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ROMAN DRESS AND THE FABRICS OF ROMAN CULTURE
PHOENIX Journal of the Classical Association of Canada Revue de la Société canadienne des études classiques Supplementary Volume xlvi Tome supplémentaire xlvi Studies in Greek and Roman Social History i
EDITED BY JONATHAN EDMONDSON AND ALISON KEITH
Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9319-6
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Roman dress and the fabrics of Roman culture / edited by Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith. (Phoenix. Supplementary volume = Tome supplémentaire ; XLVI) (Studies in Greek and Roman social history ; I) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-0-8020-9319-6 1. Clothing and dress – Social aspects – Rome. 2. Clothing and dress – Rome. I. Edmondson, J.C. II. Keith, Alison Mary III. Series: Phoenix. Supplementary volume (Toronto, Ont.) ; XLVI IV. Series: Phoenix. Supplementary volume (Toronto, Ont.). Studies in Greek and Roman social history ; I GT555.R65 2008
391′.00937
C2007-906269-5
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
CONTENTS
Preface vii Contributors ix List of Figures xi Abbreviations xvii Introduction: From Costume History to Dress Studies 1 jonathan edmondson and alison keith PART I
INVESTMENTS IN MASCULINITY
1 Public Dress and Social Control in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome 21 jonathan edmondson 2 Togam virilem sumere: Coming of Age in the Roman World 47 fanny dolansky 3 The Double Identity of Roman Portrait Statues: Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome 71 michael koortbojian 4 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga 94 michele george 5 (Un)Dressed to Kill: Viewing the Retiarius 113 michael carter
vi Contents PART II
FASHIONING THE FEMALE
6 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl 139 kelly olson 7 Covering the Head at Rome: Ritual and Gender 158 elaine fantham 8 Designing Women: The Representation of Women’s Toiletries on Funerary Monuments in Roman Italy 172 leslie shumka 9 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus 192 alison keith PART III
THE CULTURAL POETICS OF DRESS
10 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor: The Peplos in Ciris 9–41 205 riemer faber 11 Spinning the Trabea: Consular Robes and Propaganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian 217 michael dewar 12 Appearing for the Defence: Apuleius on Display 238 keith bradley 13 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa 257 t. corey brennan 14 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing 271 guy p.r. métraux References 295 Index Locorum 331 General Index 353
PREFACE
Since the publication of the path-breaking collection of papers on Roman dress by Sebesta and Bonfante in 1994, there has been a dramatic increase in social historical and in cultural studies of dress and adornment in the ancient Mediterranean world. This interest has manifested itself in a number of volumes on clothing in classical Greece (Llewelyn-Jones 2002 and 2003) or more wide-ranging work covering a wide chronological range (Cleland, Harlow, and Llewellyn-Jones 2005). The time is therefore ripe for a more focused and coherent treatment of ancient Roman dress. This is timely because recent scholarship in classical studies has shown the benefits of an approach based in sociocultural history and gender studies. We undertook a review of the general literature on dress studies in crosscultural perspective in order to identify major themes that would benefit from more detailed treatment in the Roman context. To this end, we gathered a group of eminent scholars to explore the theme and exchange ideas at a seminar in Toronto. The editors circulated to the contributors a draft introduction to the volume and asked them to revise their papers on the basis of that document and discussions at the seminar. We consider that our volume will be of interest primarily to Roman cultural historians but also to students of Roman literature and art history. We believe that the volume will also prove valuable and attractive to social, cultural, and gender historians of other periods. Accordingly, we have asked the contributors to provide translations of all quotations from Greek and Latin authors and to contextualize their evidence as clearly as possible. We would like to express our gratitude to all our contributors, who responded to our invitation with enthusiasm, participated in the discussions with gusto and collegiality, and both composed their original papers and revised their chapters for the volume with alacrity and acumen. We are par-
viii Preface ticularly grateful to our institutions, the University of Toronto and York University, for their generosity and commitment to the project. At York University, we are most grateful to the Office of the Vice-President (Academic), the Faculty of Arts, the Department of History, the Division of Humanities, and the Programme in Classical Studies. At the University of Toronto, we are indebted to the Department of Classics, Victoria College, the Institute of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, and New College. Phoenix, Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, also provided support for the original seminar and has since shown interest in including the resulting volume in its two recently launched subseries in Gender Studies and Greek and Roman Social History. We would like to thank Phoenix’s Mary White Fund, Victoria College at the University of Toronto, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Arts, and the small SSHRC/CRSH grant fund at York University for their generous financial assistance towards the costs of the illustrations. We are also grateful to the University of Toronto Press and to the senior humanities editor, Suzanne Rancourt, for their enthusiastic support of this volume, and to Beth McAuley and Richard Ratzlaff for their skill and efficiency in seeing it through to publication. Jonathan Edmondson Alison Keith Toronto, February 2007
CONTRIBUTORS
keith bradley (frsc) is Eli J. Shaheen Professor of Classics and Concurrent Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. t. corey brennan is Associate Professor and Chair of Classics at Rutgers University. michael carter is Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies at Brock University. michael dewar is Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto. fanny dolansky is Assistant Professor of Classics at Brock University. jonathan edmondson is Professor of Roman History and Classical Studies at York University, Toronto. riemer faber is Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo. elaine fantham is Professor Emerita of Classics at Princeton University and Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto. michele george is Associate Professor and Chair of Classics at McMaster University. alison keith is Professor and Chair of Classics at the University of Toronto.
x Contributors michael koortbojian is Nancy H. and Robert E. Hall Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. guy p.r. métraux is Professor of Greek and Roman Art at York University, Toronto. kelly olson is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario. leslie shumka is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Mt Allison University.
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.1 Statue of Augustus capite velato from the Via Labicana, Rome. Now in Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo, inv. 56230. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1965.1111 (Koppermann). Fig. 1.2 Statue of a Roman matrona, wearing a stola and palla, found on Tiber Island, Rome. Now in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1956.230 (Sansaini). Fig. 1.3 Statue of a matrona wearing a stola, found in the Roman theatre at Parma. Now in Parma, Museo Nazionale. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1967.1640 (Singer). Fig. 1.4 Patrician, senatorial, and equestrian calcei. After H. R. Goette, JdI, 103, 1988, 451, fig. 35a–c. Fig. 1.5 Statue of a man wearing a laena from the forum of the colony of Augusta Emerita (Mérida, Spain). Now in Mérida, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano. Photo: J. Edmondson. Fig. 3.1 Fragmentary bronze relief with an older and a younger man in togas. Claudian or Neronian. Now in Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum. Photo: museum. Fig. 3.2 Statue of the so-called Delphi philosopher. Hellenistic. Delphi, Archaeological Museum. Photo: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, neg. no. 135.127.
xii List of Figures Fig. 3.3 Togatus, ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj, Casino. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 08158 (Faraglia). Fig. 3.4 Paludatus (soldier), ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj, Casino. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 08162A (Faraglia). Fig. 3.5 Paludatus (hunter) with dog, ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj, Casino. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 08153A (Faraglia). Fig. 3.6 Bust of an unknown man, third century ad. Rome, ACEA (Centrale Montemartini). Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1936.0477 (Faraglia). Fig. 3.7 Bust of an unknown man, third century ad. Rome, ACEA (Centrale Montemartini). Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1936.0478 (Faraglia). Fig. 3.8 The Emperor as Philosopher. Bronze statue probably of Marcus Aurelius. From Turkey, (?) Bubon in Lycia, ca. ad 175–200. Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo: museum. Fig. 3.9 Marble statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, near Rome, ca. 19 bc. Vatican Museum, Braccio Nuovo. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1991.0072 (Granino). Fig. 3.10 Marble equestrian portrait of M. Nonius Balbus, from Herculaneum. Early Augustan. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 6104. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1976.1126 (Rossa). Fig. 3.11 Marble statue of a young man in Greek dress (himation), from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum, ca. 30–20 bc. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 6210. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1983.2139 (Schwanke). Fig. 3.12 Marble statue of the so-called General, from Foruli (Abruzzi), mid-first century bc. Chieti Museum. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1967.0841 (Singer). Fig. 3.13 Marble funerary relief of a young man, from the banks of the Ilissos River, Athens, ca. 330 bc. Athens, National Museum. Photo: Art Resources.
xiii List of Figures Fig. 3.14 Etruscan urn cover with semi-nude figure, from Volterra. Now in Florence, Museo Archeologico. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1967.0929 (Felbermeyer). Fig. 3.15 So-called Testamentum relief. Trajanic. Marble. Rome, Musei Capitolini. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1974.0163 (Rossa). Fig. 3.16 So-called Tivoli General, ca. 100 bc. Marble. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1932.0412 (Faraglia). Fig. 3.17 Marble grave relief with nude portrait, ca. 50 bc from Rome, Via Appia, at the fourth milestone. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1963.1095 (Eisner). Fig. 3.18 Roman denarius of 100 bc (RRC 329/1a), depicting the Genius populi Romani. London, British Museum. Photo: © Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 3.19 Silver cup from Boscoreale, depicting the Genius of the Populus Romanus. Photo: after Héron de Villefosse 1899. Fig. 3.20 Roman aureus of 36 bc (RRC 540/1), showing a semi-nude statue of Divus Julius, wearing the hip-mantle. London, British Museum. Photo: © Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 3.21 Marble cuirassed statue, from Mauretania. Julio-Claudian. Cherchel, Musée Archéologique. Photo: Forschungsarchiv für Antike Plastik, Köln. Fig. 3.22 Marble relief depicting Venus, Mars, and Divus Julius. Julio-Claudian. Algiers, Musée National d’Antiquités. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1933.0223. Fig. 3.23 Marble statue of Divus Augustus. Tiberian. Vatican Museum. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 003275. Fig. 3.24 Marble statue of Tiberius, from Leptis. Tripoli Museum. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1961.1734 (Koppermann). Fig. 3.25 Julio-Claudian portrait group. Claudian. Marble. Ravenna, Museo Nazionale. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1938.1407 (Ruhrmann).
xiv List of Figures Fig. 3.26 Private marble statue, ca. ad 40. Formia, Museo Nazionale. Photo: M. Koortbojian. Fig. 5.1 Vase showing retiarius and secutor. Colchester Museum. Photo: museum. Fig. 6.1 Relief of mother and togate girl, 50 bc. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. no. 2176. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1936.1234 (Faraglia). Fig. 6.2 Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the south frieze. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, New York, ART59594. Fig. 6.3 Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the north frieze. Paris, Louvre, MA 1088. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York, ART200854. Fig. 6.4 Funerary relief of the Sertorii, ad 50, from Ince Blundell Hall. Photo: © National Museums Liverpool, World Museum Liverpool S2006.00440 / N1975.0362. Fig. 6.5 Bust of a young girl, Severan period. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 2746. Photo: after Fittschen and Zanker 1983: Tafel 180, no. 152 (G. Fittschen-Badura). Fig. 6.6 Relief of a family group, 13 bc–ad 5. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1962.641 (Felbermeyer). Fig. 6.7 Bust of a young girl, ca. ad 200. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts: Mary S. and Edward J. Holmes Fund, 1994.84. Photo: museum. Fig. 7.1 Altar of the Lares Augusti from the vicus Sandaliarius, Rome. Florence, Uffizi. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1972.159 (Singer). Fig. 7.2 Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the south frieze. Photo: Fototeca Unione, American Academy, Rome, neg. no. 3247. Fig. 7.3 Bust of a Vestal Virgin with ritual infulae. Florence, Uffizi. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, New York, ART313434. Fig. 7.4 Statue of Drusilla from Caere. Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 9952. Photo: museum.
xv List of Figures Fig. 7.5 Statue of Agrippina the Elder. Palermo, Museo Nazionale Regionale. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1988.1156 (K. Anger). Fig. 8.1 Funerary stele of P. Ferrarius Hermes and his wives Caecinia Digna and Numeria Maximilla from Pisae. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 4675 (Gummerus). Fig. 8.2 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, Aetia (?), from Ortona. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1979.2774 (Schwanke). Fig. 8.3 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, Aetia (?), from Ortona: right side. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1979.2775 (Schwanke). Fig. 8.4 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, Aetia (?), from Ortona: left side. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1979.2776 (Schwanke). Fig. 14.1 Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite: detail showing Venus. Floor mosaic from Utica, building known as the Maison de Caton. Approx. 2.50 x 2.80 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo, inv. 2980. Photo: after CMT 1:2 Utique. Fig. 14.2 The Domain of Dominus Julius. Floor mosaic from Carthage. 5.50 x 4.50 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo. Photo: Gilles Mermet/ Art Resource, New York. Fig. 14.3 Panel showing the domina. Floor mosaic from the private baths of the villa at Sidi Ghrib. 2.95 x 1.80 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo (reserves). Photo: after Ennabli 1986. Fig. 14.4 Venus and a marine villa. Floor mosaic from Carthage, Maison de la Cachette. 4.33 x 4.00 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo, inv. A176. Photo: after CMT 4.1: Carthage, plate XC. Fig. 14.5 Tomb mosaic of Numitoria Saturnina and C. Iulius Serenus. From Thina (Henchir). 2.00 x 1.70 m. Sfax, Musée Archéologique. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 64.558 (Koppermann).
xvi List of Figures Fig. 14.6 Erotes decorating a rotunda. Floor mosaic from Carthage, Maison du Triconque. Approx. 4.50 x 3.50 m. Carthage, Parc Archéologique des Thermes d’Antonin. Photo: after CMT 4.1: Carthage, plate LXXIX. Fig. 14.7 St Thecla (?) in the Arena. Ceramic bowl (African red slip ware). 16.5 cm in diameter, 3.2 cm high. Private collection. Photo: courtesy J. Herrmann and A. van den Hoek. Fig. 14.8 The ‘Brother Sarcophagus.’ Marble. 2.30 x 1.50 m. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 1970.1505 (Singer). Fig. 14.9 Vergil and Muses. Floor mosaic from Hadrumetum (Sousse). 1.20 x 1.20 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo, inv. A.266. Photo: DAI Rome, inst. neg. 61.549 (Koppermann).
ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations of classical authors and journal titles follow those used in OCD3. Note also the following: AE ANRW APM CIL CMT Dar.-Sag.
EAA EJ
FIRA IGRR ILAlg. ILGN
L’Année épigraphique. Paris, 1888– H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlin and New York, 1972– A.A.R. Bastiaensen (ed.), Atti e passioni dei martiri. Milan, 1987. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin, 1863– M.A. Alexander and M. Ennaïfer (eds.), Corpus des mosaïques de Tunisie. Tunis, 1973–1999. C. Daremberg and E. Saglio (eds.), Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines d’après les textes et les monuments. Paris, 1877–1919. Enciclopedia dell’Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale. Rome, 1958–1966. V. Ehrenberg and A.H.M. Jones (eds.), Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1976. S. Riccobono et al. (eds.), Fontes Iuris Romani Antejustiniani. 2nd ed. Florence, 1968. R. Cagnat et al. (eds.), Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes. Paris, 1906–1927. S. Gsell (ed.), Inscriptions latines d’Algérie. Paris, 1922. E. Espérandieu, Inscriptions latines de Gaule (Narbonnaise). Paris, 1929.
xviii Abbreviations ILJug
Inscriptiones Latinae quae in Iugoslavia inter annos 1940 et 1960 repertae et editae sunt. Ljubljana, 1963–1986. ILLRP A. Degrassi (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae. Florence, 1963–1965. ILS H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin, 1892–1916. LIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. Zurich, 1981– LTUR E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Rome, 1993–2000. MRR T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic 1–2. New York, 1951–1952; 3: Supplement. Atlanta, 1986. OCD³ S. Hornblower and A.J.S. Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1996. OCT Oxford Classical Texts. OLD P.G.W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford, 1982. E. Groag, A. Stein, et al. (eds.), Prosopographia Imperii PIR2 Romani saeculi I, II, III. 2nd ed. Berlin, 1933– PLRE A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale, and J. Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge, 1971– 1980. RE G. Wissowa, W. Kroll et al. (eds.), Paulys Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Berlin, 1893– RGVV Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten. RIC H. Mattingly and E. Sydenham (eds.), The Roman Imperial Coinage. London, 1923–1994. Roman Statutes M.H. Crawford (ed.), Roman Statutes. BICS Suppl. 64. London, 1996. RRC M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge, 1974. TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Leipzig, 1900–
Introduction: From Costume History to Dress Studies jonathan edmondson and alison keith
In the opening Book of Sartor Resartus, first issued in serial form in 1833– 4, Thomas Carlyle has an unnamed ‘English editor’ introduce us to the novel’s extravagantly named German protagonist, Professor Diogenes Teufelsdröckl, and the major work that he has just completed: Die Kleider: Ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes: Their Origin and Influence). In the first chapter this anonymous editor reflects with surprise on the fact that so little had previously been written on the philosophy or history of clothes: How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue should have been overlooked by Science, – the vestural Tissue, namely of woollen or other Cloth; which Man’s Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being?
