Under Pompeii’s Ashes: Contesting Roman Identities

1/24 Course Aims&goals

This week: social identities and class

• Enslaved people • Women • Discussion: Pompeii and the usable past

Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol

Enslaved people in the Roman world

• Roman familia • Presenting ancient enslaved people • Slaves in Pompeii and the Roman world • Freedmen in Pompeii and the Roman world • Reception and use of ancient slavery in the

American Civil War

The Familia

• Reflection society • Patriarchal • elder Cato and Cicero: social reality? • nuclear family/extended family • Marriage: women around 15, men around 25 • Property • Gens, familia, domus

British Museum Exhibition

• “Recent research suggests that as many as half the people of Herculaneum, and almost certainly of Pompeii, too, were former slaves. Social mobility was built into the Roman way of life at the time.”

• "Downton Abbey is quite a nice comparison,"

• Lupanar

The Brothel, VII.12.18

• Graffiti feminine names of Greek origin

• Painted sex acts above the door

Enslaved people

• All over the Mediterranean, not related to race, sometimes even offspring were sold into slavery

• Had different social positions in Roman society • Could control property in the form of the

peculium • Manumission • Saturnalia

Social classes and archaeology

• finding the material culture of slaves in ceramics, artifact assemblages, houses, and graffiti based on identifiable ethnic markers

• not just look for material traces that uniquely and exclusively belonged to enslaved men and women

Enslaved people in the archaeological record

• Invisible • Property slaves who are included in lists of

tableware, clothes, furniture, and tools in both legal and literary

• Strategies, power and resistance • Choreography • Control of space

Casa del Fauno(VI.12.6)

Casa di Ceii/Casa di Amorini Dorati

Slaves in the house

• Menial and administrative jobs, food preparation, cleaning, cloth production

• Kitchen ware, loom weights, • Kitchens, stables • Own familia (not allowed to marry officially)

slaves of one household

tasks

• When we see these slaves, they are identified by their tasks, by what they do, or by their place:

• the doorkeeper (ostiarius), cook (cocus), meat carver (structor),hairdresser (ornatrix), attendant (pedisequus), bedchamber servant (cubicularius), provisioner(cellarius), litter bearer (lecticarius), child nurse (nutrix), child attendant (paedagogus),name caller (nomenclator), steward (dispensator), servant who cleaned and maintained the house (atriensis), waiter (ministrator), kitchen gardener (holitor), ornamental gardener (topiarius)

House of Venus in Bikini I.11.6

• Leg irons cupboard

Graffiti • Advertizing slaves for sexual purposes • (on a water distribution tower) : Anyone who wants to defecate in

this place is advised to move along. If you act contrary to this warning, you will have to pay a penalty. Children must pay [number missing] silver coins. Slaves will be beaten”

• “Successus, a weaver, loves the innkeeper’s slave girl named Iris. She, however, does not love him.”

• III.4.2 (House of the Moralist); 7698a: Let water wash your feet clean and a slave wipe them dry; let a cloth cover the couch; take care of our linens.”

• VI.6.1 (House of the Olii; on the Via Consolare); 139: “ The city block of the Arrii Pollii in the possession of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius is available to rent from July 1st. There are shops on the first floor, upper stories, high-class rooms and a house. A person interested in renting this property should contact Primus, the slave of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius.”