For a man whose first name is that of the fourth-century bc Cynic philosopher who eschewed the use of any clothing at all but a coarse cloak and whose surname translates as ‘Devil’s Dirt,’ it is something of a surprise that clothing provides such a central metaphor for understanding the universe in which he lives. But as the novel proceeds, further elements of Professor Teufelsdröckl’s philosophy of dress become clear, not least his view that clothes play a major role in defining humans as social beings. As a result, Carlyle’s work is seen by some as a founding text in what may now legitimately be termed the field of ‘dress studies.’1 Since the 1970s there has been a burgeoning scholarly interest in the analysis of dress. Sociological, anthropological, psychological, and semiotic studies have appeared that have taken the subject well beyond the rather sterile ‘costume history’ that for so long dominated the field.2 The language
2 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith of clothes; the social psychology of clothing; dress and morality; dress and class distinctions (‘dressing up and dressing down’); dress and power relations; dress and popular culture; dress and gender; cross-dressing and sexual identities; dress, culture, and identity; dress and ethnicity; and clothing as material culture are just some of the topics that have been elucidated from a variety of different perspectives.3 This is not to say that there were no valuable contributions prior to the 1970s; indeed, many fundamental points were made by Georg Simmel in his short treatise Philosophie der Mode in 1905, by John Flügel in The Psychology of Clothes (1930), and by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and sociologist Edward Sapir in their respective articles of 1919 and 1931.4 James Laver, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from 1922 to 1959, produced a number of works on dress that went well beyond an art historian’s concern to identify and date particular costumes.5 But it was arguably Roland Barthes’ 1967 study, Système de la mode, that introduced a new degree of theoretical sophistication into this discussion, as did the work of Pierre Bourdieu, notably Distinction.6 The former certainly made a strong case for seeing clothing as a communicative code, while the latter analysed the social symbolism of sartorial and cosmetic choices, and documented in particular the cultural capital expended and amassed in self-presentation. Barthes’ structuralist study of women’s clothing was conducted in accordance with his rigorous semiological method: he identified a corpus for investigation (fashion magazines from the years 1958–9), the signifying unit (‘matrix’) and its constituent components (object, support, and variant or ‘vesteme’), and an inventory of species (materials, cuts, etc.) and genera (types of clothing). Of perhaps most importance was his detailed demonstration that a description of clothing may have reference (1) to the clothes themselves (clothing); (2), self-reflexively, to the critical discourse (i.e., meta-language) of fashion (Fashion); and (3), most significantly, to the larger socio-political context of the culture beyond the fashion system altogether (world). His study concluded not only that the language of Fashion assumes a regulatory role in the context of the fashion magazines but also that, on the connotative level, ‘rhetoric opens Fashion to the world; through it, the world is present in Fashion, no longer only as human productive power in an abstract sense, but as an ensemble of “reasons,” i.e., as an ideology.’7 In La Distinction: critique social du jugement, Pierre Bourdieu addressed more directly the sociological implications of the fashion system adumbrated in Barthes’ semiological analysis. Bourdieu’s analysis of French consumers’ clothing purchases documents significant divergences along the axes of age, gender, class, and ethnicity. He argued that ‘the working classes make a realistic or ... functionalist use of clothing,’ in that they prefer func-
3 Introduction tion over form and choose lasting value over passing fad,8 while as one moves up the social scale the quantity and quality of the clothing purchases of both men and women increases. These differences he ascribed to a complicated social calculus in which the necessities and facilities that characterize one’s social position and economic condition are, on the one hand, redescribed (mystified) as a particular lifestyle and, on the other hand, assessed ‘as an opportunity to accumulate social capital.’9 He concluded, therefore, that ‘the interests the different classes have in self-presentation, the attention they devote to it, their awareness of the profits it gives and the investment of time, effort, sacrifice, and care which they actually put into it are proportionate to the chances of material or symbolic profit they can reasonably expect from it.’10 Part cause and part result of this upsurge in interest, a number of specialist journals have been launched since the late 1960s: Costume (which first appeared in 1968), Textile History (since 1969), The Clothing and Textile Research Journal (since 1982), The Journal of Design History (since 1988), Fashion Theory (since 1997), and Textiles: Journal of Cloth and Culture (since 2003). In addition, major journals such as Gender and History have occasionally published special issues devoted entirely to the theme of dress.11 Berg Publishing, with editorial offices in Oxford and New York, has played an especially important role in promoting scholarly interest in dress studies not just through the journal it has established, Fashion Theory, but also through its lively interdisciplinary series, Dress, Body, Culture, in which a number of cutting-edge monographs and volumes of collected essays have been published. To take stock of such developments, general handbooks have appeared charting the main contours of the field, while various readers are now available that aim to define the seminal works in the field.12 Dress studies is clearly now well established as a recognized field of intellectual enquiry. It can no longer be accused of being a frivolous or lightweight topic. Social and cultural historians of various periods have benefited from the insights of this scholarship to produce some revealing studies of clothing in particular historical contexts, whether it be medieval Europe, early modern England, Renaissance Italy, Russia before Peter the Great, ancien régime France, colonial West Africa, Victorian and Edwardian England, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century North America.13 Others have integrated analysis of dress into more general historical treatments of particular periods.14 Elite and royal dress have loomed large in many of these historical studies, but the clothing of ordinary people is now attracting more attention, especially as historians become more interested in questions of material culture.15 Indeed, studies of dress and fashion have featured prominently in
4 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith analyses of the rise of consumerism, while historians of labour and gender have focused on the shifting technologies of textile production that increasingly marginalized domestic production, which for so long in pre-industrial society defined the world of women’s work.16 Art historians have always been interested in clothing, as they have sought to describe and analyse the sculptures and paintings in major art collections, but here, too, there has been a paradigm shift in the way the topic has been approached. The essays and books of Anne Hollander have led the way – not least her seminal work, first published in 1978, Seeing Through Clothes – towards a much subtler understanding of the relationship between real clothes and their representation in art or sculpture.17 Literary critics, too, have become more alert to the subtle poetics of dress in their readings of texts. Thus, we now have studies of dress in works ranging, for example, from Origen to Cervantes, from Molière to Henry James.18 Clothing is now seen as crucial to the definition of gender in literature, whether it be in medieval texts, in eighteenth-century French literature, or in the contemporary novels of Margaret Atwood.19 Not surprisingly, attention to questions of dress has become more intense as part of the general proliferation of scholarly interest in the body in different historical periods and in literature and art.20 The cumulative result of this scholarship has been to foreground some of the many ways in which clothing has contributed towards the definition of class, gender, ethnicity, and cultural identity in many societies across the centuries. It has also demonstrated the importance of combining a variety of different methodological approaches (historical, art-historical, and literary; anthropological, sociological, psychological, and semiotic) to produce as richly textured a picture of dress as possible. Different styles of dress, and different fabrics, have traditionally marked boundaries between classes, and so those who aspired to higher status have often usurped the style of dress of the upper orders as part of their claim to social mobility. Views of what is appropriate dress for men and for women have evolved, especially in the twentieth century, and the clothes men and women have chosen to wear make an eloquent public statement about how they wish their gendered identity to be perceived. Dress also defines occupational groups, as soldiers and religious officials, academics and lawyers, farmers and factory workers, sportsmen and sportswomen, bankers and prostitutes each have their own distinctive dress, their uniform, to mark their identity through work. But individual dress items often change their meaning over time, as the history of blue jeans so powerfully illustrates.21 Those in positions of power are often invested with distinctive dress or elements of dress: whether it be the crown, sceptre, and
5 Introduction robes of royalty or the chain of office of a local town mayor. Even more so, people seek to gain power over others by the dress that they wear. Dress creates a ‘portable environment’ in which power relations can be effectively played out.22 Subgroups within a society, especially adolescents, often define their own dress code in reaction against the socially conservative dress norms of society. In many ways dress helps these subgroups to assert a defining identity.23 Striped clothing has often marked marginalized groups in society – prostitutes, domestic servants, criminals – and even bankers.24 Religious groups sometimes adopt a form of dress that defines their shared community and announces their confessional affinity, especially during sacral acts, while religious leaders don further distinctive elements of dress that signal their religious authority.25 And dress can be very powerful in summing up a culture’s sense of itself, for marking ethnicity and a sense of shared community, whether it be the ‘Englishness’ of English dress or the invented tradition of the kilt as a marker of highland ‘Scottishness.’26 This has become particularly clear in colonial and post-colonial contexts as ‘ethnic dress’ is usually starkly contrasted with the ‘dress of the colonizer’ and resistance to the colonial power has often been focused by the use of ethnic dress (or elements thereof) as a symbol of resistance.27 Similarly, clothing plays a central role in the debates within immigrant communities in North America, for example, over the degree to which they should assimilate to the dominant culture and how far they should preserve the diverse cultural traditions of their homelands.28 This is all possible because clothing is always bound up within a socially determined code of appropriate and inappropriate dress – a code that develops and shifts in the light of negotiation (challenges to it, attempts to reinforce it) and its ongoing reinterpretation. It is against current norms that an individual’s conformity or transgression is measured. But there is always a tension between a community’s dresscode and the clothes that an individual chooses to wear. Deviations in terms of dress are often glossed by conservative elements in society as morally depraved, dangerous to the moral good of the community. As a result, social elites have often felt the need to develop techniques of control to enforce the traditional code. But elites have also been the object of control, too, as political and religious leaders sought to limit, usually without success, ostentation and immorality in terms of dress through sumptuary laws.29 And it is through individuals’ choices (now fuelled by dress manufacturers’ marketing methods) made against the backdrop of the current orthodoxy that certain styles of dress are adjudged ‘fashionable’ and fashion trends are set.30 As part of this general scholarly trend, recent work on Roman dress has – for the most part – moved beyond an attempt to establish just what Roman
6 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith clothes really looked like. Valuable though such studies are as a first step, the ‘costume-history’ approach of scholars like Lillian Wilson simply lacks the subtlety to bring out the richness of Roman dress for revealing central aspects of what it meant to be Roman, what were appropriate modes of appearance for Roman men and for Roman women, and how dress helped to underline the key hierarchical status layers into which Roman society was divided.31 The valuable papers collected in the volume The World of Roman Costume, edited by Judith Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (1994), demonstrate the potential of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of Roman dress, with social and cultural historians sharing their insights with art historians and literary scholars. Some of its papers show an awareness of the anthropological and sociological literature on dress, but many remain more descriptive than analytical and a few prefer to stay closer to a Wilsonian paradigm: in particular, for instance, Goldman’s contributions on Roman shoes and on Roman costume more generally, the latter replete with patterns for creating a woman’s tunic and palla, several styles of male tunic and toga, a Greek peplos, various types of cloaks (the lacerna, paenula, cucullus, sagum, and paludamentum) and even underwear.32 The roots of this type of scholarship lie in the obvious need of art historians to identify the costumes in which men and women were depicted in Roman sculpture and wall painting. Indeed, some of the very best scholarship in the field of Roman dress has been that of art historians carefully evaluating the visual evidence for the nature of the Roman toga and stola, the key defining garments for adult male and female citizens respectively.33 Important art-historical work has also been done on Roman footwear and jewellery.34 Studies of Roman women have necessarily involved discussion of their dress and the two I Claudia volumes, which resulted from the exhibition of that name on women in Roman art and society, first mounted at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1996, have significantly advanced the question.35 Much of this art-historical discussion has necessarily been anchored in sound philological interpretation of the terms for Roman clothing items that appear in literary texts.36 It is only thanks to this meticulous scholarship that more wide-ranging interpretive analysis of Roman dress is made possible. The studies in this volume would simply not be conceivable without this crucial earlier spadework. Several recent articles on Roman dress have adopted a methodological approach similar to that found in this volume. The work of Judith Sebesta and Kelly Olson on Roman women’s and children’s dress and the articles by Shelley Stone and Caroline Vout on the Roman toga all combine literary and iconographic evidence to provide subtle, anthropologically astute readings of Roman clothing.37 Roman authors had keen eyes for spotting deviance in
7 Introduction matters of dress, and Roman literary scholars are becoming increasingly alert to the role that dress played in the poetics and construction of Roman identity, whether it be social identity, gender, or ethnicity. As studies of modern dress have emphasized, dress needs to be defined broadly to include hairstyles, male shaving preferences and the style of beards, jewellery, cosmetics, and perfumes.38 Colours and fabrics can make eloquent statements, too, and some work has started to appear on these, although much more remains to be said.39 Further collections of papers have been published, most recently Costume et société dans l’Antiquité et le haut Moyen Age (2003) and The Clothed Body in Antiquity (2005).40 These volumes cover Greece, Rome, and the early Middle Ages, and include further papers on the Roman toga and the poetics of dress in the Historia Augusta.41 Scholars of the Greek world are also now realizing the fruitfulness of studying issues of dress, even if Greek dress was not quite so richly invested in symbolic meaning as its Roman counterpart. Here much interest has centred on the veiling of Greek women, but other aspects of male and female dress have all received attention, including aspects of ethnicity as expressed through dress.42 In the context of the important historical and archaeological studies that have recently been devoted to Roman adornment and attire, it seems a propitious time to explore the cultural poetics of dress in the ancient Roman world. Jonathan Edmondson opens the volume with a chapter analysing the public dress code of the Roman elites in the late republican and early imperial period (chapter 1). He argues that a distinctively Roman ceremonial, public dress came to be established and enforced for both sexes and all classes of the Roman citizen body not only explicitly, through legislation, but also implicitly, through complex rhetorical strategies linking traditional morality with traditional dress; as a result, dress became so important a mechanism of social control in the Roman empire that every person’s gender, age, class, ethnicity, and citizenship were identifiable at a glance. He considers the emblematic dress of the Roman citizen male and female, the toga and stola respectively, in the civic contexts in which it was required to be worn: the senate and law courts, the theatres and religious festivals, the morning salutatio and the evening imperial banquet. Required of citizens, these garments were denied to those outside the civic body: foreigners and adulteresses, slaves and criminals. The ideological tensions negotiated in their dress and adornment by Roman citizen and non-citizen alike are the focus of the remaining chapters in the volume. Even within the citizen body, gradations of class and rank could be signalled by changes in style of dress. For example, although Roman children of both sexes wore the toga praetexta, a purple-bordered toga that established them from an early age as members of the civic community, they
8 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith exchanged this for sex- and class-differentiated adult dress at coming-of-age ceremonies, discussed in this volume by Fanny Dolansky (chapter 2) and Kelly Olson (chapter 6), respectively. Dolansky examines what we know of the rite de passage in which the Roman boy assumed the white toga, toga pura, of the freeborn enfranchised (adult) citizen male. Her study unravels the symbolic resonances of the toga pura, the very name of which, often accompanied by the adjective libera (free), connoted the pure birth of the freeborn citizen male. Analysis of the public rights and responsibilities of citizenship conferred on the wearer by the assumption of the toga – enabling him to begin a career in politics, law, rhetoric, and the army – is complemented by an exploration of the private emotions, particularly of pride and anxiety, elicited from celebrant, family, and friends on this important occasion in the domestic sphere. A discussion of the appearance of the young Roman girl by Kelly Olson draws together the diverse literary and artistic evidence for a distinctive dress code for Roman girls. Discussion, ancient and modern, of the attire and adornment of the Roman girl has been hampered in its reliance, on the one hand, on the evidence for the appearance of the Roman boy and, on the other, on the evidence for the appearance of the adult woman. Olson shows, however, that the dress of Roman girls differed significantly from that of both Roman boys and sexually mature Roman women, who exchanged the child’s tunic and toga praetexta for the stola upon their marriage. Nonetheless, Olson’s findings indicate that elite Roman girls were not as visually distinct from their mothers in the artistic sources as the literary sources would suggest and she argues that Roman girls may have been groomed for the role of sexually mature wife and mother by wearing the cosmetics, jewellery, and elaborate hairstyles of their mothers. Other rites de passage were similarly marked by a change of clothing, while within the ranks of the elite still further specialization of dress obtained in, for example, the whitened toga candida that candidates for election to Roman office wore, the purple-bordered toga praetexta to which curule magistrates were entitled, and the entirely purple toga picta worn by censors. In a synthetic study of the representation of public dress in Roman sculpture (chapter 3), Michael Koortbojian examines the different togate forms in which elite male citizens portrayed themselves as an expression of Roman civic ideology. Although details distinguishing the colour and line of the toga only rarely survive on extant statuary, the social distinctions such details marked were not omitted from the plastic arts but rather conveyed more frequently through the application of paint. Koortbojian argues that togate and cuirassed statues on display in public (i.e., political and military) contexts in this way bespeak their subjects’ prominent social standing and embody their claim to the exemplary Roman virtues of dignified authority
9 Introduction (dignitas) and military courage (virtus). Michele George turns from the elite investment in the toga as a symbol of civic prestige to the representation of the toga as a symbol of social oppression in the satirical writings of the poetclientes Martial and Juvenal (chapter 4). Her study supplements Koortbojian’s discussion of elite perspectives on the social symbolism of the toga in an examination of the negative portrayal of the toga in authors who represent themselves not as elite patrons but as citizen clientes and whose perspective is conditioned by social limitation rather than social privilege. Still lower on the social scale were gladiators, legally disadvantaged (infames) if not slaves, who fought in amphitheatrical spectacles mounted for the enjoyment of a broad cross-section of the Roman citizen body. Michael Carter explores in chapter 5 the broad cultural stereotypes, beliefs, and expectations with which the spectators viewed the different gladiatorial costumes, especially that of the retiarius, the gladiator who fought nearly naked and lightly armed with net, trident, and dagger against a much more heavily armed opponent variously called contrarete, myrmillo, or secutor. His findings suggest that retiarii were admired not only for the speed and agility with which they outmanoeuvred their more heavily equipped foe but also for their good looks, visible to the spectators because they wore neither faceguards nor helmets. Their naked appeal, however, seems also to have laid them open to charges of licentiousness and, by extension, effeminacy. The Romans policed the gendered rhetoric of dress closely, even down to the niceties of headgear. Elaine Fantham, in her study of Roman head-coverings (chapter 7), contrasts the ritual requirement for Romans to cover their heads when officiating as priests with respectable Roman women’s daily wearing of woollen headbands, vittae. Both sexes, moreover, were supposed to wear infulae, the hanks of wool shaped like a diadem from which vittae hung on either side, when officiating as priests or acting as suppliants, while the bride also wore them on her wedding day. Despite the abundant literary evidence documenting women’s daily wearing of vittae and priests’ ritual wearing of infulae, however, Roman portraiture preserves few traces of these headbands, and Fantham speculates that their absence in the plastic arts may reflect Roman women’s disinclination to observe the prescriptions of the moralists. Leslie Shumka likewise contrasts the strictures of Roman moralists concerning women’s sartorial behaviour with women’s own selfpresentation, in so far as it is visible in the iconography of funerary commemoration in the so-called mundus muliebris reliefs, which depict the articles women employed in their toilette (chapter 8). She argues that a special feminine iconography developed in the decorative programs of these commemorative monuments to record the essential tools in the design of female appearance and she suggests that this gendered mortuary culture can be read
10 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith as evidence not only of elite Roman women’s aspirations to beauty but also of the (slave or freed) beautician’s memorialization of her occupational skills. Either way, these reliefs attest to the importance of dress and adornment to Roman women as vehicles of self-expression. Like Shumka, though from a different perspective, Alison Keith in chapter 9 explores the limited evidence we have for Roman women’s views on female dress. In a discussion of the poetry by and about Sulpicia, the niece of Augustus’ general M. Valerius Messala Corvinus (consul in 31 bc) and the best known Roman female poet whose work is extant, Keith argues that Sulpicia was sensitive to the prescriptions of both poets and moralists concerning female dress in Roman culture. She suggests that Sulpicia exploited elite women’s access to sartorial finery to blur gender and class lines in her poetry, but that her male contemporaries may have been impervious to the gender and class challenges posed by sartorial self-fashioning. In chapter 10, Riemer Faber traces the history of the literary metaphor of the woven robe in classical epic in order to unravel the significance of the metaphor in the proem of the epic poem Ciris, honouring the dedicatee, M. Valerius Messala. He finds the Ciris-poet’s identification of a general with the spangled cloak of heaven particularly appropriate to literary panegyric, and argues that the poet intends a compliment to Messala by identifying him with the immortal subjects of cosmology. In a discussion of late-antique panegyric descriptions of woven robes, Michael Dewar in chapter 11 examines the strategies by which Claudian and other late Latin poets praise the emperor and his advisers by equating consular robes with the office on which they depend. He argues that the elaborate descriptions such garments received in late-antique poetic panegyric suggests both the visual importance they assumed in late-antique imperial ceremonies and the larger political messages they could convey to the astute observer. In a study of Apuleius’ self-presentation at his trial in the mid-second century ad for magic held in Roman North Africa, Keith Bradley is similarly concerned in chapter 12 to elaborate the signals that the orator’s selfportrait, particularly his description of his dress and deportment, conveyed about his social, political, and economic standing, and the particular social situation – a judicial trial – in which he delivered the speech in his own defence. Bradley finds that Apuleius’ self-portrait was designed to appeal to the judge by fashioning him, like the judge, as an orator, togate and learned, formed in the Roman tradition. Like Bradley, Corey Brennan explores the social significance of modes of dress in Roman North Africa in an analysis of Tertullian’s De Pallio (chapter 13). Examining the rhetoric in which Tertullian urges his audience to reject the Roman toga (symbol of their Roman citizenship) and return to the Greek pallium (symbol of erudition), Brennan
11 Introduction argues that Tertullian invokes the pallium as a metaphor to encourage his Carthaginian audience to renounce the worldly pursuits symbolized by the prestigious Roman toga and thereby to embrace the Christian faith symbolized by the pallium. In the final chapter (chapter 14), Guy Métraux is also concerned with the significance of clothing and accessories in late antiquity, both in textual and in artistic representations, and he examines in particular two emerging concerns about dress: first, an increasing prudery about mortal female nudity and, second, an increasing uniformity in the length of the toga and in its style of draping. Métraux links both developments to new standards of self-fashioning, in which clothes came to be invested with both a literal and a symbolic significance that sacralized what had formerly been secular style. As this survey indicates, the contributors share our commitment not only to investigate the social symbolism of dress in the Roman world but also to elicit the views of a wider spectrum of the members of Roman society than just those of the male elite. These concerns are reflected in the organization of the volume. Part I, ‘Investments in Masculinity,’ groups together papers that examine masculine attire, especially the toga, in ancient Rome and assess the views of those whose age, class, or ethnic background could make the assumption of the toga a dangerous or socially limiting act. Part II, ‘Fashioning the Female,’ explores the strategies for self-expression available to Roman women in negotiating a dress code prescribed by a patriarchal culture. Part III, ‘The Cultural Poetics of Dress,’ explores the complex dynamics of dress in imperial Roman culture, both literary and artistic. With the establishment of secure rule over the whole of the Mediterranean, Greeks and Punic North Africans alike became members of the Roman Empire and had to learn to dress the part. Obviously, it has not been possible to cover every aspect of Roman dress in a single volume and there are many topics that will require further treatment elsewhere. This volume does not concentrate very much on Roman fashion per se and the way in which styles of dress evolved between Republic and Empire and beyond, even though Keith’s study of sartorial elegance in the Sulpician corpus (chapter 9) reveals much about Roman attitudes towards refinements. More could be said about luxury fabrics and evolving fashions in dress among the Roman elite. Here the depiction of luxury dress in Pompeian wall painting would repay closer scrutiny, even though this involves complex methodological problems of just what is being represented in this artistic genre. Male dandies and cross-dressers have piqued some curiosity, but further work would be enhanced by the application of insights from the crosscultural literature now available on these striking figures.43 Religious dress – the dress of the major flamines, pontifices, augurs, and
12 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith haruspices, of the Vestals and flaminicae, not to mention the more exotic garb of priests of Cybele or Isis – needs further study, as does the extent to which dress was regulated during festivals, whether it be the need to wear vestes albae at the Ludi Cereales or multicoloured clothes at the Floralia (Ov. Fasti 4.619–620; cf. 5.355–356).44 Roman military dress would also repay close analysis: not just the rank distinctions that have been the object of much work by Roman military historians,45 but in particular the striking dress of the commander, when he dramatically exchanged his toga for the scarlet, purple, and gold paludamentum after crossing the sacred boundary (pomerium) of the city of Rome as he left on campaign. To denote that war had been declared, it was sufficient for Roman authors such as Sallust to state simply, ‘He changed his toga for a paludamentum.’46 Although Faber in chapter 10 discusses the imagery of fabrics and weaving in Roman epic, there is also little here on the fabrication of textiles per se or on the gendered technologies of production, questions that have engaged a range of scholars working on more modern periods. Nor is there space here to discuss clothing trends across the provinces of the Roman Empire.47 This volume concentrates on dress as a key marker of Romanitas and has something to say on the complex reactions to the wearing of Greek dress at Rome and on dress codes in the provincial setting of Roman North Africa (chapters 12 to 14), but much more needs to be said about the close connection in Roman mentality between dress and ethnicity. Olson, Fantham, Shumka, and Keith in chapters 6 to 9 each touch on several ancillary items of female dress and adornment such as ribbons, jewellery, and cosmetics, but a more thorough-going treatment of such items, to which should be added hairstyles and perfume, would be valuable. While the focus here is for the most part on the elite, the dress of Roman emperors and female members of the domus Augusta would also benefit from more systematic discussion to see to what degree they differentiated themselves in terms of dress from other members of Roman society, and more needs to be said about the tunicatus populus and the dress of the working poor across the Roman Empire.48 During the reign of Augustus, the learned grammarian and freedman M. Verrius Flaccus, tutor to the emperor’s grandsons, composed a major work of Latin lexicography, On the Meaning of Words (De verborum significatu), following in the footsteps of M. Terentius Varro, whose On the Latin Language was completed probably in 43 bc. Although Verrius Flaccus’ work is now lost, it was abridged in the later second century ad by Sex. Pompeius Festus, whose epitome (of which only about half survives) was in turn epitomized in the eighth century by Paul the Deacon. Without the epitomes of this work, we would be much less well informed about Roman dress; for Verrius Flaccus clearly treated the whole gamut of Roman dress: the toga,
13 Introduction the stola, the toga praetexta of the Roman child, the dress of a bride on her wedding day, mourning dress, the purple ribbons (vittae) of the flaminica, the fringed shawl (ricinium) of the Roman widow, to name just a few items. Not to be outdone, the learned scholar Suetonius composed a work On the Nature of Clothes (De genere vestium) in the early second century. It, too, is now lost, but a few snippets can be gleaned from stray quotations in later authors. He clearly discussed the different kinds of trabea, including those worn by augurs, the laena (a double toga) worn by flamines when sacrificing, the various types of caps worn by priests, and the distinctive shoes of patricians.49 In the fourth century ad, the grammarian Servius included many explications of Roman dress in his learned commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid. And as late as the seventh century, Isidore, bishop of Hispalis (modern Seville), drew on the scholarship of these earlier authors for the material on dress that he included in his work The Etymologies. Its penultimate book contains a series of observations, totalling over 4,000 words, on dress (Etym. 19.22–34) and the discussion is organized into the following sections: 22 On the diversity and names of garments (De diversitate et nominibus vestimentorum) 23 On the distinctive dress of certain peoples (De proprio quarundam gentium habitu) 24 On men’s outer garments (pallia) (De palliis virorum) (including the toga) 25 On women’s outer garments (pallia) (De palliis feminarum) (including the stola) 26 On coverings and other textiles currently in use (De stratu et reliquis vestibus quae in usu habentur) 27 On fabrics (De lanis) 28 On the colours of clothes (De coloribus vestium) 29 On instruments used in making clothes (De instrumentis vestium) 30 On decorative accessories (De ornamentis) 31 On decorative accessories for women’s heads (De ornamentis capitis feminarum) 32 On rings (De anulis) 33 On underwear (De cingulis) 34 On shoes (De calciamentis)
The sheer comprehensiveness of the ancient scholarly literature on dress illustrates how deeply significant it was to the Roman mentality. Even if Isidore occasionally got muddled over some details, for instance when trying to explain the cinctus Gabinus style of wearing the toga, it is neverthless striking that the importance of dress as a defining element of Roman culture was still remembered in learned circles in the far western Mediterranean over 200 years after the Romans had lost political control of the region.50
14 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith Notes 1 For Carlyle’s place in the study of dress, see Keenan 2001 and Carter 2003: 1–17, a study of Sartor Resartus as the first of what are for Carter ‘Fashion Classics.’ 2 For examples of the costume history approach, see Köhler 1928; Payne 1965; Bigelow 1970; for Roman dress studied from a costume history perspective, see Wilson 1924 and 1938a; Croom 2002. 3 Language of clothes: Lurie 1981; psychology of clothing: Kaiser 1990; dress and morality: Ribeiro 1986; class: Binder 1986; power relations: McDowell 1992; Johnson and Lennon 1999; popular culture: Cunningham and Lab 1991; gender: Martin 1989; Barnes and Eicher 1992; Fischer-Mirkin 1995; Buckley and Fawcett 2002; Burman and Turbin 2003; cross-dressing: Garber 1992; Griggs 1998; culture and identity: Kuper 1973; Davis 1992; ethnicity: Eicher 1995; material culture: Kuchler and Miller 2005. 4 Simmel 1905, on which see Carter 2003: 59–81; Flügel 1930, with Carter 2003: 97–119; Kroeber 1919, on which see Carter 2003: 83–96; Sapir 1931. 5 Most important, among his many works, are Laver 1937, 1950, 1969; see further Carter 2003: 121–41. 6 On Barthes, see Carter 2003: 143–63; but note the mild scepticism of Davis 1992: 5–18. 7 Barthes 1983: 278. 8 Bourdieu 1984: 200. 9 Ibid.: 202. 10 Ibid. 11 For example, volume 9.3 (1997) on dress and gender in the ancient world or volume 14.3 (2002) on dress and gender in historical perspective, the latter subsequently reissued as a book (Burman and Turbin 2003). Cf. Journal of American Folklore 111, no. 440 (Spring 1998), on ‘Modern Dress: Costuming the European Social Body, 17th-20th Century’; Art Journal 54.1 (1995) on ‘Clothing as Subject,’ ed. N. Felshin. 12 Taylor 2002; Breward 2003; Calefato 2004; Kawamura 2005. For seminal works in dress studies, Carter 2003; Johnson, Torntore, and Eicher 2003. 13 Medieval Europe: Piponnier and Mane 1995. Early Modern Europe: Jones and Stallybrass 2000. Early Modern England: Vincent 2003. Early Modern Italy: Frick 2002. Russia: Sekatcheva 2004. Ancien régime France: Roche 1989 = 1994. West Africa: Martin 1994 and 1995. Victorian/Edwardian England: Breward 1999. America: Kidwell and Christman 1974; Marchand 1985; Severa 1995; Palmer 2004. 14 Le Goff 1985: 188–207 = 1988: 132–50 (on the ‘code vestimentaire’ of Medieval Europe); Harris 1981 (on the red liberty cap of the sans-culottes in the French Revolution).
15 Introduction 15 Royal dress: Cumming 1989 (in general); Burke 1992 (Louis XIV); Smuts 1996 on the early Stuarts. Elite dress: for example, see Dolan 1994; Vincent 2003. Ordinary people: Styles 1994, 2002, 2003; Smiles 1997. Slave-dress in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: White and White 1995. 16 Fashion and consumerism: Rappaport 2000; Williams 1982; Wilson 1985; Leach 1993; Lears 1994; Palmer 2002 and 2004. For shifting technologies of production, see Lemire 1997 (seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England); Styles 2003; Bray 1997 (on late-imperial China). For weaving as women’s work in the ancient world, see esp. Barber 1994. 17 Note also Hollander 1999 (esp. Part II) and 2002. For further developments in this line, see Ribeiro 1995 and 2000; Ashelford 1996; Rodini and Weaver 2002. 18 See, respectively, Noce 2002; Dock 1992; Bernis 2001; Hughes 2001. In general on dress and literature, see Monneyron 2001. 19 Medieval texts: Burns 2002 and 2004. Eighteenth-century French literature: Batchelor 2005; Jones 2004. Margaret Atwood: Kuhn 2005. 20 Seminal here of course has been the work of Foucault 1984. 21 Barthes 1983: 295; Gordon 1991; and note the exhibition catalogue: Histoires du jeans de 1750 à 1994 (Musée de la mode et du costume 1994). 22 Johnson and Lennon 1999; Keenan 2001. On dress as a ‘portable environment,’ see Watkins 1984. 23 For analyses of the manner in which Goth dress has defined a whole subculture, see Hodkinson 2002; Spooner 2004: esp. ch. 6, ‘Undead Fashion’ (159–99). For the importance of gay men’s dress during the twentieth century for self-definition of the male homosexual community, see Cole 2000. 24 As revealed in the fascinating study of Pastoureau 1991. 25 On religious dress in cross-cultural perspective, see Mayo 1984 and esp. Arthur 1999 and 2000. 26 On English dress: Breward, Conekin, and Cox 2002; on the kilt, Trevor-Roper 1983. 27 For this in Africa, see Martin 1994; Allman 2004; in colonial Jamaica, Buckridge 2004; in Australia, Maynard 2001; in India, Chaudhuri 1976; in East Asia, Chen 2003. In general, see McClintock 1995. For the related question of dress and globalization, see Maynard 2004; Niessen 2003. 28 On Jewish immigrant women’s dress in the United States, see Schreier 1994. On Asian American and African American use of ethnic dress in courtship rituals and marriage ceremonies, see Lynch 1999. 29 See Harte 1976. For sumptuary laws, Hughes 1983; Hunt 1996. 30 For discussions of fashion, see esp. Hollander 1978: 349–90; Davis 1992; Ash and Wilson 1992; Breward 1995, 1999, and 2003; Buckley and Fawcett 2002. 31 On the toga, Wilson 1924; on Roman clothing in general, Wilson 1938a; on Greek, Roman, and Byzantine costume, Wilson 1938b. For other works that take
16 Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith
32 33
34 35 36
37 38
39
40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47
a ‘costume history’ approach, note Heuzey 1923; Repond 1931; Houston 1947; and, most recently, Croom 2002. For a well-illustrated introduction to Roman dress in general, see Sette 2000. Goldman 1994a and 1994b. For a more revealing look at Roman underwear, see Olson 2003. Toga: Goethert 1937 and 1939 and esp. Goette 1990. On the toga in the Greek East, see Havé-Nikolaus 1998. Stola: Bieber 1931 and esp. Scholz 1992. The valuable work of Bonfante on Etruscan and Roman dress (1973 and 1975) is essentially grounded in this art-historical tradition. Footwear: Goette 1988; Curletto 1990; Goldman 1994a. For jewellery, see Pfeiler 1970; Stout 1994. Kleiner and Matheson 1996; Kleiner and Matheson 2000. So both Goette 1990 and Scholz 1992 include careful discussion of the textual references to the toga and stola respectively. For a thorough philological study of clothing terms in Latin, see Potthoff 1992. Sebesta 1994a, 1997, 2005; Olson 2002; Stone 1994; Vout 1996. On the poetics of dress in Cicero, see Heskel 1994 and Dyck 2001; in Roman epic, Bender 1994; Keith 2000: esp. 18–35; on the poetics of cosmetics, Wyke 1994 and Richlin 1995; on women’s hair, Bartman 2001; on beards, Zanker 1995; on ‘moral appearance’ and ‘effeminate signs,’ Corbeill 1996: chap. 4, esp. 159–69; on reading the body, Edwards 1993: chap. 2; Gleason 1995: esp. chap. 3 (‘Deportment as Language’). Colours and fabrics: see Sebesta 1994b; Alfaro et al. 2004; colours: Cleland et al. 2004; on textile production, see Wild 1970; Cardon and Feugère 2000; Rogers et al. 2001. Chausson and Inglebert 2003; Cleland et al. 2005. On the toga, Deniaux 2003; Davies 2005; Sebesta 2005; on the Historia Augusta, Molinier-Arbo 2003; Harlow 2005. The veil: Cairns 2001 and 2002; Llewellyn-Jones 2003. For an excellent collection of papers on Greek women’s dress, see Llewellyn-Jones 2002. On Athenian male dress, Geddes 1987; on dress and ethnicity, note Cohen 2001; Miller 1997 (analysing Persian dress at Athens). In general, Losfeld 1991 and 1994; Alden 2003. Jones Roccos 2006 provides a useful annotated bibliography on Greek dress. See briefly Tracy 1976; Edwards 1993: 63–70, 78–97; Corbeill 1996: 159–69. Modern studies: Garber 1992; Griggs 1998. On the regulation of Greek dress, especially at festivals, see Mills 1984; Ogden 2002. See Franzoni 1987. Sall. Hist. 1. 87, quoted at Isid. Etym. 19.24.9; cf. Pliny Pan. 56.4. For some (mainly descriptive) work, see Wild 1985; Böhme 1985; Garbsch 1985; Roche-Bernard and Ferdière 1993; Roussin 1994; Swift 2000.
17 Introduction 48 Alföldi 1935 still provides a valuable starting-point on the emperor’s dress; on slave-dress, note Bradley 1994: 87–9, 95–8; George 2002. 49 Suet. frs. 165–169 (ed. Reifferscheid). 50 Etym. 19.24.7, with the comments of Stone 1994: 39n6. We are very grateful to numerous colleagues in the Department of History at York University for their bibliographic suggestions on dress in later periods.
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PART I
Investments in Masculinity
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1 Public Dress and Social Control in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome jonathan edmondson
In the opening book of Vergil’s Aeneid, Jupiter delivers a long speech to console his despondent daughter Venus and reassure her about the future greatness of Rome (Verg. Aen. 1.229–296). In a climactic, and much quoted, passage (1.282–286), he reveals the divinely laid plan: his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono; imperium sine fine dedi. quin aspera Juno quae mare nunc terrasque metu caelumque fatigat, consilia in melius referet, mecumque fovebit Romanos, rerum dominos gentemque togatam. For them [sc. the Romans] I set neither physical nor temporal bounds on their possessions; dominion without limit I have bestowed. Furthermore, even harsh Juno, who right now terrorizes and harries sea, lands and heaven, will eventually return to better plans of action, and at my side she will nurture the Romans, masters of the world and the race that wears the toga.
So, for Vergil’s Jupiter, the Romans would most of all be identified by their wearing of a shared, distinctive garment: the toga. Only Roman citizens were entitled to wear it. This was a point that the emperor Claudius was anxious to emphasize some sixty years or so after Vergil wrote the Aeneid when he was presiding at the trial of a Greek accused of usurping Roman citizenship. Throughout the judicial proceedings, Claudius was punctilious about the defendant’s dress. When advocates were laying out the case for the prosecution, he required the defendant to wear Greek dress – the pallium; but during the speeches for the defence he allowed him to change into a toga
22 Jonathan Edmondson (Suet. Claud. 15.2). The strict correlation between Roman civic status and the right to wear the toga could not have been more emphatically underlined.1 Roman citizen women, once married, had their distinctive dress too: the stola.2 Roman citizens, therefore, both male and female, were marked by their entitlement to wear what was construed as distinctively Roman civic dress, or, to use Suetonius’ term, habitus patrius et civilis (Calig. 52.1; cf. Tib. 13.1). By wearing the toga or stola on civic occasions, they demonstrated their membership in a defined and bounded community, the gens Romana; they laid claim to a shared Roman identity and the cultural traditions with which each of these garments was invested. Roman public dress helped to delineate precisely what it meant to be Roman. The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the many different ways in which toga and stola served to define the Roman community in the late Republic and early imperial period. It will be argued that these garments were very much the ceremonial, public dress of Roman citizens, by no means their everyday wear. The wearing of the toga began early in life, as Roman boys and girls were socialized by wearing it when they took part in Roman public rituals. As children grew to maturity, the precise form of their public dress changed at key moments in their development as citizens, helping to advertise publicly their changing roles in the civic life of the community. But for male citizens, in particular, public dress was doubly potent as an agent of social control. For at the same time as the toga united the citizen body, marking those who belonged within it and those who were excluded from it, it also allowed some of the many rank distinctions that divided the Roman citizen body into hierarchical social strata to be advertised, to be given very tangible form. Furthermore, it also visibly marked those who were currently vested by the Roman state with political and military power. But unifying though the uniform of the toga was, like all forms of fashion, it invited subtle and not so subtle deviations from the official dress code, as some Romans tried to use public dress to make powerful statements to their fellow citizens. As a result, Roman public dress had to be controlled in various ways. This was in part achieved by reinforcement from above – by legislation or through the intervention of Roman magistrates. But arguably more effective were the actions of Roman citizens themselves, who developed complex rhetorical strategies that underlined the moral force of correct dress. Thus, it will be argued, it was not just the wearing of the toga and stola, but the complex discourse that developed around public dress that functioned as important mechanisms of social control in Republican and early imperial Rome.
23 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome Toga and Stola: Defining the Roman Civic Body Given its emblematic force, it is not surprising that male citizens were encouraged, indeed required, to wear the toga for all civic occasions – political, judicial, and religious. In the same period as Vergil was composing the lines with which this chapter began, Augustus was seeking in the 20s bc to reassert traditional Roman values after the disruption of civil war. As part of that campaign, he issued an edict that all citizens should wear the toga when entering the forum at Rome (Suet. Aug. 40. 5); they should be wearing traditional Roman civic dress to enter the civic heart of the city. He also encouraged citizens to wear it when attending the theatre and religious festivals. It is no surprise, therefore, that one of the most distinctive images of the new princeps showed him as the togate citizen, often with his toga pulled reverently over his head (capite velato), just as it would have been every time he officiated at sacrifice; see, for example, fig. 1.1, a statue of Augustus from the Via Labicana, Rome.3 Furthermore, his lex Iulia theatralis, to be dated to the period between 20 and 17 bc, banished to the back rows of the theatre those citizens who turned up dressed in dark-coloured ordinary clothes (pullati) rather than in white togas (Suet. Aug. 44.2). They had to sit alongside noncitizens and slaves, relegated to the fringes of Roman society.4 Togas were also required dress for citizens in Roman law-courts. The younger Pliny, a leading advocate in the centumviral court under Domitian and Trajan, commented in a letter written at the end of the first century ad that when he was released from his duties and found time to escape to his country villa in Etruria, there was mercifully no need to wear a toga (Pliny Ep. 5.6). A generation or so later another famous advocate, M. Cornelius Fronto, while returning home late one night from a dinner party during the reign of Hadrian, was amazed to find that the praetorian prefect Q. Marcius Turbo was already presiding in the courtroom in which Fronto was due to defend a client. When Fronto entered the court, he was still wearing his dining robes, his synthesis. This elicited an ironic ‘vale!’ from Turbo: that is, the greeting used in the evening rather than the form more appropriate for the morning, ‘salve!’ (Dio 69.18.3, Xiphilinus). Turbo’s sardonic witticism underlines the point that the toga was de rigueur for judicial proceedings in the Roman courts. This also explains why it was necessary for Quintilian to go to such lengths to explain how an orator should arrange his toga to make the best impression on his audience in his treatise on rhetorical training, completed in the ad 90s.5 Another major occasion on which the toga had to be worn was the daily morning ritual at which clients greeted their patron: the salutatio. Hence
24 Jonathan Edmondson Juvenal can refer to clients as ‘togate hordes’ (turbae togatae) scrambling to pick up the measly dole provided by their patron (Sat. 1.96), while Martial talks of the tasks that a client was obliged to provide for his patron as a ‘togate service’ (opera togata, 3.46.1).6 Togas came to be required as well, it seems, at imperial banquets. Hadrian always wore either a toga or a pallium when he presided at imperial banquets (SHA Hadr. 22.4), while in the ad 160s Septimius Severus, as a young man recently arrived in Rome from North Africa, committed the serious faux pas of arriving for one dressed in a pallium; his blushes were saved by the loan of one of the emperor’s own togas (SHA Sept. Sev. 1.7).7 The toga thus became symbolic of Roman civic life itself, and civic life was taken to include the salutatio, at which client greeted patron, and at imperial banquets, at which the emperor entertained his guests. Its centrality was underlined by the fact that it was very consciously put aside during the Saturnalia, the annual festival at which many Roman social norms were temporarily inverted.8 In similar fashion, female Roman citizens, once safely married, were marked out by the stola that they were now entitled to wear (see figs. 1.2 and 1.3). This was a heavy, sober, straight-cut garment worn over the tunic, fixed with straps, as is visible on a statue of a stolate matrona now in Parma (fig. 1.3); it was often covered with a mantle or palla, as can be seen, for instance, in the statue of a matron dating to the early first century ad found on Tiber Island in Rome (fig. 1.2). As this statue also makes clear, to its bottom hem was attached a ruffle (instita) that covered the ankles – and hence the modesty – of the woman. Headbands (vittae) appear to have been a further part of the matron’s attire, even though they are seldom visible on statues (but see fig. 7.4, a statue probably of Drusilla, sister of Caligula, from Caere).9 At the same time as he reinforced the wearing of the toga for males, Augustus also put a renewed emphasis on the centrality of the stola for female Roman citizens.10 The dress of the matron was designed to shield its wearer both physically and morally from the prying gaze of disreputable males who might impugn her chastity. This is a point underlined by Ovid in the prologue to the first book of his Ars Amatoria, written ca. 2 bc, where he warns off respectable stolatae from the saucy delights of his didactic work: ‘Stay far away, you slender headbands (vittae), symbol of modesty, and you long ruffle (instita), you who cover half of the feet’.11 After his relegation to Tomis in ad 8, Ovid felt the need to reiterate the point that he had strictly excluded from his Ars all those women (i.e., matrons) who had assumed the stola and vitta, which ‘protect them from being touched with pollution.’12 Not surprisingly, the terms stolata femina or matrona stolata came to be used from the later second century ad onwards as a term of social rank for those of equestrian status or above, the equivalent of honesta femina.13
25 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome The emperor Claudius’ conduct at the trial of the Greek accused of usurping Roman citizenship, discussed above, emphasizes that non-citizens (peregrini) were denied the right to wear the toga. So, too, was any citizen deemed to be infamis – that is, one who had chosen to pursue an ‘unspeakable’ profession as a gladiator or actor, pimp or prostitute.14 Those citizens condemned to exile also lost the right to wear the toga.15 Similarly, Roman citizen women convicted of adultery were banned from wearing the stola and may have been required to wear the toga in public.16 In this way, they were assimilated to prostitutes, some at least of whom also wore togas in public, to mark them off from respectable women.17 By wearing this ostensibly masculine dress, they had given up any claim to feminine modesty. As the dress that quintessentially defined Romanness, it is no surprise that the use of the toga gradually spread to overseas regions as they were brought under Roman control from the second century bc onwards. Roman soldiers may have provided the initial impetus; for when they were billeted for the winter in towns in the area of their campaign, it seems that they wore the toga. This is the implication of the fact that in 205 bc, the Romans required two Spanish tribes, the Ilergetes and Ausetani, to provide ‘heavy cloaks and togas’ (saga et togae) to supply the Roman army as part of the terms of settlement following their revolt (Livy 29.3). The following year the praetor serving in Sardinia sent 1,200 togas and 12,000 tunics to supply Scipio’s legions operating in North Africa (Livy 29.36), while in 169 bc, the urban praetor let a contract in Rome for shipping 6,000 togas and 30,000 tunics to the army in Macedonia (Livy 44.16). Roman citizens residing overseas took to wearing the toga, as can be inferred from the fact that in 88 bc it made the Roman citizens of Asia so conspicuous that they became easy targets for Mithridates’ assassins (Val. Max. 9.2. ext. 3; App. Mithr. 22–23; Plut. Sulla 24; cf. Cic. Leg. Man. 7, 11). As a result, in a speech that the historian Posidonius put into the mouth of the Athenian hoplite-general Athenion, such Roman citizens then ‘changed their dress to himatia’ and ‘once more called their original cities their fatherlands’ (Athen. 5. 213b = Posid. Hist. fr. 253 Kidd); that is, they abandoned the wearing of the toga, went back to their Greek dress, and stopped calling Rome their patria. Furthermore, the Roman senate developed the practice of bestowing either the toga picta and tunica palmata, the dress of a triumphant general, or the toga praetexta of a curule magistrate on those foreign kings who were deemed worthy to become ‘friends and allies of the Roman people.’ This had allegedly occurred as early as the late sixth century bc in the case of Porsenna king of Clusium (Dion. Hal. 5.35.1), but a series of examples can be found from the third century onwards: for instance, Syphax and later Masinissa, kings of Numidia in 210 and 203 or 200 bc, respectively (Livy
26 Jonathan Edmondson 27.4; 30.15; cf. 31.11); Antiochus, king of Commagene in 59 bc (Cic. Q.fr. 2.11 = Shackleton Bailey 15); or Ptolemy, king of Mauretania in ad 24 (Tac. Ann. 4.26: ‘an ancient custom revived’).18 By such means the connection between the Roman state and the toga was emphasized even more clearly. Toga and stola, then, served as a powerful means for defining who belonged within, and who was excluded from, the Roman citizen body. As such, they fostered a sense of civic uniformity and cohesion, contributing in theory at least towards social order. However, Roman public dress had still greater potential, since within the officially sanctioned dress code there were a number of variations that highlighted status and rank. As a result, the particular type of toga that one wore in public and changes in the type of dress one was entitled to wear very strikingly marked and affirmed one’s changing place within Roman civic society. Mutatio vestis: Changes in Dress and Distinctions within the Citizen Body Changes in dress occurred at key transitional moments in the life cycle of a Roman citizen. Roman boys and girls were distinguished from adult Roman citizens by their wearing of a purple-bordered toga (the toga praetexta). Such togae praetextae marked children out early as members of the Roman civic body and helped to socialize them into the traditions of their community, but interestingly did not differentiate them by gender. Before puberty their incipient Romanness, their membership in the gens togata, was much more crucial than whether they were male or female.19 The purple border around their togas and the little pouch or bulla that they wore around their necks intended to offer them prophylactic protection from physical and moral danger.20 As Festus remarks (283 L = 245 M), ‘No obscene word is to be spoken in the presence of a praetextatus,’ that is, in the presence of a child wearing a toga praetexta. When a boy reached puberty, he dedicated his toga praetexta and bulla to his household gods (Lares) and assumed the pure white toga, the toga pura or toga virilis, the toga of manhood.21 Girls dedicated their praetexta and dolls to Fortuna Virginalis at the time they were deemed ready for marriage.22 From this moment onwards they may also have assumed a different kind of headband (an altera vitta), as Propertius implies when he has the ghost of Cornelia, daughter of the Scribonia who was later to marry Augustus, recall her marriage to L. Aemilius Paullus Lepidus, suffect consul in 34 and censor in 22 bc (Prop. 4.11.33–35): mox, ubi iam facibus cessit praetexta maritis, vinxit et acceptas altera vitta comas, iungor, Paulle, tuo sic discessura cubili.