• "Methe, slave of Cominia, from Atella loves Chrestus. May Pompeian Venus be good to them both and may they always live in harmony.“

Funerary inscriptions

• By the owners • Necropolis outside

porta nocera and porta Ercolano

• Grave stelae with memorials to slaves (single greek names)

Paintings

• Depicting slaves • Used by slaves: house shrines

House of the triclinium

House of the Chaste lovers

House of the Caecilii (V.1.26)

Shrines

• House shrines: lararia • Separate for slaves, • Worshipping the guiding spirit (genius) of the

pater familias • saturnalia

House of Sutoria Primigenia (I.13.2),

Worship of the master

• Painting kitchen shrine- house I.13.2

Bakery, House of the Labyrinth , VI 11, 8-10

School for gladiators

• Iudus gladiatorus • Portico of the

theatre • Kitchen utility,

armor, 18 skeletons • Graffiti names and

dueling opponents

Manumission • When slaves were freed

they became liberti • Took his former master’s

name (gens) • Became Roman citizen • Could not hold public

offices (like women) • Could become very wealthy • Casa di vetti owned by

freedmen, amphitheatre built by freedman

Lucii libertus/a

Isis temple

“ Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, rebuilt at his own expense from its foundations, the Temple of Isis, which had collapsed in an earthquake; because of his generosity, although he was only six years old, the town councilors nominated him into their number free of charge”

Use of Roman slavery

• Worse in Antiquity or better in Antiquity?

Abolistionists/confederates

• Confederates: Made the empire what it was • Abolitionists: Reliance on slaves corrupted Roman

society, led to moral and political collapse of the Roman Republic

• Aristotle: already criticism against slavery • Worse in antiquity

– Not able to live together and have children • Better in Antiquity?

– Less severe – Not racial

Under Pompeii’s Ashes: Contesting Roman Identities

1/24 Course Aims&goals

This week: social identities and class

• Monday: Enslaved people • Wednesday: Women • Friday: Discussion: Pompeii and the usable

past

Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol

Class

• Freeborn • Enslaved • Freed

The Familia

• Reflection society • Patriarchal • elder Cato and Cicero: social reality? • nuclear family/extended family • Marriage: women around 15, men around 25 • Property • Gens, familia, domus

Women, gender and ‘engendering’

• Feminism and archaeology • Women in Pompeii

Feminism and archaeology

• Feminist archaeology • Focused on putting women in the archaeological

record- • Necessary, but provided a very simplistic view of

gender • Western projection • It often focuses on gender, but also considers

related factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. • From ‘looking for women’ to gender

Biological essentialism

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.

Gender

• Gender identity is one's personal experience of one's own gender

• Social construction • Male/female: transgender?

– Ovid’s Tiresias was transformed from being a man into a woman and then back again

– Elagabalus asks to be rid of his genitalia – Cinaedus (gender-fluid person with androgynous

qualities)

Phaedrus: transgender soldier

"a barbarian threatening the troops of the military leader, Pompey the Great, all of the other soldiers were too afraid to challenge this fierce opponent until a cinaedus stepped forward to volunteer for combat."

Women and class in archaeology

Invisible

Problems of Evidence

tangible evidence on women in the cities of Vesuvius is limited and fragmentary

What does archaeology do?

Idealism and reality

The women of Pompeii

Women Free-born women in ancient

Rome were citizens (cives), but could not vote or hold political office

In comparison to Greece: more independence and freedom

Right to own, inherit and sell property

Not segregated from men in the homes

Could attend races, theater, amphitheater (in separate sections)

Etruscan women equal to men, literate, could vote and be elected

Women at work

• Asellina owned a tavern

“I beg you to elect Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile, worthy of public office. Aegle asks for this” “I beg you to elect Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile, worthy of public office. Maria asks for this”

Women in election graffiti

• ILS 6408a. I beg you to make Pupius duumvir. Appuleia with her neighbour Mustius (asks), and Narcissus asks you.

• 6414 [written on bakery (?) wall]. We beg you to make M. Casellius and L. Albucius aediles. Statia and Petronia ask. Such citizens (would be?) in the city forever.

• 6431a. I ask you to make A. Vettius Firmus aedile. He is worthy. Caprasia asks with Nymphius, together with the neighbours. (We) ask you to vote for him.

• D'Avino, p.28. I beg you to make Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedile. I beg you to make L. Ceius Secundus duumvir. Recepta (asks), not without Talamus.