27 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome Later, when my (toga) praetexta gave way to marriage torches, and a different headband bound up my swept-up hair, I shared your bed, Paullus, only to leave it thus. (tr. G. Lee 1987)
Other rites of passage were symbolized by a temporary and very visible change in dress (mutatio vestis). A woman on her marriage day wore a woollen tunic woven on an upright loom (the tunica recta), belted with a special kind of girdle (cingulum) tied with a distinctive knot (a ‘Herculean’ knot), orange slippers (lutei socci), and, most strikingly, a flaming-yellow veil (flammeum) that covered a distinctive hairstyle, the ‘six braids’ (seni crines), otherwise only worn by Vestal Virgins.23 Slaves on the day of their manumission had their hair shaved and wore a distinctive pointed cap, the pilleus (Polyb. 30.18.3; Livy 45.44). Hence, the term ‘to summon slaves to the pilleus’ (servos vocare ad pilleum) became a metaphorical way of describing manumission.24 Candidates for election wore a special whitened toga, the toga candida.25 Men in mourning appeared in ‘sombre-coloured’ togas (togae pullae), left their hair unkempt, and did not shave their beards.26 Widows may have worn a fringed shawl (ricinium), while eventually old men, at least under Severus Alexander, were allowed to wear cloaks over their togas as protection against the cold, though matrons, we are told, were forbidden such a luxury.27 Variations in rank and status were also made immediately clear through dress. Regular citizens wore the plain white toga: the toga pura or toga virilis, while equestrians were entitled to the trabea, a short toga of distinctive form and colour, as well as narrow purple stripes on their tunics (the angusti clavi), equestrian shoes (calcei), and the gold ring (anulus aureus).28 Senators were distinguished by the broad stripe (the latus clavus) on their tunic and by their senatorial shoes (calcei). As a result, Varro mocks those who wore transparent togas to show off the broad stripe on their tunic (Sat. Men. 313 Bücheler), while Horace gently chides the folly of the man ‘silly enough to wind those black straps [that is, of his senatorial calcei] around his calves and have a broad stripe (latus clavus) going down his chest’ (Sat. 1.6.24– 29).29 Consequently ‘to change one’s shoes’ (calceos mutare) became a metaphorical expression for ‘becoming a senator.’ For example, Cicero alleged that a certain Asinius simply ‘changed his shoes’ and became a pater conscriptus in the chaos following Caesar’s death in 44 bc (Cic. Phil. 13.13.28).30 Patricians were differentiated from plebeians by their patrician shoes (calcei patricii), black with moon-shaped buckles, the maximum price for which (150 denarii) was set 50 per cent higher than that for senatorial shoes (100 denarii) in Diocletian’s Price Edict of ad 301, and 114 per cent higher than that for equestrian shoes (70 denarii). (For these three types of calcei, see fig.
28 Jonathan Edmondson 1.4.) Julius Caesar, keen to distinguish himself among patricians, took to wearing the sort of red calcei that the kings of Alba Longa had reportedly once worn (Dio 43.43.2).31 Public dress also marked those who had been granted authority within the Roman state. Those who were appointed curule magistrates or priests were entitled to wear the toga praetexta both during their time in office and subsequently at certain festivals.32 The clearest statement of this entitlement occurs in a speech that Livy put into the mouth of the tribune of the plebs, L. Valerius, as he argues in 195 bc in favour of his proposal to repeal the lex Oppia (Livy 34.7.1–3). This law of 215 bc had prohibited women from wearing purple as an emergency frugality measure during the Hannibalic War.33 How, L. Valerius contended, could Romans allow this ban to continue when Roman males were allowed to wear purple, especially togae praetextae? Shall our wives be the only ones not to derive any benefit from the peace and national tranquillity we now enjoy? Shall we men wear purple, dressed in togae praetextae while holding magistracies and priesthoods? Shall our children wear togas bordered with purple? Shall we permit magistrates in colonies and municipalities and the magistri of the urban neighbourhoods (vici) here in Rome, low though they are in rank, the right to wear the toga praetexta and enjoy such a great distinction not only in life, but also after their death when they may be cremated in it? At the same time shall we deny women the right to wear purple? (Livy 34.7.1–3)
Whether this accurately reflects the situation in 195 bc is unclear, but it certainly reveals norms at the time that Livy was writing – under Augustus, who, as we have seen, was eager to reinforce distinctions of dress. A purplebordered toga worn by an adult thus marked its wearer as someone, temporarily at least, invested with power, whether at the level of the Roman state, the local community, or even the urban neighbourhood.34 It lent him a dignity and authority that elicited respect and obedience from his fellow citizens. The special power of a Roman magistrate’s dress is dramatically emphasized in Livy’s narrative of the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 bc, where he conjures a vivid picture of Rome’s senior senators (seniores) donning their togae praetextae or triumphal dress and sitting on their curule stools in the vestibules of their houses to await the marauding Gauls. When the latter arrived, they were simply dumbfounded at what they saw: They gazed as in veneration at the beings seated in the vestibules of their homes, for their attire and bearing surpassed those of mortal men, and in majesty of countenance and gravity of expression they were most like to deities. (tr. T.J. Luce)35
29 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome Again the historicity of the details of the incident matters less than the importance it reveals about Roman perceptions concerning the potency of the toga praetexta; it endowed the Roman elite with a statuesque, almost divine authority. Similarly Plutarch (Pomp. 24.6) reports the capture by pirates of two praetors, Sextilius and Belli(e)nus, probably in the year 68 or 67 bc. When apprehended, each was dressed in his toga praetexta and attended by lictors.36 The fact that they were wearing their togae praetextae when seized caused more outrage, it would appear, than even their capture on Italian soil; the power of their official dress really should have repulsed the pirates and prevented their assault.37 Ordinary Romans recognized, and usually respected, the distinctive dress of the elite. Cicero describes (Brut. 56) how during the conflict of the orders, M. Popillius, the consul of 359, was officiating at a sacrifice as flamen Carmentalis wearing his laena, a form of double toga traditionally worn by priests, when he was informed of a riot that had erupted elsewhere in the city. He hastened to the scene and arrived ‘clad in his laena’ (laena amictus). The aura of authority that this distinctive dress bestowed upon him was, allegedly, sufficient to quell the riot immediately without any further action required.38 (For a statue of an official wearing a laena from the forum of the colony of Augusta Emerita [Mérida, Spain], see fig. 1.5. This forum was closely modelled on the Forum Augustum in Rome.)39 At the very top of the cursus honorum, the censors wore all-purple togas to mark them out from the curule magistrates who wore the toga praetexta (Polyb. 6.53.7), while military commanders who qualified for a triumph, the Roman state’s highest award, were granted the most striking form of public dress available: the vestis triumphalis, which comprised the tunica palmata (a purple tunic with gold palm branches embroidered into it) covered by a toga picta (a purple toga emblazoned with gold stars).40 Public dress thus contributed significantly towards dividing the Roman citizen body into its various status hierarchies. Rome was a culture of spectacle, and the spectacle of dress helped to emphasize some of its most important values. The potency of these distinctions in public dress is further underlined by the fact that occasionally the elite orders very visibly gave up the dress to which they were entitled. This occurred in particular at moments of public mourning. Our best evidence concerns mourning rituals after the death of a member of the domus Caesaris. In 10 bc, for instance, senators ‘changed their dress’ as a sign of respect following the death of Augustus’ sister Octavia (Dio 54.35.5). What this entailed comes more sharply into focus in Dio’s description of events immediately subsequent to Augustus’ death in ad 14. At the first meeting of the senate after the body of the deceased princeps had reached the city of Rome, ordinary senators came wearing equestrian dress,
30 Jonathan Edmondson while the magistrates wore plain senatorial dress: that is, they had doffed their togae praetextae (Dio 56.31.2).41 As a mark of respect, each group down-dressed by one rank. When almost 200 years later Commodus ordered senators to wear equestrian dress and woollen cloaks at the amphitheatre, Dio, a contemporary witness, interpreted this as a clear omen of the emperor’s imminent death, since ‘this was a thing we [sc. senators] never do except when an emperor has just died’ (Dio 72.21.3). The practice was also replicated at the local level in the municipalities and colonies of Italy and the provinces, where, as we have seen, local magistrates were required to take off their togae praetextae and assume darkened togas (togae pullae) as part of the mourning rituals following the death of Lucius and Gaius Caesar in ad 2 and 4, respectively (ILS 139, lines 16–22; ILS 140, line 22: veste mutata; lines 31–33). Mourning dress, however, was not just worn after the death of a prominent citizen; it was also donned after a national disaster. For example, after the Roman army surrendered in disgrace to the Samnites at the battle of the Caudine Forks in 320 bc, senators took off their gold rings and their tunics with the latus clavus (Livy 9.7). In 56 bc, when the elections were disrupted by the vetoes of the tribune C. Cato, the senate ‘changed its dress’ in protest (Livy Per. 105: vestem mutavit). Dio, reporting the stormy politics of the same year, claims that the senators passed the resolution to change their dress ‘as if at a time of public calamity’ (Dio 39.28.2). Such changes of dress could be used metaphorically to make powerful rhetorical statements. The pilleus, the cap donned by slaves at their manumission, could be worn by those of free birth to symbolize that they had been liberated from a difficult situation. For example, the senator Q. Terentius Culleo, one of the prisoners of war released by the Carthaginians as part of the peace terms following their defeat at the Battle of Zama in the Second Punic War, wore the pilleus at Scipio Africanus’ triumph in 201 bc to remind everyone that his liberty had been restored (Livy 30.45; Val. Max. 5.2.5). Similarly, some of the colonists of Cremona and Placentia marched in pillei at the triumph of C. Cornelius in 197 bc to commemorate the fact that he had liberated these two Latin colonies from the threat of attack by the Insubres and Cenomani (Livy 33.23). When King Prusias ii of Bithynia wore a freedman’s pilleus in 168–167 bc to meet a Roman delegation, the contemporary historian Polybius objected to his conduct; it suggested too obviously that he was a servile dependant of the Romans (Polyb. 30.18.3–7; cf. Livy 45.44 for a more favourable version of the incident). Mourning dress was particularly effective for conveying a rhetorical message. Defendants at trials, and their supporters too, often donned it in the hope that this would elicit the pity of the jury.42 So, when P. Rutilius chose
31 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome not to put on mourning dress nor take off his senatorial insignia at his trial during the civil strife of the 90s bc, he was making a powerful statement that he was being brought to trial unfairly (Val. Max. 6.4.4, in his section on ‘impressive sayings and deeds’: graviter dicta et facta). Presiding magistrates also changed their dress just before pronouncing the sentence. At his trial on a charge of extortion in 66 bc, as soon as C. Licinius Macer saw Cicero, the praetor and president of the court, taking off his toga praetexta, he realized that he was about to be found guilty. He sent a message to Cicero announcing that he intended to commit suicide, at which Cicero allegedly refrained from announcing the jury’s verdict.43 Mourning dress could also be put to political ends. In 133 bc, the property-owning classes appeared in togae pullae in the forum to protest the agrarian legislation of Ti. Gracchus (Plut. Ti. Grac. 10). In 98 bc, Q. Caecilius Metellus, who would become consul in 80, launched a campaign to get his father Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, censor in 102, recalled from exile. He let his hair grow long, put on a dark-coloured toga, and went about the forum beseeching his fellow citizens to pass a law revoking his father’s banishment. They eventually took pity on him and recalled Numidicus, while he gained the agnomen ‘Pius’ for the devotion he showed his father (Diod. Sic. 36.16.1). But the strategy of ‘changing one’s dress’ to affect mourning could not have been clearer than in 58 bc, the year of P. Clodius’ tribunate. In a dramatic gesture designed to signal his opposition to Clodius’ measures as tribune, Cicero discarded his senatorial dress and went around the city dressed as an equestrian (Dio 38.14.7; cf. Plut. Cic. 30). The equites then changed into mourning dress in sympathy with Cicero (Plut. Cic. 31). This in turn prompted the senate to pass a resolution that all senators should ‘change their dress’ (i.e., put on mourning dress) to protest Clodius’ machinations (Cic. Sest. 53). According to Cicero’s version of affairs after his eventual return from exile in 57 (Red. sen. 12), Clodius had had the gall not only to disregard this resolution, but even to put on a toga praetexta, the dress of a curule magistrate, to which he, as tribune of the plebs, was not strictly entitled and which even the praetors and curule aediles had temporarily discarded. In February 56 the son of P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, consul the previous year, also ‘changed his dress’ (vestitum mutavit) when the tribune C. Cato proposed a plebiscite relieving his father of his appointment as proconsul in Cilicia (Cic. Q.fr. 2.3.1 = Shackleton Bailey 7.1). Roman politicians clearly expected that dramatic, highly symbolic gestures such as this would bring them advantage in the stormy politics of the period. The sheer effectiveness of Roman dress as an indicator of status is illustrated by the fact that certainly individuals laid claim to a higher status merely by wearing the type of public dress to which they were not enti-
32 Jonathan Edmondson tled.44 If a non-citizen wanted to pass himself off as a Roman citizen, what better way than to appear in public in a citizen’s toga? If an ambitious freedman wanted to claim equestrian status, why not simply dress like an equestrian? This had become a serious problem during the late Republic and civilwar period and was an issue that Augustus made a determined effort to tackle: hence his concern to regulate correct dress in general and for seating hierarchies in the theatre. Suetonius mentions his attempts to regulate dress (Aug. 40.5) immediately after discussing his endeavours to prevent non-citizens (peregrini) and slaves from usurping Roman citizenship (ibid. 40.3–4). In Suetonius’ mind, at least, the issues were clearly interconnected. The problem of appropriating status recurred under Domitian, as is clear from a series of poems in Martial’s fifth book of epigrams, published ca. ad 90, in which the poet pokes fun at upwardly mobile freedmen who tried to pass themselves off as equestrians by occupying seats in the fourteen rows of equestria loca in the theatre or by wearing scarlet and purple – perhaps the equestrian trabea – or both.45 Conversely, on certain occasions some Roman citizens rejected the toga and stola altogether, preferring to wear other less cumbersome forms of dress.46 Techniques had to be developed to control public dress, since deviation in terms of dress was seen as a threat to the social order and was very closely associated in Roman mentality with moral deviance; for the cohesion of the res publica such deviance had to be kept in check. Controlling Dress It was one of the responsibilities of the magistrates of the Roman state to ensure that the traditional Roman dress code was upheld. During the Republic, censors scrutinized the body politic every fifth year, and dress was one of the areas of their scrutiny. Cato the Elder, censor in 184 bc, penalized those families whose women possessed excessively luxurious clothing. He taxed them punitively, we are told, and lowered their property qualification and, in the process, their social rank (Plut. Cat. Maj. 18).47 During the principate emperors took on a similar, censorial role. Tiberius in ad 16 as corrector morum had a senatus consultum passed prohibiting Roman citizen males from wearing silk clothes (Tac. Ann. 2.33; Dio 57.15.1). Nero banned women from wearing ‘amethystine and Tyrian purple clothes’ (Suet. Nero 32.3). Domitian, as censor perpetuus from ad 85 onwards, reasserted earlier Roman laws on public dress to stamp out the wearing of gaudily coloured clothing at the theatre, where he posted vigilant imperial freedmen to enforce this regulation and ferret out spurious equites.48 Similarly, Roman magistrates sponsored a series of laws, going back to the XII Tables, which
33 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome attempted to limit the wearing of excessively luxurious dress; expensive fabrics and costly dyes (in particular, silk and purple) were the main objects of such legislation’s attention.49 The high costs involved in their production made them luxury items and, as such, obvious targets in the moralising discourse of a society that placed an ideological premium on the simple and the frugal. During the civil wars in the late Republic there had been a considerable slackening in the observance of Roman dress codes at public events. As a result, in the 20s bc, Augustus decided to reassert by edict the requirement to wear the toga on public occasions in the city of Rome. He pursued the issue by instructing the aediles to stop people entering the forum unless they were wearing togas (Suet. Aug. 40.5). Earlier, as triumvir he had issued an edict in 36 or 35 bc restricting the wearing of purple to senators and magistrates alone (Dio 49.16.1), and further dress regulations may have been included in his lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus that passed into law in 18 bc.50 Correct dress was a key element of Roman tradition, and tradition (mos maiorum) meant a great deal to Augustus. He was furious, Suetonius reports, when a crowd of citizens turned up for a public meeting (contio) dressed in dark clothing (pullati) rather than in white togas. He lectured them, reminding them of Vergil’s line about the Romans being a gens togata (Suet. Aug. 40.5). Similarly, his law regulating seating at the theatre and amphitheatre (the lex Iulia theatralis), passed between 20 and 17 bc, required that those who turned up wearing dark clothing (i.e., not wearing togas) be restricted to the very back rows (Suet. Aug. 44.2). Claudius, it appears, enforced a similar dress code in the Circus (Dio 60.7.4). Later, Hadrian used an edict to reassert the rule that senators and equites should wear the toga in public (SHA Hadr. 22.2; cf. Gell. NA 13.22.1). Edicts, senatus consulta, and laws were clearly needed to reinforce tradition. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the charter for the Roman colony founded at Urso in Baetica in 44–43 bc includes the prescription that the colony’s duoviri and aediles as well as its pontifices and augurs should wear togae praetextae when fulfilling their official duties.51 Even peregrini (i.e., non-Roman citizens) in the provinces were sometimes required to wear particular types of dress. Under Trajan, for instance, the Roman prefect of Egypt had an inhabitant of Alexandria executed for not wearing white at the theatre.52 Emperors, however, also had to lead by example. Augustus always kept a toga and calcei close at hand within his private quarters (intra cubiculum) in case he had a sudden need to don them for official business (Suet. Aug. 73). This detail clearly implies that he always conducted public affairs dressed in a toga.53 Hadrian, too, always wore a toga in public when in Italy (SHA Hadr. 22.2). In ad 14 Tiberius was concerned about the elite ignoring previ-
34 Jonathan Edmondson ous laws banning the wearing of purple. According to Dio (57.13.5), he decided not to enforce the terms of the law by fining offenders but, at a festival soon afterwards, he made a point of wearing a dark-coloured cloak over his toga. ‘After that,’ comments Dio, ‘no-one dared any longer to wear any other sort of dress in public.’ On this occasion, the emperor’s example was sufficient to deal with the problem, at least temporarily. Furthermore, emperors even had their own public dress regulated by law.54 They did not have the automatic right to wear triumphal dress on all ceremonial occasions; it had to be granted to them by law or senatorial decree. The precedent was set by a special privilege bestowed upon Cn. Pompeius Magnus. A plebiscite granting him the right to wear triumphal dress at all festivals (ludi) was passed in 63 bc much to the consternation of traditionalists, including the younger Cato (Vell. Pat. 2.40.2; Dio 37.21.3–4). Julius Caesar, Octavian and M. Antonius jointly, and then Augustus again received the same honour by senatorial resolutions in 45, 40, and 25 bc, respectively (Dio 43.43.1; 48.31.3; 53.26.5), but Augustus seems to have exercised this right only rarely. Claudius was similarly authorized – presumably by means of a senatus consultum – to wear triumphal dress for the ceremonies marking the rededication of the Theatre of Pompey in ad 41, but chose to wear just a toga praetexta for everything but the dedicatory sacrifices (Dio 60.6.9). In so doing, each of them asserted their wish to be seen as a civilis princeps.55 Conversely, Caligula was criticized for his constant wearing of triumphal dress before he had ever been on a military campaign (Suet. Calig. 52). However, it is clear from the frequency with which laws, senatorial resolutions, and edicts had to be reasserted to enforce the dress code that regulation from above was not always effective. Rather more potent, I would argue, was the role that correct, traditional dress played in Roman civic ideology, and especially the continued centrality of the toga and stola to the very definition of what it meant to be Roman. Toga and stola were enshrined as the customary public dress of the Romans. As a result, arch traditionalists such as the younger Cato could even revert to the supposed archaic practice of wearing a toga without a tunic as a sign of his old-fashioned morality.56 Even if he invented the tradition, this does not reduce its effect, since Romans of the late Republic clearly believed that it was traditional and hence morally authentic. By analogy, the kilt, the supposedly traditional dress of the Scottish, loses none of its force as a national symbol by the fact that it was a tradition invented in the nineteenth century.57 The key point is that Roman authors and Roman rhetoricians throughout the late Republic and early Empire continued to appeal to the toga and stola as emblematic of moral probity and civic mindedness. Most of all, in political
35 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome and judicial rhetoric any deviations from the norms of the civic dress code provided ideal ammunition for a full-scale assault on an individual’s moral character. How one wore one’s toga made a difference. As mentioned earlier, Quintilian devotes a long passage (11.3.137–149) to the most appropriate style of toga and the best way in which to wear it. ‘It should be distinguished and manly’ (splendidus et virilis, 11.3.137); ‘excessive carefulness regarding the toga, the shoes, and the hair is as bad as excessive carelessness’ (ibid.).58 It was considered ‘plebeian’ to allow one’s left hand to emerge from the toga’s constraining folds, a vice of which Claudius was accused when he got rather over excited at the gladiators (Suet. Claud. 21.5). Cicero was reproached for wearing his toga too long, even if it was to cover his varicose veins.59 Tunics had to be worn properly, too. Julius Caesar and Maecenas belted theirs too loosely, a dangerous sign, it was thought, that their morals might be similarly loose.60 Roman magistrates who wore inappropriate dress when on public duty were the targets of even fiercer critique. Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius, when serving as proconsul in Further Spain against Q. Sertorius during the 70s bc, was censured for wearing a triumphant general’s toga picta at private banquets.61 He was inappropriately, and hubristically, overdressed. Conversely, Roman magistrates opened themselves up to castigation if they spurned the official insignia of their position. Cicero worked up a number of memorable tours de force about the deviant dress of three of his greatest rhetorical targets: C. Verres, L. Calpurnius Piso, and M. Antonius.62 The first two were lambasted for appearing in Greek dress when serving as proconsuls in the provinces of Sicily and Macedonia in 73–71 and 57–55 bc, respectively. Piso was scornfully chastised as an ‘imperator in [Greek] sandals.’63 Yet more scandalously, Verres wore clothing, we are led to believe, that was not just foreign, but effeminate as well: He spent his time dressed in a purple pallium and an ankle-length tunic (talaris tunica), partying with women. People were not offended nor irritated by the absence of the magistrate from the forum, by the fact that there was no jurisdiction, that there were no legal hearings.64
Cicero elaborates the image later in the same speech: ‘There stood a praetor of the Roman people in his slippers, dressed in a purple pallium and anklelength tunic, propped up against some little prostitute on the beach.’65 Praetors of the Roman people should be seen in their senatorial shoes (calcei), not their slippers (soleae). They should devote themselves to the serious business of Roman provincial administration, not debauched beach
36 Jonathan Edmondson parties. Purple Greek-style cloaks (pallia) reeked of oriental luxury. Anklelength and long-sleeved tunics were worn by women or by effeminate males, not by real men. More than 200 years later, Aulus Gellius drives home the same point in his discussion of long-sleeved tunics:66 For men to wear tunics that extend beyond the forearm and reach as far as the wrists, and almost to the fingers, was indecorous at Rome and throughout Latium. Our countrymen (nostri) used the Greek term chirodotae to describe those tunics, and they thought it seemly that only women should wear long and full-flowing clothing to protect their arms and legs from view.
And to clinch his argument, he quotes no lesser authorities than Vergil and Ennius (NA 6.12.6–7), those bastions of Roman morality and national custom (patrius mos). But it is in the Second Philippic attacking M. Antonius in 43 bc that Cicero develops his most elaborate passage of invective around the theme of dress. First, while Antonius was still wearing the toga praetexta (i.e., while he was still a boy), he had gone bankrupt. Nevertheless, he brazenly insisted on sitting in the equestrian seats at the theatre, even though bankrupts had been assigned a special place in the lex Roscia of 67 bc, which had tightened up seating regulations at the theatre. Cicero then goes on to connect two supposed, very noticeable changes in Antonius’ dress with his increasing sexual infatuation for C. Scribonius Curio. No sooner had Antonius assumed the toga virilis than he started playing the prostitute, switching his toga virilis for the muliebris toga that prostitutes traditionally wore. Curio then took him off the street, as it were, and set him up ‘in stable and fixed wedlock’; it was, claims Cicero, as if he had given Antonius a stola.67 In the imperial period, emperors and other members of the domus Caesaris had their dress just as carefully scrutinised. In ad 19 Tiberius felt the need to reprimand Germanicus, if mildly, for his dress (cultus) and comportment (habitus) during his stay in Egypt.68 More outlandish Caesars such as Caligula, Nero, and Elagabalus had their unusual and effeminate dress habits excoriated. According to Suetonius, Caligula preferred not to be constrained by any norms of dress: ‘As for his clothing, his shoes, and the rest of his dress, he never conformed to the traditional style of Roman civic dress; he wore clothing that was not even manly, and, in the end, inappropriate for a human being to wear.’69 The same author claimed that Nero was ‘utterly shameless in his dress and comportment,’ appearing in public in his dining robes (his synthesina) and a neckerchief, with his tunic unbelted, and without his calcei.70 He flouted tradition in wearing a short flowery tunic and muslin neckerchief to greet senators, much to the annoyance of the senator
37 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome Cassius Dio, who also criticized Elagabalus for wearing ‘the barbaric dress of Syrian priests’ in public (Dio 63.13.3; 79.11.2). The life of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta contains even more vivid descriptions of his outlandish dress (SHA Elagab. 26).71 Conversely, an emperor’s moderation in terms of dress won praise. So, Marcus Aurelius wore a plain citizen’s white toga at salutationes under Antoninus Pius rather than ‘the dress to which his rank entitled him’ (Dio 71.35.4), while, as we have seen, Claudius was praised for not wearing triumphal dress for the entire festival that marked the rededication of the Theatre of Pompey in 41, even though he had been voted the privilege; he preferred the toga praetexta for all but the dedicatory sacrifice (Dio 60.6.9). Writers such as Suetonius or Dio, and Roman citizens in general, were so accustomed to the traditional Roman dress code, the habitus patrius et civilis, to borrow Suetonius’ telling phrase (Calig. 52.1, cited above), that they immediately noticed any deviations from it and developed stinging rhetoric to try and prevent any such depravity. Such rhetoric could only be produced, I would argue, in and for a community that had an elaborate dress code and one which was invested with deep ideological resonance. Since the appropriate wearing of the toga and stola was so much a part of Roman tradition (mos maiorum), invented or otherwise, so much a part of what it meant to be Roman, it served as an absolutely crucial litmus test when people’s morals and public conduct were being scrutinized in front of their fellow citizens. Conclusion In his book on Public Order in Ancient Rome (1995), Wilfried Nippel emphasizes the important role that self-regulation within the citizen body played in the maintenance of public order at Rome. Regulation by magistrates using their legal powers was, he argues, ‘merely complementary to mechanisms of social control underlying magistrates and the senate.’72 He singles out four features of Roman life that helped to enhance the authority of the elite and hence contributed towards cohesion and public order: (1) the discipline and respect for commanders inculcated through military service, a requirement for all citizens at least until the military reforms of 106 bc; (2) the far-reaching extent of patria potestas, the legal power of life and death over family members that the male head of the household (paterfamilias) possessed; (3) the almost sacred bonds between patrons and clients in Roman society; and (4) the influence of state religion, especially since the state’s priests were at the same time its magistrates and senators and since so much of Roman public life took place in an overtly religious setting. According to Nippel, Polybius was right on the mark in observing (6.56.9) how
38 Jonathan Edmondson ‘superstition’ (deisidaimonia) kept the Roman state together. In Polybius’ view, ‘every crowd is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger. The multitude must be held in check by invisible terrors and such stagecraft’ (tragoedia). I would argue that the elaborate nature of Roman public dress, which created a sense of civic uniformity across the citizen body, while at the same time marking difference and rank, was an important part of this tragoedia, this stagecraft. After all, in his famous description of Roman elite funerals (6.53–54), a passage that immediately precedes the one we have just been discussing, Polybius placed special emphasis on the various types of togas worn at these funerals by actors representing the ancestors of the deceased. As an outside observer on Roman public life, Polybius had carefully noted how consuls and praetors wore different togas from those worn by censors, whose togas were in turn distinct from those of triumphatores. The sight of these ancestors, brought back temporarily to life, arrayed in their togate finery was for Polybius, as it doubtless was for many Romans, too, an inspiring sight. ‘There could not easily be a more ennobling spectacle for a young man who aspires to fame and virtue,’ he concludes (6.53.9–10). The efficacy of such ephemeral spectacles was reinforced in more permanent terms by the forests of togate (and occasional stolate) statues of the elite that were crammed into the public spaces of the city of Rome and of cities through the Roman Empire. So, for example, L. Volusius Saturninus, consul in ad 3 and later urban prefect, received no fewer than nine public statues following his death in ad 55 at the age of ninety-three: three showed him in triumphal dress (one in bronze in the Forum Augustum, two marble ones in the temple of Divus Augustus); three in consular dress (all of marble, one in the temple of Divus Julius and two others on the Palatine: one intra tripylum, and one in the area Apollinis facing the curia); one in augural dress in the Regia; an eighth comprised an equestrian statue set up near the Rostra in the forum; while the ninth depicted him sitting on a sella curulis, the magistrate’s stool of office, and was set up in the Campus Martius in the Portico of the Lentuli near the Theatre of Pompey. These statues, with carefully distinguished types of dress, helped to remind Roman citizens of Volusius Saturninus’ many contributions to the Roman state and to demonstrate the importance of dress distinctions in Roman public life.73 Some have argued that the toga and stola lost much of their force as cultural signifiers as the first century ad progressed, since Roman citizens, especially those who lived outside Rome, increasingly abandoned their use.74 It is true that the evidence for the use by Roman matrons of the stola is not extensive, especially in the post-Augustan period. But the silence of our sources could be explained on the grounds that they took for granted the
39 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome wearing of this ceremonial dress by female Roman citizens. And the gaze of our male sources only tended to focus on female subjects when they deviated from what males considered appropriate female conduct. As for the toga, it clearly continued to be the official, ceremonial dress of the male citizen – and not just in the eyes of Roman rhetoricians, as Vout has argued. Juvenal’s much quoted remark that the toga was hardly ever seen in Italy in his day except to drape the bodies of the dead at funerals (Sat. 3.171–172) should not be read literally. We should not forget that he makes this comment in a satire in which his central aim is to exaggerate the problems of residing in Rome, not least the chore of being a togate client, and to overplay the delights of living elsewhere.75 The toga was never designed to be ‘everyday wear,’ and so its symbolic force was not diminished by the fact that most Romans went about their daily work dressed in tunics, tunics and cloaks, or even, in some colder parts of the Empire, in trousers.76 But in the lawcourts, in the Forum, at the theatre, at religious festivals at Rome, in the cities of Roman Italy, and in colonies and municipalities across the Empire, the toga continued to be worn and still had the power to construct Roman identity and to mark Roman social distinctions in a highly visible manner. Roman provincial governors went on wearing the toga on official occasions. How else could Plutarch have claimed in his essay of advice on running a Greek city under Roman rule that ‘the calcei of the (Roman) proconsul continued to loom over the heads of the Greeks’ (Mor. 813e)?77 And the moral and cultural resonance of the toga was felt even as late as the early sixth century ad. For around the year 510, the Gothic king Theoderic could appeal to all who resided in the Gallic provinces to show a willingness to follow Roman custom. ‘Now that you are restored to your ancient liberty through God’s favour,’ he urged, ‘clothe yourselves in the customs of the toga (moribus togatis), divest yourselves of barbarity, cast aside savagery of the mind, since it is not fitting for you to live in accordance with alien customs when these times of ours are so fair and equitable.’78 The spectacle, the tradition, the moral discourse of dress all contributed, I would argue, towards the creation of a strong conservative ideology, whereby Roman citizens remained proud to wear the toga and stola. John Berger has noted how the urban and rural working classes in early-twentieth-century Europe came willingly to accept the wearing of suits in conscious imitation of the dress of the ruling class, despite the uncomfortable nature of such an unnaturally constraining garment.79 Something similar, I would suggest, occurred with the adoption of the toga at Rome, in Italy, and, to a degree, in the Roman provinces. By wearing it, Roman citizens affirmed that they belonged within a peaceful, civilized community, which valued tradition (mos maiorum) and a set of shared values. The toga was symbolic of Romanness (Romanitas) and in particular of the peace that the force of
40 Jonathan Edmondson Roman arms allegedly brought to the Mediterranean world: the pax Romana. Vergil’s Jupiter hints at this in the passage from the Aeneid with which this chapter began (1.282–286), and by the mid-first century bc, at the very latest, the word ‘toga’ was being used metonymically in Latin to mean ‘peace.’80 Furthermore, its force as a powerful signifier of the pax Romana is clear from the fact that certain regions of the Empire came to be classified as ‘togate.’ Cisalpine Gaul, for example, was known as ‘Gallia Togata.’81 Cassius Dio explains the significance of the label when he discusses the allocation of provinces to the triumvirs in 43 bc (46.55.4–5): ‘It was called “Togata” because it seemed to be more peaceful than the other parts of Gaul and because its inhabitants were already wearing Roman citizen dress.’ He then goes on to compare it to the much less civilized region of Gallia Comata, ‘Long-Haired Gaul.’ Strabo had made essentially the same point about the so-called togati of central Spain: ‘as you might call them, the peaceful ones, they had been transformed to a civilized disposition and to an Italic way of life, wearing their togas’ (3.4.20; cf. 3.2.15 on the togati of Baetica). On the other hand, for Horace, those Romans who had forgotten about the toga (togae oblitus), like Crassus’ troops captured by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in 53 bc, had essentially lost their Romanness (Hor. Carm. 3.5.10–11). Concepts such as these underline how effective public dress was in defining what it really meant to be Roman. Dress codes help to encourage conformity, but at the same time often invite evasion. This unquestionably happened at Rome. But the wearing of the toga and stola on civic occasions remained in force by a mixture of regulation from above and self-regulation from within the citizen body. It was by enshrining the toga and stola at the very heart of Roman ideologies about tradition, morality, gender, and Romanness itself that Roman citizens sought to define and control themselves as members of the Roman civic community.82
Notes 1 On the toga, see in general Goette 1990; Stone 1994; Vout 1996, which all mark significant advances beyond the simplistic ‘costume-history’ approach of Wilson 1924. More briefly, Bonfante Warren 1973: esp. 590–3, stressing the toga’s Etruscan origins. 2 On the stola, see Scholz 1992: esp. 13–88; more briefly Sebesta 1994a: 48–50; Olson 2002. 3 For the centrality of pietas to Augustus’ program of cultural renewal, see Zanker 1988: 101–66, esp. 102–35. For the statue of Augustus from the Via Labicana, see Boschung 1993: 176–77, cat. no. 165 and plates 80 and 214.1. This image was
41 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome
4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12
13
14 15 16
widely reproduced throughout the Roman Empire: note, for example, the portraits of Augustus capite velato from Emerita (Mérida, Spain) and Corinth in Greece: Boschung 1993: 163, cat. no. 130 and plate 74.1–4 (Emerita), 157–8, cat. no. 114 and plates 178 and 215.1 (Corinth). Cf. Calp. Sic. Ecl. 7.26–29, comparing the pulla sordida veste ... turba sitting at the very back of a wooden amphitheatre in Neronian Rome with the eques aut nivei ... tribuni who occupied the seats at the front of the cavea. For a full discussion of the lex Iulia theatralis, see Rawson 1986. Quint. Inst. 11.3.137–149, 156, 160–161, with Fantham 1982. For the use of the toga at the salutatio, see the detailed discussion in George, chap. 4, in this volume. For recent analyses of dress in the Historia Augusta, see Molinier-Arbo 2003; Harlow 2005. See Mart. 14.141 (= 14.142 Shackleton Bailey). For the distinctive inversion of the Saturnalia, see Versnel 1993: esp. 150–63. For vittae, see, in detail, Fantham, chap. 7, in this volume. Zanker 1988: 162–6; Sebesta 1997. Ars am. 1.31–32: este procul, vittae tenues, insigne pudoris, / quaeque tegis medios instita longa pedes. As Hollis comments ad loc. (1977: 37–8), instita was often used pars pro toto to refer to the stola; cf. Hor. Sat. 1.2.28–29: sunt qui nolint tetigisse nisi illas / quarum subsuta talos tegat instita veste. The latter passage is misunderstood by Sebesta (1994a: 49) to identify the instita as ‘sewnon shoulder-straps’ to which the stola was attached. Rather, it clearly reinforces the point that the instita covered a matron’s ankles. For the more problematic vittae, see Fantham, chap. 7, in this volume. For their supposed origin as a privilege granted to matrons after the crucial role played by Coriolanus’ mother and wife in persuading him to withdraw his army from the gates of Rome in 489–488 bc, probably an invented tradition, see Val. Max. 5.2.1. Trist. 2.251–252: ecquid ab hac omnes rigide summovimus Arte, / quas stola contingi vittaque sumpta vetat? This follows immediately a passage (2.247–250), where he quotes Ars am. 1.31–34 verbatim. See AE 1974, 618 (Iulia Gordos); CIL III 5225, 5283, 5293 (Celeia, Noricum); CIL III 6155 = 7571 = AE 1978, 715 (Tomis), with Poulter 1978. In general, see Holtheide 1980 (with further examples). Gardner 1993: 110–54; on these ‘unspeakable’ professions, see Edwards 1998. Pliny Ep. 4.11.3: carent enim togae iure, quibus aqua et igni interdictum est. This is the implication of Porphyr. schol. ad Hor. Sat. 1.2.63: togatae autem in publicum procedere cogebantur feminae adulterii admissi convictae. See further Gardner 1986: 127–30 (adulteresses), 250–3 (prostitutes), pointing out (129) that many adulteresses may have chosen to take up a life of prostitution, hence the toga; McGinn 1998: 156–93; Olson 2002: esp. 393–7, although it is puzzling how
42 Jonathan Edmondson
17 18 19
20
21 22 23 24
25
26
27
28
after citing the scholion of Porphyrio she can claim (p. 394) that ‘there is no specific evidence ... that the adulteress or prostitute was “compelled” to wear the toga.’ For detailed discussion of this complex issue, see Gardner 1986: 250–3; McGinn 1998: 156–93; Olson 2002: 393–401. For a full analysis, see Schäfer 1989: 57–63. See, further, Gabelmann 1985; Sebesta 2005; Dolansky, chap. 2, and Olson, chap. 6, in this volume. In early Rome, before the development of the stola, adult men and women both wore the toga: so Varro ap. Non. 867 L = 540 M: toga non solum viri, sed etiam feminae utebantur; 867–868 L = 540 M: ante enim olim commune vestimentum diurnum et nocturnum et muliebre et virile. On the bulla, see Goette 1986; Palmer 1989 [1998]; Dolansky, chap. 2, in this volume. Girls do not seem to have worn bullae, but sometimes wore lunulae: see Olson, chap. 6, in this volume. For a detailed analysis of the ceremony, see Dolansky, chap. 2, in this volume. Arnobius Adversus nationes 2.67; see further Olson, chap. 6, in this volume. Sensi 1980–81: esp. 58–9, 91–102; Fayer 1986; Treggiari 1991: 163; La Follette 1994. On the dress of the Vestals, see Beard 1980: esp. 16–17. For the phrase note Livy 24.32; cf. Livy 24.16. In general on manumission ceremonies, Fabre 1981: 19–20. Freedmen were expected to wear the pilleus on the day of their former master’s funeral: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.24, with Fabre 1981: 148–9. Hence, Cicero’s speech In Toga Candida, delivered in the senate in 64 bc, when Cicero was a candidate for the consulship: note Asconius’ surviving commentary on it. See also Livy 4.25.13; Pliny HN 7.34.120; Isid. Etym. 19.24.6: toga candida eadem cretata, in qua candidati, id est magistratum petentes ambiebant, addita creta, quo candidior insigniorque esset; Deniaux 2003. For a vivid image of the debauched son of Scipio Africanus standing for the praetorship wearing a toga candida allegedly ‘soiled with the stains of turpitude,’ see Val. Max. 3.5.1b. On mourning dress, see Sen. Controv. 4.1; 7.3.7; 9.5.1. The regulations from Pisae for mourning the death of Lucius Caesar in ad 2 require that on the anniversary of his death (20 August) the local duoviri sacrifice to his departed spirits wearing togae pullae (ILS 139, lines 16–22); cf. the regulations on the death of Gaius Caesar in ad 4 (ILS 140, lines 31–33). For mourning dress in Cicero, note Heskel 1994: esp. 141–3. Ricinia: Varro Ling. 5.132; Cic. Leg. 2.23.59, 25.64; Festus 342 L = 274 M; see further Sensi 1980–81: 64–5; Sebesta 1994a: 50. Cloaks for old men: SHA Sev. Alex. 27.4. For equites trabeati, see Val. Max. 2.2.9; Tac. Ann. 3.2; Suet. Dom. 14.3; Stat. Silv. 5.2.17; Gabelmann 1977; Wrede 1988; Demougin 1988: 782–9. As a result, trabea was used metonymically to denote the equestrian order: for example,
43 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome
29
30
31
32 33 34
35
36 37
38
39 40
Mart. 5.41.5. For the trabea in the later Empire, when the term was used to describe the distinctive dress of the consuls, see Dewar, chap. 11, in this volume. For angusti clavi on the tunic, see Demougin 1988: 777–82; not on the toga, as claimed, for example, by Garnsey and Saller 1987: 114. Scholars still continue to claim erroneously that the latus clavus was a stripe on the toga: for example, Stambaugh 1988: 339; Fantham 1996: 111. Varro Sat. Men. 313 Bücheler (discussed above) clearly shows that it was on the tunic. When Roman sculptors wanted to reuse a statue to depict a senator, they made sure to represent carefully the laces of the calcei: see Zanker 1988: 30 and fig. 23, discussing a seated statue of the Greek poet Poseidippos transformed into the image of a Roman senator. For these various types of shoes, see Goette 1988. The plebeian C. Marius was granted calcei patricii as an honour for his services to the Roman state: ILS 59 (elogium from Arretium, based on his elogium in the Forum of Augustus). For the claim that emperors wore the same calcei as the kings, see Isid. Etym. 19.34.4, but unfortunately the text becomes defective just as he is about to describe their form. For ex-magistrates and triumphators allowed to wear the toga praetexta and vestis triumphalis, respectively, at the Ludi Circenses, see Livy 5.41. For further discussion of the lex Oppia, see Culham 1982; Baltrusch 1989: 52–9. For the right of local duoviri and aediles in overseas colonies to wear togae praetextae, see the lex Ursonensis (CIL II2/5, 1022 = Roman Statutes no. 25), chap. 62; for local pontifices and augurs, ibid., chap. 66. Magistri of collegia were also allowed to wear the toga praetexta when presiding at the Ludi Compitales: Ascon. ad Cic. Pis. 4.8: solebant autem magistri collegiorum ludos facere, sicut magistri vicorum faciebant, Compitalicios praetextati. Livy 5.41: adeo haud secus quam venerabundi intuebantur in aedium vestibulis sedentes viros, praeter ornatum habitumque humano augustiorem, maiestate etiam quam voltus gravitasque oris prae se ferebat simillimos dis. For the event, cf. Val. Max. 3.2.7. For the incident, cf. Cic. Leg. Man. 32–33; App. Mithr. 93; for the date and identity of the praetors, see Broughton, MRR 2.138, 141n3; Brennan 2000: 434. Cf. Val. Max. 9.7.4: the urban praetor A. Sempronius Asellio was pulled limb from limb by a mob in 89 bc while dressed in his toga praetexta; cf. Liv. Per. 74. For the claim that he was killed while pouring a libation in the forum wearing ‘the sacred gilded dress that is normal at sacrifice,’ see App. B Civ. 1.54. For the laena, see esp. Suet. fr. 167: laena ... toga duplex, qua infibulati flamines sacrificant. See further Bonfante Warren 1973: 594–5, 608–9; Goette 1990: 7–8 and 17 (texts 111–16). See Trillmich 1995 and 1996. For the dress of triumphatores, see Polyb. 6.53.7; Festus 228 L (s.v. picta); Bonfante Warren 1970; Versnel 1970: 56–61.