• D'Avino, p.29. I beg you to make Ceius Secundus duumvir. Sutoria Primigenia with her family asks. Are you asleep, Astylus?

although women could not stand for political office, 14.5 % of electoral graffiti are by women urging the support of candidates.

Women as Midwives Boys, are more easily delivered than girls.(6) According to Pliny, fumigations with the fat from hyaena loins produce immediate delivery for women in difficult labor; placing the right foot of a hyaena on the woman results in an easy delivery, but the left foot causes death.(7) A drink sprinkled with powdered sow's dung will relieve the pains of labor, as will sow's milk mixed with honey wine.(8) Delivery can also be eased by drinking goose semen mixed with water or "the liquids that flow from a weasel's uterus through its genitals”

Wealthy Women • Carry out duties as mater familias • Supervision of the household, slaves • Leisure and beauty

jewelry and coins found with woman's skeleton outside Pompeii

Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus

Porta Vesuvio

Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus

Tomb of Gaius Vestorius Priscus

To Gaius Vestorius Priscus, Aedile. He lived 22years. His burial place was granted along with2,000 sesterces for his funeral by decree of the town councilors. Mulvia Prisca, his mother, set thisup at [her own] expense

Freed women

• Freed women Liberti • Some freedwomen married well and

established their own households • Naevoleia Tyche erected a tomb for her

husband at the Ercolano Gate

Freed women could own slaves • Two wax tablets wrapped in cloth were

found ,together with some silver vessels in the furnace area of the Palaestra Baths. They relate to a business deal between two women dating to AD 61.

• A freedwoman Poppaea Note has borrowed money from Dicidia Margaris. As security she has temporarily transferred ownership of two of here slaves to her creditor. The tablet implies that Poppaea did default on her payment

• “ Poppaea Note, freedwoman of Priscus, has sworn that the slaves Simplex and Petrinus are hers and that she owns them and that these slaves are not pledged to anyone, nor does she share them with anyone else………..”

Powerful women

• Eumachia • Julia Felix

Eumachia

• public priestess of the Imperial cult in Pompeii during the middle of the 1st century AD

• matron of the Concordia Augusta • matron of the fullers • Made her own fortune, married well

Eumachia

Eumachia, daughter of Lucius [Eumachius], public priestess, in her own name and that of her son, Marcus Munistrius Fronto, built with her own funds the porch, covered passage, and collonade and dedicated them to Concordia Augusta [Peace] and to Pietas [Piety].

Women were subservient to the paterfamilias

Religious roles

independent Political

promotion Architecture as self promotion

Womne could own property and be independently wealthy

Local elite expressed the loyalty to the Imperial family by imitation- see Livia statue and dedication

Inscriptions as evidence for the role of women

Inscription from a seat at the tomb of the public priestess Mamia, Porta Ercolano, Pompeii

Mamia- a Public priestess and woman of status

Tomb inscriptions of priestesses ILS 5053.1. Clodia A.f. sacerdos publica of Ceres, by decree of the city council. 5053.2. Lassia M.f. sacerdos publica of Ceres, by decree of the city council. 5053.5. Clodia A.f. (built) this monument at her own expense for herself and her heirs. 6369. For Mamia P.f. sacerdos publica. The burial place was given by decree of the city council. 6370. Istacidia N.f. Rufilla sacerdos publica. 6371. Alleia daughter of Cn. Maius, sacerdos publica of Venus and Ceres, by decree of the city council at public expense.

Praedia Julia Felix

In praedi(i)s Iuliae Sp(uri) f(iliae) Felicis locantur balneum Venerium et nongentum tabernae pergulae cenacula ex Idibus Aug(ustis) primis in Aug(ustas) sextas annos continuos quinque

To let, in the estate of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius: elegant baths for respectable people, shops with upper rooms, and apartments. From the 13th August next, to the 13th August of the sixth year, for five continuous years. The lease will expire at the end of the five years.