44 Jonathan Edmondson 41 Magistrates also renounced their togae praetextae at the Parentalia, the annual festival (13–21 February) honouring the Roman dead: so Lydus Mens. 4.29, cited by Price 1987: 63n7. 42 See, for example, Cic. Clu. 18; Planc. 21; App. B Civ. 2.24; Dio 38.16; Val. Max. 6.5.2; for discussion, David 1992: 624–30. 43 See Val. Max. 9.12.7; cf. Cic. Att. 1.4.2, claiming that he did in fact pass sentence in this trial. Note also Petron. Sat. 58: a magistrate pronouncing the sentence toga perversa. 44 For usurpation of citizenship and higher social status, see Reinhold 1971. 45 Mart. 5.8, 23, 35; cf. 5.25, 27, 38, 41. For the date, Sullivan 1991: 35. 46 For further discussion, see Vout 1996; Olson 2002. 47 In general on this aspect of the censors’ role, see Astin 1988. 48 Mart. 5.8, 14, 25, 35 (all mentioning Leitus), 5.23 (Oceanus). 49 For a full discussion, see Baltrusch 1989: 50–61; Clemente 1981; on purple, see further Reinhold 1970. 50 Cf. Prop. 4.11.61–62, which appears to contain an allusion to the grant of a distinctive form of dress for married women who had given birth to three children. 51 CIL II2/5, 1022 = Roman Statutes no. 25, chap. 62 (magistrates), 66 (priests). The recent discovery of a new plaque of the statute has revealed the presence of a curia Asiniana among the colony’s curiae (chap. 15), proving that the colony’s founder (deductor) was C. Asinius Pollio, propraetor in Hispania Ulterior from 44 to 42 bc: see Caballos Rufino 2005 and esp. 2006: 133–5 (text), 338–62 (commentary). 52 P Oxy. 471 = Acta Alexandrinorum, ed. Musurillo, no. 7 (Acta Maximi), cols. ivv, lines 100–107; see Musurillo 1954: 36 (text), 42 (translation), 158 (discussion). On coloured dress for processions at festivals in the Greek East, see Jones 1999. 53 For an imperial slave responsible for the emperor’s vestis forensis, see ILS 1757. 54 On emperors’ dress, Alföldi 1935 remains crucial. 55 On this ideology, see in general Wallace-Hadrill 1982. 56 Plut. Cat. min. 44.1; Ascon. ad Cic. pro Scauro 29; Val. Max. 3.6.7. For the antique and manly practice, Gell. NA 6.12.3, with Keith 2000: 22–3. On the Ara Pacis the relief panel of Aeneas sacrificing to the Penates shows him wearing a toga pulled up over his head (capite velato) without a tunic, thus capturing the archaic style of wearing the toga in contrast with the contemporary togas so amply displayed on the south and north friezes (see fig. 6.2–3, 7.2 in this volume). For statues of Romulus and Titus Tatius wearing togas but without tunics, see Ascon. ad Cic. pro Scauro 29. 57 Trevor-Roper 1983. 58 See further Fantham 1982. On the masculinity of the toga, see recently Davies 2005. For the importance of physical appearance (aspectus) in the oratory of Q. Hortensius, cf. Val. Max. 8.10.2.
45 Public Dress and Social Control in Rome 59 Dio 48.18.2; Quint. 11.3.143, citing Pliny the Elder. For the ridicule that wearing one’s toga too long elicited, cf. Val. Max. 7.8.1. 60 For Caesar, see Suet. Iul. 45.3; Dio 43.43.4. For Maecenas’ discincture and flowing tunics (tunicae solutae), see Sen. Ep. 114.4–6; cf. Suet. Aug. 86.2; Eleg. de Maec. 1.21, 25–26. 61 Sall. Hist. 2.59, McGuishin; Val. Max. 9.1.5 (cum palmata veste convivia celebrabat). The incident probably took place after he had been saluted Imperator following his victories in 75 bc: see Broughton, MRR 2.98. 62 For fuller analyses, see Heskel 1994; Dyck 2001. 63 Cic. Pis. 38.93: crepidatum imperatorem; cf. 38.92: crepidatus veste servili navem conscendit. 64 Cic. II Verr. 5.13.31: cum iste cum pallio purpureo talarique tunica versaretur in conviviis muliebribus, non offendebantur homines neque moleste ferebant abesse a foro magistratum, non ius dici, non iudicia fieri. 65 Cic. II Verr. 5.33.86: stetit soleatus praetor populi Romani cum pallio purpureo tunicaque talari muliercula nixus in litore. 66 Gell. NA 6.12, sections 1–2 cited. On the gendered semiotics of this passage, see Keith 2000: 22–3. 67 Cic. Phil. 2.18.44: tenesne memoria praetextatum te decoxisse? ... sumpsisti virilem, quam statim muliebrem togam reddidisti. primo vulgare scortum, certa flagitii merces, nec ea parva; sed cito Curio intervenit, qui te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et, tamquam stolam dedisset, in matrimonio stabili et certo collocavit. 68 Tac. Ann. 2.59: cultu habituque eius lenibus vocibus perstricto. 69 Suet. Calig. 52.1: vestitu calciatuque et cetero habitu neque patrio neque civili, ac ne virili quidem ac denique humano semper usus est. For the allegation that Caligula dressed up as a Roman matron and various gods (male and female), cf. Dio 59.26.6–10. 70 Suet. Ner. 51: circa cultum habitumque adeo pudendus ut ... plerumque synthesinam indutus ligato circum collum sudario prodierit in publicum sine cinctu et discalciatus. 71 The importance of dress in Suetonius does not receive the attention it deserves in Wallace-Hadrill 1983; for dress in Dio, see Freyburger-Galland 1993; in the Historia Augusta, Harlow 2005. 72 Nippel 1995: 30. 73 Tac. Ann. 13.30; cf. AE 1972, 174, with Eck 1972; for further discussion of the significance of statues for the Roman dress code, see Koortbojian, chap. 3, in this volume. 74 So Vout 1996: esp. 216–18; Olson 2002. 75 In the same vein, we must not read too literally Martial’s comment (1.49.31– 32) on the delights of living in Bilbilis in Spain, where a lunate shoebuckle (i.e. patrician shoes), a toga, or clothes reeking of purple dye are, he alleges,
46 Jonathan Edmondson
76
77 78
79 80
81 82
nowhere to be seen. On the toga in satirical writing, see George, chap. 4, in this volume. For the phrase tunicatus populus, that is, ordinary people in their working clothes, see Plaut. Poen. 1121; Cic. Leg. agr. 2.34.94; Tac. Dial. 7. On trousers, see Wild 1985; Böhme 1985. For the importance of Roman dress, especially the toga, in the law courts of Roman North Africa, see Bradley, chap. 12, in this volume. Cassiod. Variae 3.17.1: libenter parendum esset Romanae consuetudini ... atque ideo in antiquam libertatem deo praestante revocati vestimini moribus togatis, exuite barbariem, abicite mentium crudelitatem, quia sub aeternitate nostri temporis non vos decet vivere moribus alienis. Berger 1980: 38–9. A point made explicitly at Cic. De or. 3.42.167: Liberum appellare pro vino, campum pro comitiis, togam pro pace, arma et tela pro bello. For the phrase cedant arma togae, note Cic. Off. 1.22.77; Pis. 30.73; Vell. Pat. 1.12.3; Tert. De pall. 5. For Gallia Togata, see also [Caes.] BG 8.52; Cic. Phil. 8.27; Dio 48.12.5; Pomp. Mela 2.59. I should like to thank audiences in Calgary, Victoria, Hamilton, Fredericton, and Toronto, as well as at the Institute of Classical Studies in London, for their comments on various preliminary versions of this chapter, and the anonymous referees for the press. I am grateful to them all for helping to improve it.
2 Togam Virilem Sumere: Coming of Age in the Roman World fanny dolansky
The years 51 through 49 bc were trying times politically and personally for Cicero. His proconsulship in Cilicia necessitated a year’s absence from Rome, his relations with Julius Caesar were becoming strained, and both his nephew and son were nearing adolescence, a situation he appears to have met with both anticipation and apprehension. Several letters from this period reflect his preoccupation with the boys’ coming of age and the need to celebrate their achievement with the appropriate rituals, namely, the exchange of their bordered childhood togas (togae praetextae) for plain white togae viriles.1 The ceremonies for his nephew, Quintus, which his brother entrusted to him to celebrate, seem to have taken place in March on the Liberalia as originally planned. His son Marcus’ rites proved more difficult to schedule, but were eventually held in his hometown of Arpinum. Despite the apparent importance of these rites, Cicero offers few details about what they actually entailed, let alone why they were meaningful for the boys as individuals and the family as a group. Similar brief references emerge from a wide range of ancient sources chronologically and geographically, which suggests that assuming the toga virilis was a social institution of endurance and significance. Nevertheless, the ritual has received relatively little scholarly attention.2 As a contribution to the study of Roman social and cultural history, and to the history of the Roman family in particular, this chapter examines aspects of a freeborn boy’s coming-of-age ceremony commonly known among modern scholars as the assumption of the toga virilis (togam virilem sumere). There is no evidence for a comparable ceremony at the end of girlhood, and a distinct celebration aside from marriage probably did not exist for freeborn girls. Girls may have dedicated their dolls to Venus (Pers. 2.70) or the Lares (Ps-Acro ad Hor. Sat. 1.5.65–66) and their childhood togae prae-
48 Fanny Dolansky textae to Fortuna (Arn. Adv. nat. 2.67) prior to marriage. This latter rite paralleled the boy’s assumption of the toga virilis, yet the girl did not assume what Sebesta has termed her ‘final adult garments’ until she became a bride.3 I begin this chapter with an imaginative reconstruction of the series of rites that celebrated the passage from boyhood to adulthood, from the laying aside of the markers of free birth – the apotropaic locket called the bulla and the bordered toga praetexta – to the donning of the toga virilis and presentation of the new togatus to his family and community under the auspices of domestic and civic gods. Although the ritual is widely documented in various literary sources and attested in the epigraphic record, no single account describing the entire ceremony survives. Many of the references are brief and must be combined to form a coherent picture of Roman practice.4 The evidence is also strewn over a considerable period of time, from the late Republic to the early fifth century ad, and is widely distributed geographically as well. Given the nature of the evidence, it is difficult to assess the rite in terms of change over time or to reconstruct it with any precision for a specific moment in Roman history. Thus, any reconstruction must entail an element of idealization.5 My aim here is to draw together the diverse fragments available to provide an account of an ideal upper-class ceremony, the sort we might reasonably imagine Pliny (Ep. 1.9.1–2) attending when he comments that he was regularly invited to toga virilis rites in Rome, or the sort that Cicero arranged for his nephew and son. The ceremony can also be regarded as a rite of passage of some importance, and I would argue that there were elements of symbolic communication inherent in the ritual transformation, since both the boy’s praetexta and the man’s toga virilis were potent signifiers for a society that employed an elaborate dress code to define and distinguish its members.6 In the final section, I address some practical implications of the ceremony for the young Roman himself and his family. Reconstructing a Roman Boy’s Coming of Age The life course of a freeborn male was punctuated by a set of predictable expectations, many of which tended to occur at specific ages: receiving his name nine days after birth on the dies lustricus, entering the army at seventeen, starting on the cursus honorum in his twenties.7 The ritual achievement of adult status did not have a fixed age, though fifteen or sixteen appears to have been conventional in the late Republic and the first two centuries of the Principate, and these may have constituted ‘suitable’ ages for the ceremony and the rights and privileges that followed.8 Cicero, his son,
49 Coming of Age in the Roman World and his nephew all assumed the toga at sixteen, while Augustus and his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, were each fifteen. Some boys took the toga below the customary ages such as the emperor Tiberius at fourteen, Nero and Caracalla at thirteen, or later as in the cases of Tiberius Caesar, son of the younger Drusus, and Caligula, who were both eighteen.9 Although donning the toga virilis often coincided with puberty, it was not necessarily a celebration of the onset of puberty, as Rousselle contends. She maintains that the boy and his family would watch for the first signs of sexual maturation and determine the date for receipt of the toga once his physical readiness was confirmed.10 There is no evidence, however, that puberty was a formal requirement for taking the toga.11 It is entirely possible that many adult Romans felt that a boy should exhibit the initial signs of physical maturity before he was given the toga that identified him as a man and thus, from sensible reasoning, a common practice developed – the granting of the toga to boys of fifteen or sixteen who were already in the process of maturing physically. When Cicero discusses when to give his son the toga, he does not mention his wife Terentia’s participation in choosing a date and suggests that the decision resided entirely with him. Similarly, in the case of his nephew Quintus, Cicero indicates that the impetus came from Quintus’ father.12 It may have been common for fathers to select the date; yet we should not discount the possibility that mothers could also be involved and, under certain circumstances, exert considerable influence in scheduling the event. This is especially likely when the natural father was no longer alive, as in Propertius’ celebration, as well as in that of Pudens, the stepson of Apuleius. Particularly in the latter situation, where Pudens’ mother Pudentilla seems to have financed the celebration substantially (perhaps even in full), it is reasonable to presume that she had considerable influence in determining its date.13 For Q. Cicero’s ceremony, although his father had commissioned his uncle to see to the rites, the precise date might actually have been left to Cicero’s discretion. Cicero tells Atticus (Att. 5.20.9) that he has been instructed to celebrate the rites upon arrival in Laodicea since Quintus’ father was absent at the time, wintering with the army near Tarsus. Cicero later adds that he was thinking about the Liberalia on 17 March (Att. 6.1.12). Ovid reports (Fast. 3.771–772) that Liber’s feast was a popular date and that in his day boys frequently came of age then. Yet there was no fixed date for the rites, and though efforts may have been made to hold them on the Liberalia, this was not always possible nor perhaps desirable.14 In fact, of the historical figures for whom we can identify the dates of their ceremonies with certainty, none received the toga on 17 March. Many other dates throughout the year
50 Fanny Dolansky were selected instead, such as 18 October for Augustus, 1 January for Galba, and 26 June for Alexander Severus. Once a date was determined, a boy’s ritual passage began in the family home before the lararium with the dedication of the bulla to the Lares and laying aside of the toga praetexta.15 The bulla, an apotropaic locket sometimes fashioned from gold, and the praetexta, a white toga with a purple band surrounding the bottom edge, were regarded as insignia puerorum ingenuorum (the emblems of freeborn boys).16 It is not clear who actually removed the bulla and praetexta – the boy himself or his father – but the bulla was hung upon the statuette of the Lares kept in the lararium where we might imagine the boy offering an additional sacrifice of incense, spelt, honeycomb, or cakes. The praetexta was set aside and it too may have been consecrated to the household gods.17 Before donning the man’s toga, the boy put on a special tunic, the tunica recta or regilla, that his father had given him. The tunic, which had been woven on an archaic loom, was believed to bring good luck (ominis causa) and was the same kind brides-to-be slept in on the night before their wedding ceremony.18 The boy then received the toga virilis from his father, the pure white toga worn only by freeborn adult men. For those present, the boy’s first appearance in the toga must have been a memorable, emotionally charged experience. The ritual transformation from boy to man was not simply a mechanical performance, but rather a socio-religious celebration under the auspices of the household gods and other deities such as Juventas, the goddess of youth, and Liber.19 As the boy dressed in his new toga, one can imagine that he became the focus of pride and admiration for those attending the ceremony. Coming of age was not a celebration for the immediate family alone, but for the family in the broadest sense and, in some regards, for the community as well. There is evidence for the direct involvement of fathers in the actual rites, and the likely participation of mothers in some capacity.20 The presence of brothers is fairly certain, and similarly relatives such as uncles and cousins.21 We may also envision the atrium filled with servile members of the household there to wait on family members and guests, but perhaps also specifically to observe the rites.22 Two late-second- or early-third-century ad inscriptions from Rome suggest that slaves may have attended their master’s rites. In both inscriptions, a certain Lucius Ragonius is commemorated ob honorem togae virilis (in honour of [his assumption of] the toga virilis), by his slave Verecundinus in one and his slave Ofellius in the other. Though neither notice explicitly mentions the slaves’ presence at the ceremony, this is entirely possible, particularly if they had enjoyed a close relationship with their master, which seems likely given that both refer to Ragonius as domi-
51 Coming of Age in the Roman World nus optimus and they themselves appear to have set up these monuments in his honour. Perhaps Verecundinus and Ofellius had forged more intimate ties with Ragonius as two of his caregivers or as collactanei, children nursed by the same woman, who might subsequently become the playmates of their freeborn masters.23 Friends of the boy and influential figures in the community are also known to have witnessed the rites. Horace, for instance, may be describing a joint ceremony or the coincidence of two ceremonies on the same day when he remarks of boyhood friends, Numida and Lamia, that they ‘changed their togas together’ (mutataeque simul togae, Carm. 1.36.9). The friends of a young man named Atilius were probably at the domestic portion of his rites before they accompanied him to the Capitol where he sacrificed to the gods (App. B Civ. 4.5.30). For the younger Pliny, toga virilis ceremonies along with betrothals and weddings were the sort of officia – social duties – a man of his age and stature was expected to perform when in Rome (Ep. 1.9.1–3). One of his letters to Trajan from Pontus and Bithynia also reveals that in some places it had apparently become common practice to invite large numbers of decurions who presumably had some association with the boy’s parents (Ep. 10.116). Under the Principate, high-profile Christians such as Tertullian attended coming of age rites, as well as other significant family rituals including naming ceremonies, betrothals, and weddings (De Idol. 16.1–3). For Tertullian, like Pliny, being present at a toga virilis ceremony constituted an officium, and even though the celebration included a sacrifice to pagan gods, it did not pose a problem provided that the purpose for attending was to perform a social duty rather than pay homage to idols. After the domestic portion of the ceremony was complete, the concluding rituals took place in civic spaces where the boy’s ritual achievement of manhood was now evident from his change of attire. Accompanied by family and friends, the boy progressed to the forum and the Capitol. In Rome, this element in the series of rites might have been commonly known as ad Capitolium ire, ‘going to the Capitol,’ as Servius indicates when he comments that Jupiter looked after boys as they grew up and donned the toga.24 On the Capitol, the boy performed sacrifices as Appian (B Civ. 4.5.30) reports, probably to Jupiter and Juventas in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and may have followed an ancient custom of depositing a coin in Juventas’ small shrine in the Capitoline temple or at her temple near the Circus Maximus, as boys are said to have done in Servius Tullius’ reign (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.15.5).25 It is plausible, as Marquardt suggested long ago, that the boy then registered his name at a tabularium (records office) located nearby that held records of citizenship.26 Following thanksgiving to the gods and registration, the procession perhaps went through the forum once again, where, accord-
52 Fanny Dolansky ing to Ovid (Fast. 3.787–788), people would gather around the novus togatus. Financial gain, in addition to well-wishing, presumably motivated crowds to throng around the boy and his entourage since it was customary among the upper orders to distribute gifts of food or money (sportulae) to mark the occasion.27 In his discussion of the dedication of the new temple of Mars Ultor in 2 bc, Dio (55.10.2) implies that boys who had donned the toga were encouraged to come to the temple.28 Rawson regards the temple as the location for some toga virilis ceremonies, although it is not clear whether she envisions boys actually exchanging togas there or simply visiting it as yet another component to the coming of age rites.29 Harlow and Laurence propose that the boy came to the temple after receiving his toga at home, which seems plausible. They note the significance of the setting of Augustus’ new temple as ‘an arena of exempla that stressed the duty of the young man to parents, ancestors, and the state.’30 Both of these arguments, however, are based on a fragmentary text of Dio that is imprecise concerning the boys themselves and their status. They may have been in the midst of the ritual passage to manhood, but it is equally possible that they were already novi togati and that Augustus intended them to come to the temple as they embarked on the early stages of their careers.31 It is important to bear in mind, though, that many boys would have donned the toga outside the city of Rome, which renders the question of the relationship of the temple of Mars Ultor to their ceremonies irrelevant. Cicero’s nephew and son, for instance, both celebrated their coming of age beyond Rome, in Laodicea in Asia Minor and Cicero’s home town of Arpinum, respectively. Other sources describe the ceremony taking place throughout Italy as well as in several of the provinces, in such diverse locales as Surrentum, Thermae Himeraeae, Capri, Chaeronea, Oea, and Antioch.32 By the second century ad, the ceremony seems to have become part of the fabric of Roman life in many provincial milieux where taking the toga – the quintessential symbol of the Roman people and of Roman masculinity in particular – served as a highly visible demonstration of Romanitas for those living far from Rome. Visual Language in the Ritual Exchange Many years before his dedication of the temple of Mars Ultor in Rome, Augustus donned the toga in rather dramatic fashion, according to his biographer Nicolaus of Damascus (4.8–10): He came down into the Forum, when he was about fourteen years old, so that he might lay aside at that time the purple-edged toga and assume the pure white toga,
53 Coming of Age in the Roman World which is the symbol of enrolment in manhood. He was gazed upon by all the people because of his fine appearance and the brilliance of his high birth, and he was enlisted in the priesthood in the place of Lucius Domitius who had died. The people applauded him very enthusiastically, and at the same time as he changed his toga, this honour was bestowed upon the young man; and he sacrificed to the gods.33
Nicolaus’ description captures much of the excitement of what could be an extraordinary event for any boy and which may have been heightened to the level of the spectacular for the future emperor.34 He also highlights the strong visual dimension and rich ceremony that characterized the transitional rites, evinced in large part by the articles of clothing that played such central roles in the ritual – clothing that Romans themselves identified as potent symbolic communicators.35 The child’s praetexta, worn by freeborn boys as well as freeborn girls, was considered a guardian of the innocent and vulnerable, as Persius (5.30) implies in a reference to the custos ... purpura. It was a sacred garment that empowered and protected those who wore it. These associations are clear from a declamation attributed to Quintilian, in which the speaker swears upon ‘that sacral quality itself of the praetexta, with which priests and magistrates are robed, and we make sacred and venerable the weakness of childhood.’36 The antiquity of the praetexta – for it was believed to date back to the reign of Tullus Hostilius – and the symbolic significance of its prominent purple border, contributed to a belief in the sanctity and inviolability of the garment and, by extension, of the child wearing it.37 The praetexta was distinct from other garments because of the purple band that surrounded the bottom edge of an otherwise white toga. This vibrant ring of colour was more than mere decoration: it was a complex means of symbolic communication. In the Roman world, purple was a colour rich in splendour and symbolic value. The elder Pliny (HN 9.60.127) remarked on its ability to make every garment radiant and noted its particular association with the maiestas (majesty) of childhood.38 Though the Romans called the colour purpura and used the term as a metonym for the child’s praetexta, the shade that adorned the toga more closely resembled garnet than purple.39 Roman purple varied in intensity, encompassing rose and scarlet shades, but in Pliny’s estimation (HN 9.62.135), in its highest glory, it was the colour of congealed blood: ‘blackish at first glance but gleaming when held up to the light.’ Blood represents and sustains life, and is a powerful, vital force. In many cultures shades of red are believed to protect babies, children, and pregnant women – in essence, to protect nascent life.40 Though there is no direct evidence for this connection in the minds of Romans, similar beliefs are perhaps implicit even if not explicitly expressed.
54 Fanny Dolansky The purple border of the praetexta had another important significance that derived from the omnipresent institution of sacrifice. Shades of purpura were prominent during the performance of public sacrifice – in the blood of the animals, but especially in the garments of the religious personnel, visible in the praetextae of curule magistrates, priests, and, under the Principate, the Arval Brethren as well. Dramatic purple detail also accented the sacrificial attire of the Vestal Virgins, who veiled themselves with the suffibulum, a short white veil that Festus (474 L = 348 M) describes as praetextum (bordered). Beneath her veil, a Vestal wore an infula, a white fillet of wool coiled around her head several times like a diadem from which ribbons or vittae in red and white hung down (Serv. ad Aen. 10.538). According to one scholar, the infula was ‘a symbol of inviolacy and ritual purity.’41 The stark contrast of purple trim on a white background recalls the boy’s toga praetexta and reinforces visually the symbolic value of the purple border as a powerful, sacrosanct feature of an otherwise ordinary piece of clothing. Yet the adult toga was by no means an ordinary piece of clothing. It was a garment laden with ideological associations that conveyed a wealth of information in a single glance about the age, gender, juridical and socio-economic status, even the reputation of the person wearing it. When a boy assumed the toga virilis, any Roman onlooker knew that regardless of his young age, he was a freeborn citizen male. This was apparent first and foremost because his toga was completely white. Persius (Sat. 5.33) calls it candidus umbo, ‘shining white toga,’42 while an inscription from Sardis that commemorates Augustus’ grandson and adopted son Gaius’ ceremony, speaks of his ‘brilliant white toga in all its splendour.’43 More often, however, the adult toga was termed toga pura, in part to denote its natural colour, probably offwhite or greyish-white.44 Yet pura, or kaqara/ as Nicolaus of Damascus uses, bears other meanings and may have been deliberately used for its ethical connotations. Cicero’s fondness for pura in all of his correspondence about Marcus’ and Quintus’ ceremonies suggests a connection between the innocence of childhood and the precarious stages of early adulthood. The boys were emerging from childhood, a period of protective benefits that left them ritually and sexually unspoiled.45 The garment that inaugurated their adulthood functioned as a means of moral and religious continuity. Connected to this notion of ethical purity is the idea that those permitted to wear the toga pura were in some way ‘pure’ because of their freeborn status. This may explain why both a status-conscious ingenuus such as Cicero, and a freedman like Phaedrus, prefer toga pura over other designations.46 The adult toga was also described by the epithet libera (free), a term that had particular resonance in a slave-owning society where freedom was a restricted privilege.47 The assumption of the toga marked the acquisition of
55 Coming of Age in the Roman World full citizenship and increased freedom, though not complete independence from paternal control.48 Several poets emphasize its association with libertas (freedom), particularly the Augustan poets Propertius and Ovid, though they invert expectations regarding the civic responsibilities the toga was supposed to usher in for men of their status and rank. Rather than function as a passport to greater participation in the res publica, the toga libera invests them with the freedom to follow their own moral and intellectual paths – to write elegy instead of pleading cases and to enjoy a freer lifestyle on account of their new status.49 Ovid specifically connects the god Liber with the assumption of the toga and a life that is now liberior (freer) than before (Fast. 3.777–778). Liber, who enjoyed unprecedented popularity in Italy during the Augustan period, was believed to oversee physiological responses during sexual intercourse.50 Under Liber’s patronage, new togati began to exercise greater sexual freedom, no longer hindered by their praetextae. Propertius (3.15.3–6), for instance, declared that once the pudor of his praetexta was lifted, he was free to learn the ways of love.51 The praetexta was believed to confer a certain dignity on a boy, as Horace (Epod. 5.7) suggests when he refers to purpurae decus, the ‘grace’ or ‘distinction of the purple.’ Some (Macrob. Sat. 1.6.17) were of the opinion that it was given to boys so that ‘the blush of the purple might teach them to order their lives with a modesty (pudor) befitting their free birth.’52 Yet older Romans feared that in setting aside the praetexta and casting off pudor, problems would quickly ensue. Plutarch (Mor. 37c-e) urged his pupil, Nicander, a recent recipient of the toga virilis, to avoid temptation by exercising self-control and relying on reason instead of following the negative example of other boys who simultaneously shed their sense of modesty or shame, as well as caution, with their childhood attire. According to Cicero (Cael. 5.11), one way of limiting youthful exuberance was, quite literally, to limit the mobility of new togati by a unique mode of dress that he claims was current early in the first century bc: ‘When I was young, we usually spent a year “keeping our arms in our gown” [ad cohibendum bracchium toga] and, in tunics, undergoing our physical training on the Campus, and, if we began our military service at once, the same practice was followed for our training in camp and in operations.’ New togati were, in essence, put on probation, and extravagant gestures were forbidden because the toga was worn so that the left arm was largely immobilized and the right freed only to accommodate moderate gestures.53 The elder Seneca (Controv. 5.6) attests to wearing the toga in this fashion some time after Cicero’s youth, though how long it persisted or how effective it was at shaping young men’s behaviour is unclear. More than a century later, older Romans were still worrying that the toga might be granted prematurely and
56 Fanny Dolansky wondering, as Statius did, ‘whom unrestrained youth has not corrupted’ (quem non corrupuit pubes effrena, Silv. 5.2.68). The Implications of Assuming the toga virilis within the Roman Household The toga did confer considerable rights and responsibilities on those who wore it, and distinguished them as freeborn, citizen men. As Tacitus remarked, comparing the assumption of the toga with a German coming of age ritual, ‘before this they seem part of the household, now they are part of the civic community’ (ante hoc domus pars videntur, mox rei publicae, Germ. 13.1). In the Republic receipt of the toga granted boys a share in the civic community since they were now eligible to vote. It also enabled them to apprentice with successful politicians, orators, and lawyers during the preparatory period called the tirocinium fori, to engage in advanced studies, and to join the army – all steps towards more independent futures.54 Acquiring the toga also allowed boys to recline at banquets, a social privilege that was not unproblematic for some since it literally put them in contact with a variety of temptations.55 Some sources suggest that the new freedoms were sometimes abused and problems arose as a result. Nicolaus of Damascus (8.18, 13.28–30) commended the young Augustus for exercising restraint at drinking parties, unlike his peers, and for abstaining from sex for a year soon after taking the toga virilis, behaviour he deemed remarkable since he claimed that most young men – and particularly the elite – were especially sexually active at this age (15.36).56 From Apuleius’ portrayal of his stepson Pudens in his Apologia (98.5–7), a speech in his own defence against charges of practising magic, Pudens appears as a young man overwhelmed by the freedoms of the toga. Apuleius accuses Pudens of abandoning his studies and serious friends for low-class taverns, dinner parties, and prostitutes, excesses that contributed to tensions that had already developed within the family unit between the boy and his parents.57 Neither exemplary like Augustus nor extravagant like Pudens, the young Quintus and Marcus Cicero present more moderate and perhaps more authentic pictures of the growing pains assuming the toga virilis might initiate. In the year and a half following his rites, Quintus began to exert his independence, causing his uncle considerable distress. On one occasion, Cicero wrote of Quintus, ‘I cannot help feeling affection for him, but I plainly see that he has none for us ... But I shall take care that he gets some direction ... His abilities are extraordinary, it is his character that needs attention’ (Att. 10.10.6).58 With Marcus there was less friction but still some
57 Coming of Age in the Roman World mutual testing, as Marcus’ studies in Athens reflect. Cicero was reluctant to allow Marcus to oversee the arrangements without assistance and asked Atticus to attend to the logistics, only conceding some decisions to Marcus at Atticus’ request. Once Marcus, now nearly twenty, was in Athens, Cicero monitored his progress by corresponding with his teachers while Atticus maintained contact with Marcus’ companions.59 Cicero, like others, believed that adolescence was a precarious time of life, ‘a slippery age’ (lubrica aetas) when boys could easily stray from the moral path.60 He argued that strength of character, clean living, and discipline fostered at home (gravitas, castimonia, disciplina domestica, Cael. 5.11) could help to keep one on the straight and narrow, although naturally some new togati found themselves in predicaments nonetheless.61 Some youthful indulgence was expected and even seems to have been excused. Perhaps a ‘boys-will-be-boys’ attitude, adopted by some, was motivated in part by adult concerns about the future and fears that young men might not live long enough to enjoy the benefits the toga bestowed. Yet it was around the age of fifteen, the approximate age when many boys donned the toga, that prospects for life expectancy actually increased dramatically.62 This concurrence is probably not coincidental.63 While ‘demographic consciousness’ is anachronistic, since demography is a modern science, it seems that Romans understood that surviving childhood was an achievement of considerable significance that merited celebration and thanksgiving.64 As noted above, Cicero’s attention to his nephew’s and son’s rites demonstrates that coming of age was of particular concern for Roman fathers. But many boys donned the toga without their fathers, not because their fathers were absent on military service like Q. Cicero, but because they had already died.65 Propertius, for example, put on his toga ‘before his mother’s gods’ (matris ante deos, 4.1.132) since his father had died when Propertius was young. Similarly a promising young man named Crispinus seems to have lost his father shortly before he came of age, as Statius laments (Silv. 5.2.64– 67): ‘a cruel fate consumed him and he died, leaving two children without a guardian; he did not even take off the purple of boyhood from your slender arms and cover your shoulders with the white robe.’66 For some fatherless boys a stepfather or father figure seems to have overseen the rites. Presumably this happened when Augustus took the toga, since he is reported to have been raised ‘as if in the care of a father’ while in his stepfather’s house (Nic. Dam. 3.5). Strained relations and Apuleius’ rhetoric make it difficult to determine who presented Pudens with his toga. Apuleius himself seems an unlikely candidate, but Pudens’ older brother, Pontianus, and his paternal uncle Aemilianus, are strong possibilities.67 In addition to its significance as a demographic achievement, donning the
58 Fanny Dolansky toga was an important family event for other reasons. The novus togatus embodied the future prospects and continuity of a family’s male line. In his commemoration of his father’s rites, Statius suggests that the ritual brought glory to the entire family, past and present (Silv. 5.3.116–120): Your birth was not mean, your blood not obscure, nor your race without lustre, though your parents’ fortunes fell short of outgoings. For rich was the ceremony wherein Infancy made you lay aside your purple clothing, given in honour of your birth, and the noble gold from your breast.68
The rites provided an opportunity for self-presentation and promotion as a family demonstrated the extent of its resources financially and socially, in some instances sparing no expense. In honour of Antyllus, the son of Fulvia and Mark Antony, the entire city of Alexandria was reported to have been overtaken for days with banquets, revels, and feasts (Plut. Ant. 71.3). Antyllus’ celebration was clearly exceptional, but even ceremonies of a much smaller scale could nevertheless be noteworthy affairs. The rites for Pudens, for example, were said to have drawn ‘a fresh concourse of citizens’ on account of the substantial distributions Pudens’ mother handed out to the people of Oea.69 Pliny (Ep. 10.116) worried that one of the negative consequences of lavish displays was that the rites might be tainted by corruption, for it had apparently become common practice in Pontus and Bithynia to issue invitations and monetary gifts to the entire town council and a substantial number of the plebs. But Pliny seems to have been in the minority among the elite as others instead seized upon the occasion to communicate through their sons’ attainment of adult status the many achievements of their family line in the past, and to anticipate similar successes in the future.70 Conclusions The ritual exchange of the bulla and toga praetexta for the toga virilis was a defining moment in the life of a freeborn Roman boy as it marked the end of his boyhood and the beginning of his adult years. In setting aside his bulla and praetexta, the boy divested himself of the symbols of his boyhood, which represented a degree of venerability and vulnerability as well. Donning the toga virilis, he assumed a new identity, his white toga communicating his achievement of adulthood with its attendant freedoms. The series of distinct rites that comprised his coming of age began in the home before the lararium, the focus for domestic worship, and in the company of family and friends. When celebrated in Rome, it concluded in civic spaces of religious and political significance – the forum and the Capitol – that the boy could
59 Coming of Age in the Roman World now participate in more fully as a result of his dramatic change in status. The transition was of immense importance to the boy himself since the toga conferred various rights and privileges and in many ways initiated a new chapter in his life. For family members, the ritual was a memorable experience as they witnessed his transformation visually from boy to man. That he had survived childhood to reach early adulthood was a major accomplishment in its own right and one that needed to be celebrated properly. The boy’s attainment of adult status symbolized his family’s present vitality and the continuity of its line, and thus provided an opportunity for self-promotion that manifested itself among the upper classes in lavish ceremonies with public distributions and display. Yet regardless of what one perceives as the dominant feature of the rite, it is clear that taking the toga virilis was a deeply meaningful event in the lives of Roman boys, their families, and the community as a whole. It was a religious and cultural institution of considerable importance and endurance, attested throughout the empire from Sicily and Surrentum to Asia Minor and North Africa where it persisted into the fifth century ad as a vital part of Roman domestic and civic life.71
Notes 1 Cic. Att. 5.20.9; 6.1.12; 9.6.1, 17.1, 19.1. In his correspondence Cicero calls the ceremony togam puram dare, ‘granting the pure-white toga,’ but elsewhere refers to it as togam virilem sumere, ‘assuming the toga virilis’ (e.g., Phil. 2.18.44; Amic. 1.1). Ancient sources use a variety of phrases to signify the exchange of togas including togam accipere (Livy Per. 26; SHA Comm. 12.4), togam mutare (Gell. NA 18.4.1; Hor. Carm. 1.36.9), and togam (de)ponere (Gell. NA 18.4.1; Prop. 3.15.4; Sen. Ep. 4.2), while Tertullian (De Idol. 16.1) uses the phrase sollemnitas togae purae, ‘the ritual of the toga pura,’ to refer to the complex of rituals involved. There are many poetic variations on toga virilis as well: toga libera (Ov. Fast. 3.771; Tr. 4.10.28; Prop. 4.1.132), amictus albens (Stat. Silv. 5.2.67), and candidus umbo (Pers. 5.33). See the Appendix in Dolansky 1999 for additional examples, including Hellenizations. Translations throughout have been taken from the Loeb Classical Library unless indicated otherwise. 2 The only study specifically devoted to the ceremony, prior to Dolansky 1999, was Amiotti 1981. The present chapter expands on aspects of Dolansky 1999 and draws upon material discussed more fully in Dolansky 2006: 40–92. Several Roman family historians have included useful but limited sections on the rites: Néraudau 1979: 147–63 and 1984: 251–7; Wiedemann 1989: 113–42; Dixon 1992: 101–2, 134–5; Rawson 2003: 142–4, 323–5. Harlow and Laurence (2002: 67–9) also treat the ceremony, but they do not discuss the relationship of juridical
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status to the rites, which lends the impression that all Roman boys received the toga virilis when in fact it was the exclusive privilege of the freeborn. For girls’ dedication of their dolls as a rite that paralleled boys’ assumption of the toga virilis, see George 2001: 184. For girls’ assumption of ‘final adult garments’ only at marriage, see Sebesta 1994a: 47. Given the paucity of sources to document the practices, we do not know how regularly these rites took place or at what age except an imprecise ‘before marriage,’ or whether they formed part of a larger complex of rituals to mark the end of girlhood as a specific stage in the life course. Dixon (1992: 101, 215n12) rightly cautions against assuming an absence of special rituals for girls simply because male sources fail to record them. She offers the useful analogy of all-female rites among some Australian aboriginals that were left out of early ethnographic accounts because of the biases of male informants and anthropologists. On the appearance of the freeborn girl, see Olson, chap. 6, in this volume; for the relationship between the girl’s toga praetexta, status, and formality, see George 2001. Although freeborn girls wore the toga praetexta, there is no evidence that they also wore the bulla, as Gabelmann 1985: 521–2 and Goette 1986: 137–8 demonstrate. In comparison with literary evidence, epigraphic evidence is scant and consists of a mere handful of inscriptions. These do, however, add to our overall understanding of the rite and are valuable for offering different perspectives from much of the literary evidence. Curiously, the ceremony seems to be completely absent from the iconographic record. Huskinson (1996: 92) notes the lack of depictions in her study of children’s sarcophagi, a situation that is paralleled for adult biographical sarcophagi, according to Kampen 1981b: 50. A fragmentary late-firstor early-second-century ad sarcophagus (the so-called Via Portuense monument) may be the sole exception. It presents a scene that seems to illustrate either the taking of the toga virilis or a boy’s first declamation. Though there has been some disagreement, scholars tend to favour the latter explanation: for example, Faccenna 1949–50: 227 (despite the critique of Berczelly 1978: 66); Kampen 1981b: 48. The elite bias of the sources is also a factor in reconstructing the ceremony. Nonelite sources for the rite and records of non-elite celebrations are similarly scarce: Livy 42.34.3–5; Phaedrus 3.10.10; CIL V 2089; VI 1504; P Mich. 7.433; (perhaps) Cic. Mur. 69. Van Gennep’s concept of a rite de passage, with its tripartite structure of separation, transition, and incorporation, remains a useful framework for thinking about the toga virilis ceremony despite its shortcomings and the fact that the Roman rite does not map onto the schema seamlessly. Van Gennep, however, did not include it among the Roman rites he classified as rites of passage, though he discussed social and physiological puberty in Rome (1960: 66). The applicability of the model and the relevance of other theoretical models to the toga virilis
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8
9
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ceremony, such as Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, which he most fully develops in Turner 1969, are discussed by Dolansky 1999: 124–34. For treatments of the rite de passage model, including criticism and development of specific aspects, see Vizedom 1976; Gluckman 1962; Dodd and Faraone 2003; Padilla 1999. On the dies lustricus, see Rawson 2003: 110–13. Some scholars regard seventeen as the legal age of eligibility for military service (e.g., Wiedemann 1989: 114; Néraudau 1979: 117). While it seems to have been common for boys to enlist at the age of seventeen, there is no evidence to suggest that boys who had already taken the toga prior to seventeen were prohibited from entering the service voluntarily. For the cursus and youth, see Kleijwegt 1991: 188–91. The age for starting on the cursus changed considerably over the course of the middle and late Republic. In 180 bc, the lex Villia annalis set a minimum age of 27 for holding the quaestorship (often the first office on the cursus), but Sulla raised it to 30 before Augustus lowered it to 25. See Apul. Apol. 70.7 on the notion of a boy being a suitable age (idoneus) for receipt of the toga. The rights and privileges the toga conferred were significant, most notably the right to vote, to acquire the latus clavus (senatorial tunic), and to recline at convivia. Donning the toga was also a necessary step towards full inclusion in politics and the military, and generally invested boys with greater freedom socially and sexually. See below and, more fully, Dolansky 1999: chaps. 3 and 4. For birthdates, dates, and precise ages for receipt of the toga for twenty-one historical figures for whom such data exists, see Marquardt 1886: 128–30. For additional entries based on papyrological and epigraphic sources, see Dolansky 2006: Appendix 2. Rousselle 1988: 59: ‘[The boy] and his family would watch for the first signs of his sexual maturity. The appearance of pubic hair and his first ejaculations were a cause for celebration for the whole household, particularly the father.’ Puberty was a precondition of marriage for which physical inspection could be used to determine the capacity of either sex (Corbett 1930: 51). The age of puberty and the practice of physical inspection were contentious issues among jurists in the first century ad (see Gaius Inst. 1.196 and Reg. 11.28, with discussion by Gardner 1998: 141–3); Justinian finally resolved this problem by abolishing physical inspection and establishing statutory ages of fourteen for boys and twelve for girls as the ages at which puberty commenced (Cod. Iust. 5.60.3). Earlier literary sources, however, acknowledged that there was a considerable range within which boys might show signs of maturing physically, from the ages of fourteen through seventeen (e.g., Censorinus DN 1.7.3–4). Att. 5.20.9: ego cum Laodiceam venero Quinto sororis tuae filio togam puram iubeor dare; 6.1.12: Quinto togam puram Liberalibus cogitabam dare; mandavit
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enim pater; cf. Cic. Sest. 144; Phaedrus 3.10.9–10; Plut. Ant. 71.3; Dio 51.6.1; SHA Sept. Sev. 14.8, 16.8. Prop. 4.1.132 (matris et ante deos libera sumpta toga); Apul. Apol. 73.9, 87.10– 11, 98.5. There are hints, however, that Pudens’ brother and uncle may have also had considerable say regarding the date. Other historical figures are also known to have donned the toga after their fathers had died, though whether their mothers played different or more prominent roles as a result cannot be determined. The circumstances surrounding Vettius Crispinus’ coming of age, as Statius (Silv. 5.2) has presented them, strongly suggest an instance in which neither parent was involved in scheduling the rites. Crispinus’ father had already died and his mother reputedly tried to poison him, presumably in connection with the estate. Thus when Crispinus hurriedly received the toga virilis, it likely was not at the behest of his mother. The date 17 March already had several festal associations as the shared occasion of the Liberalia, the Agonalia, and, after 45 bc, the anniversary of Caesar’s victory at Munda. Prior to the Augustan age, the Liberalia included games in Liber’s honour which involved subject matter that some might have deemed inappropriate for new togati (see Naev. fr. com. 113 on the ‘free speech’ of the Liberalia and Wiseman 1998: 35–51 for two possible plays for the festival, as well as Festus 283 L = 245 M for concerns regarding obscena verba in the presence of praetextati). Working from Ovid’s presentation of the Liberalia, which he argues has been sanitized, Wiseman (2002: 291–3) envisions a much bawdier Liberalia in earlier times. For additional aspects of Ovid’s Liberalia, see Miller 2002. Prop. 4.1.131–132: mox ubi bulla rudi dimissast aurea collo, / matris et ante deos libera sumpta toga (Next when the golden locket was removed from your innocent neck, and you donned the toga of manhood before your mother’s gods ...); Pers. 5.30–31: cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit, / bullaque subcinctis Laribus donata pependit (When first as a timid youth I lost the guardianship of the purple, and hung up my bulla as an offering to the short-girt household gods ..., tr. Lee 1987). Propertius and Persius use the exchange of togas as a man’s first significant adult achievement. Suetonius often incorporates the ceremony into his biographical sketches: for example, Aug. 8.1; Tib. 7.1; Claud. 2.2; Galba 4.3; Vesp. 2.2. For Suetonius, the ritual passage to adulthood appears to be important because it introduces noteworthy early accomplishments that foretell successful adult futures. Insignia: for example, Hor. Epod. 5.12; Val. Max. 5.6.8; Festus 32 L = 36 M s.v. bulla aurea; Macrob. Sat. 1.6.11. Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 101) calls it to\ paidiko\n para/shmon (a badge of childhood). Ancient sources disagree on the shape of the bulla and its etymology, but they are consistent in associating it only with freeborn boys. For its apotropaic functions, see Macrob. Sat. 1.6.9. The most extensive discussion of the bulla is Palmer 1998, who maintains that freeborn
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boys only wore golden bullae. There is, however, convincing evidence for leather bullae, particularly for poor boys (e.g., Juv. 5.164–165 with Courtney 1980: 250 and Braund 1996: 303; Asc. ad Cic. Verr. 2.1.152, but see Palmer 1998: 46). Customary offerings to the Lares: Juv. 9.137–138; Hor. Carm. 3.23.3–4; Tib. 1.10.21–24. In the houses of affluent Romans, a lararium was often located in the atrium, the room chosen for other significant family rituals, including naming ceremonies and girls’ dedication of their dolls prior to marriage. For the importance of the atrium as a space for family rituals, see Clarke 1991: 9–10. Lararia have also been found in the kitchens, gardens, and peristyles of Pompeian houses. For less affluent families living in insulae, shrines may have been located about the fauces (entrance) or in individual rooms as is the case in the Casa del Bicentenario: see Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 110. Festus 342 L = 274 M s.v. rectae and 364 L = 289 M s.v. regillis tunicis. Néraudau (1979: 148) similarly envisions the boy putting on the tunica recta immediately before donning his toga, but Fraschetti (1997: 65) proposes that he slept in it the night before the ceremony as brides-to-be were accustomed to do. On the tunica recta worn by brides, see La Follette 1994: 54–6; Staples 1998: 89; Treggiari 1991: 163. Juventas: Tert. Ad nat. 2.11.11; August. De civ. D. 4.11. Liber: Ov. Fast. 3.771– 788. Some authors (e.g.,Val. Max. 5.4.4; Apul. Apol. 73.9) use the verb auspicor in connection with the ritual which highlights its religiosity and suggests, furthermore, that assuming the toga might have been an awe-inspiring experience. Mothers: Apul. Apol. 87.10–11; Prop. 4.1.131–132; Petron. Sat. 81.5 (perhaps). It is possible that there were some extraordinary ceremonies in which mothers actually granted the toga. This may be the meaning of Dio 51.6.1 regarding Caesarion and Antyllus, the sons of Cleopatra and Antony respectively, although we cannot be certain. Dio states that ‘they enrolled their sons among the youths of military age, Cleopatra [her son] Caesarion, and Antony [his son] Antyllus, who had been born to him by Fulvia and was with him’ (kai\ tou\j u9iei ~j Kleopa/tra ! o(\n e0k th= j Fouloui/aj gennhqe/nta oi ( me\n Kaisari/wna ’Antw/ nioj de\ Antullon, ). Dio maintains that they did this to reassure the ei]xen, e0j e0fh/bouj e0se/grayan Egyptians that if Cleopatra and Antony were to die, they would have the boys as leaders since they were now regarded as men. Reinhold (1988 ad loc.) proposes that two distinct ceremonies took place: Cleopatra inducted Caesarion into the ephebate and Antony gave Antyllus the toga (cf. Plut. Ant. 71.3 with Pelling 1988 ad loc.). Dio’s language, however, casts some doubt on this interpretation since he regularly uses the phrase ‘enroll among the youths of military age’ (e0j tou\j e0fh/bouj e0ggra/fein; e.g., 55.22.4; 56.8.1; 61.31.2) to signify taking the toga virilis, and only twice uses an alternative, more direct translation of the Latin (th/ n te e0sqh= ta th\n a0 ndrikh\n e0ndu/ein, 45.2.5; tou ~ a0 ndrikou ~ xitw~ noj e0ndu/ein, 45.2.6). Yet for Caesarion to have received the toga, Cleopatra had to have been granted
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Roman citizenship before he was born and no source comments upon this occurrence. If she was granted citizenship, then Caesarion could have been given the toga alongside Antyllus or, as one reader has suggested to me, Caesarion could have participated in both ceremonies (i.e., he was enrolled in the ephebate and granted the toga virilis) since this was a unique situation. Brothers: Ov. Tr. 4.10.27–28; Apul. Apol. 73.9, 87.10–11. Cousins: Cic. Att. 5.20.9; 6.1.12 (since both Quintus and Marcus were with Cicero in Laodicea, it seems likely that Marcus would have attended his cousin’s ceremony). Uncles: Cic. Att. 5.9.20; 6.1.12; Apul. Apol. 98.5. For the large slave staff of a domus, some of which was devoted to the needs of guests in the house’s reception areas, see Treggiari 1975b. With respect to the presence of slaves, as I have argued elsewhere (Dolansky 2006: 87–8), the ceremony played an important role in shaping and structuring the family as a unit by transmitting and reinforcing normative sociocultural values to its members, particularly regarding gender and status. The ceremony dramatized for the entire family, free and slave, male and female alike, the present and potential benefits of being a freeborn citizen male; as a result, all members may have been encouraged to attend. CIL V 2089: L. Ragonio L. f. | Pap(iria tribu) Tuscen(io) | Quintiano c(larissimo) i(uveni) | ob honorem | togae virilis | Verecundinus ser(vus) | domino optimo; CIL VI 1504: L. Ragonio L. f. Pap(iria tribu) | Urinatio Tuscenio | Quintiano | domino ob honorem | togae virilis | Ofellius ser(vus) ark(arius). On collactanei/ae, see Bradley 1991: 145, 149–155. Serv. ad Ecl. 4.49: Iovis incrementum nutrimentum – sane Iovem merito puerorum dicunt incrementa curare, quia cum pueri togam virilem sumpserint, ad Capitolium eunt. Note, too, that Servius, writing in the fourth century ad, uses the present tense (eunt) which shows that the practice continued into late antiquity. There is no evidence that boys dedicated their bullae on the Capitol, as Wiedemann (1989: 116) argued. Appian (B. Civ. 4.5.30) does not specify the recipients of the sacrifices or the temples. Nicolaus of Damascus (4.10) has Augustus sacrifice to the gods and this seems to occur in the forum, but it is not entirely clear. Servius’ association of Jupiter with boys approaching manhood and Juventas with the assumption of the toga make both of these divinities probable candidates for sacrifice. Marquardt 1886: 125–6, referring to ‘the Tabularium’; but as Purcell (1993: 139– 41) has argued, there may not have been one specific tabularium that served as a repository for records of citizenship. An early-second-century ad document from Egypt (P Mich. 7.433), which is identified as a ‘certificate of the toga pura,’ shows that at this date lists of recent recipients of the toga were displayed in the Forum Augustum in Rome while copies seem to have been kept in local records offices in the provinces (see below n68).
65 Coming of Age in the Roman World 27 Sportulae: Pliny Ep. 10.116 (1–2 denarii per person in Pontus and Bithynia); Apul. Apol. 87.10–11 (HS 50,000 on the joint occasion of a toga virilis ceremony and a wedding). Those who were less affluent handed out cakes and mead to commemorate their coming of age rites (see CIL X 688, lines 4–5, Surrentum), while Statius claims that even families whose finances were strained could boast of honouring their sons in impressive fashion (Silv. 5.3.116–120). Members of the imperial family dispensed congiaria (largesses) in honour of Germanicus’ son, Nero, and Lucius Verus: Suet. Tib. 54.1; Tac. Ann. 3.29.3; Fasti Ostienses for ad 20 (EJ, p. 41); SHA Ver. 3.1. For Caligula’s retroactive compensation in ad 37 when he was proclaimed emperor, since neither sportulae nor congiaria had been disbursed when he assumed the toga, see Suet. Calig. 10.1; Dio 59.2.2. 28 ... tou/j te e0k tw~n pai/dwn e0zio/ntaj kai\ e0j tou\j e0fh/bouj e0ggrafome/nouj e0kei ~se pa/ntwj a0 fiknei ~sqai, ‘[it was voted that] those who were leaving the age-group of boys and being enrolled among the youths of military age should on that occasion invariably present themselves there.’ Scott-Kilvert’s translation (1987), which I have quoted, may be somewhat misleading as it implies that there was a formal motion requiring boys to come to the temple, but because of the lacuna at the beginning of the passage, it is not clear whether they were required or simply encouraged to go. 29 Rawson 2003: 323. 30 Harlow and Laurence 2002: 67–9, quotation on 69. 31 New togati could acquire some political experience and make valuable connections during the preparatory period called tirocinium fori, literally ‘training for the forum,’ an apprenticeship with an established politician, orator, or advocate that usually lasted a year. See further n54, below. 32 Surrentum: CIL X 688; Thermae Himeraeae: CIL X 7346: Capri: Suet. Calig. 10.1; Chaeronea: Plut. Mor. 37c; Oea: Apul. Apol. 87.10; Antioch: SHA Sept. Sev. 16.8. 33 For text and translation, see Bellemore 1984. 34 Social status obviously affected the scale with which the rites were performed and the extent to which the ceremony functioned as spectacle as well. 35 Nicolaus’ language is of particular interest with respect to aspects of the visual. He points to the need for both actor and audience and draws out the dynamism of the ceremony. His use of periblepo/menoj is also important for its dual meanings of ‘was gazed upon’ as well as ‘was admired’: Augustus is presented as an exceptional novus togatus, a model for others to emulate. Note too that periblepo/menoj is related to perible/yij which can mean ‘close examination,’ perhaps in the sense of being scrutinized. 36 [Quint.] Decl. 340.13: ego vobis allego etiam ipsum sacrum praetextarum, quo sacerdotes velantur, quo magistratus, quo infirmitatem pueritiae sacram facimus ac venerabilem. For the use of the praetexta by magistrates and priests engaged in sacrifice, see Warde Fowler 1896: 317 and 1920: 42–3.
66 Fanny Dolansky 37 Pliny HN 9.63.136. Macrob. Sat. 1.6.7–17 records that the praetexta was not worn by children during Tullus Hostilius’ reign; his successor, Tarquinius Priscus, introduced the custom of boys wearing the praetexta along with the bulla. 38 Note the comment of Warde Fowler 1920: 46n1 that ‘[m]aiestas, a strong word to use of boyhood, may be explained as combining the ideas of potency, dignity, and inviolability.’ 39 Metonym: Hor. Epod. 5.7; Pers. 5.30; Stat. Silv. 5.3.119. On purpura as garnet, see Wilson 1924: 119, with a sample of how Roman purpura probably appeared. 40 Sebesta 1994a: 47, citing Quint. Inst. 11.1.31 on the unsuitability of purpura and coccum (scarlet) for the elderly. As Armstrong 1917: 24 notes, for Servius blood and life are nearly one and the same: e.g., sanguis enim velut animae possessio est (ad Aen. 3.67); ... sanguinis in quo est anima (ad Aen. 6.221). For examples of the curative uses of blood in Roman remedies, see Armstrong 1917: 25–6. 41 La Follette 1994: 57. For further discussion of women’s head-coverings, including infulae and vittae, see Fantham, chap. 7, in this volume. 42 In their glossary, Sebesta and Bonfante (1994: 247) define the umbo as a ‘bunching of cloth pulled from the portion [of the toga] draped over the left side of the body over the sinus. It apparently helped to hold the garment in place.’ Peter White has suggested to me that umbo also contains the idea of the toga as a ‘manly shield.’ In this way, the toga can be seen to serve as a means of protection for the novus togatus as he begins a much more conspicuous stage of life through his involvement in the civic community. Persius, however, gestures towards more active participation in social life, as discussed below in n49. 43 IGRR IV 1756 = EJ no. 99, lines 6–7 (tr. Braund 1985: 59, no. 124): e0pei\ Ga/ i+oj
i0 ou/lioj Kai ~sar o9 presbu/tatoj tw~n tou~ Sebastou~ pai/dwn th\n eu0ktaiota/thn
e0k periporfu/rou lampra\n tw~| panti\ ko/ mw| a0 nei/lhfe th/bennon, ‘since Gaius
44 45 46 47 48
Julius Caesar, the oldest of the sons of Augustus, has taken off the purple-bordered toga and assumed the most prayed for, brilliant white toga in all its splendour ...’ Stone 1994: 15. For Cicero’s correspondence, see above n1. For the use of pura to indicate ritual and sexual purity, see OLD, purus 3 and 5. White garments were also ideally reserved for the upper orders, dark for the lower: Garrido-Hory 1981: 151. Prop. 4.1.132; Ov. Tr. 4.10.28; Fast. 3.771, 777. The boy’s receipt of the toga did not affect his legal position within the family. He remained a filiusfamilias in the potestas of his paterfamilias until his own death or the death of the latter. In addition to formal, legal constraints on the novus togatus’ independence, it seems that some boys who lived at home continued to be monitored closely and were subject to parental influence and authority.
67 Coming of Age in the Roman World 49 Prop. 4.1.131–134; Ov. Tr. 4.10.27–30. Others similarly allude to this connection: for example, Catull. 68.15–17 (where the ambiguity of multa satis lusi at 17 – either writing playful verse or playing around sexually – works nicely); Pers. 5.30–37 (for sexual freedom in the reference to exploring the Subura, and social/educational freedom to pursue a relationship with the Stoic philosopher, Cornutus). 50 For the popularity of Liber in Augustan art and literature, see Castriota 1995: 87– 123. Miller, however, points out (2002: 203–4) that there was no widespread association of Augustus with Liber despite some early coin issues styling the princeps as Liber. Physiological responses: August. De civ. D. 4.11; 6.9; 7.21. 51 For greater sexual freedom, see also Catull. 68.15–17; Pers. 5.32–33, as noted above. 52 Macrob. Sat. 1.6.17: togamque praetextam his additam ut ex purpurae rubore ingenuitatis pudore regertur (tr. Davies 1969). 53 nobis quidem olim annus erat unus ad cohibendum bracchium toga constitutus, et ut exercitatione ludoque campestri tunicati uteremur, eademque erat, si statim merere stipendia coeperamus, castrensis ratio ac militaris. Probation and gesture: Austin 1960: 58. Draping: Richardson and Richardson 1966: 266; cf. Néraudau 1979: 113. 54 Tacitus (Dial. 34.1–7) regards the tirocinium as an instructional period. Cicero (Cael. 5.11), who reports that it involved practical training for politics and the army, states that it usually lasted a single year, though it seems his own apprenticeship with Scaevola lasted nearly two years (Brut. 303). Marrou (1956: 243) suggests that though a year was the norm, some might remain with their mentor longer, as Austin (1960: 58) argues for Marcus Caelius. See also Kaster 1988: 51– 2; Gwynn 1964: 132–3. For the connection between receipt of the toga and the beginning of the tirocinium, see Cic. Amic. 1.1; Brut. 303, 306; Cael. 4.9; Fronto, Ep. 1.10.1. For the link between the ceremony and advanced studies: Pers. 5.30– 37; Gell. NA 18.4.1; Plut. Mor. 37c-e. Praetextati only seem to have been allowed to serve in the army under exceptional circumstances such as the battle at Cannae in 216 bc (Livy 22.57.9). 55 Temptations at convivia: Nic. Dam. 8.18, 13.28–30; Apul. Apol. 98.6; cf. Catull. 21.4–6 on Juventius (with Wiseman 1985: 130); Petron. Sat. 85–87. On the right to recline and attendant abuses, see Booth 1991. Roller 2006: 157–75 appeared too late to be taken into consideration here. 56 Nicolaus’ presentation of Augustus is not wholly reliable because of its combination of apology and panegyric, yet he is useful for the range of behaviour he suggests one might expect of new togati, some of which other sources corroborate: for example, Cic. Fam. 9.22.2 on young men’s sexual activity; more generally, Plut. Mor. 37c-e. 57 Hunink 1997: 2.240–1 shows that Apuleius’ charges against Pudens are fairly
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60 61
62 63 64
standard invective. They can be classified as follows into charges that recur throughout the speech, but only here are deployed against Pudens specifically: illiteracy, sexual license, frequenting inns and taverns. On Quintus’ changing relationship with Cicero, see Bradley 1991: 192–6. Arrangements: Cic. Att. 12.24.1, 27.2. Correspondence: Plut. Cic. 24.8; Cic. Att. 14.16.3–4. Apparently these long-distance reports were only somewhat satisfying as Cicero planned a visit to evaluate the situation in person: Cic. Att. 14.13.4; 16.3.4. Cic. Cael. 17.41, 31.75; Sen. Controv. 2.6.4; Tac. Ann. 13.2.2; 14.56.2; Dig. 4.4.11.5. New togati might be easy targets for financial exploitation as Horace suggests describing an unscrupulous moneylender who strives to get accounts from new togati despite (or perhaps because of) stern paternal control: nomina sectatur modo sumpta veste virili / sub patribus duris tironum (Sat. 1.2.16–17). There were safeguards in place, however, to prevent exploitation, namely the institution of curatio or cura minorum (caretakership or supervision). After fourteen, a boy was released from guardianship (tutela), which left him in a vulnerable position with respect to his peculium (spending allowance, sometimes a considerable amount). Many elite boys probably then entered into curatio until the age of twenty-five when jurists agreed that full adulthood was reached (Dig. 4.4.1). A curator was appointed by the praetor or governor to protect the interests of the minor in financial transactions, although the curator did not authorize transactions, but instead consented to them (see Inst. Iust. 1.23 pr.2, with helpful discussion in Frier and McGinn 2004: 441–2). Entering curatio was not mandatory, though minors normally did; if a minor was unwilling to do so and someone wished to sue, he could ask that a curator be appointed (Cod. Iust. 5.31.1). On peculium, see also Saller 1994: 123–4; on tutela and curatio, id., 181–9. Saller 1994: 23–5. This idea is developed from Bradley 1999: 190. Seneca (Cons. Marc. 9.2) captures this awareness of how precarious life was during childhood and draws attention to the assumption of the toga as the first significant achievement in a young man’s life after completing those years: tot praeter domum nostram ducuntur exsequiae: de morte non cogitamus. tot acerba funera: nos togam nostrorum infantium, nos militiam et paternae hereditatis successionem agitamus animo (So many funeral processions are led past our homes, yet we do not think about death. So many premature deaths, yet we make plans for our own infants – donning the toga, serving in the army, and succeeding to their father’s property.) In light of these remarks and what is now understood of child mortality rates, Livy’s report (42.34.3–5) that Sp. Ligustinus had six sons, four of whom had donned the toga and two who were still praetextati, as well as two married daughters, is all the more extraordinary.
69 Coming of Age in the Roman World 65 By the estimates of Saller 1994: 189, over one-third of Roman children were fatherless by the time they reached puberty. 66 nec genitor iuxta; fatis namque haustus iniquis / occidit et geminam prolem sine praeside linquens; / nec saltem teneris ostrum puerile lacertis / exuit albentique umeros induxit amictu. Whether either Propertius’ or Crispinus’ mother had remarried when they took the toga is not known. Persius may have been in a similar situation. According to his Life (3), he had lost his father at the age of five; his mother had remarried, only to have her second husband die within a few years. It is not clear though if the death of Persius’ stepfather preceded his assumption of the toga virilis or not. His close relationship with Cornutus, which he describes in Satire 5, allows for the possibility that his mentor may have fulfilled this role if his stepfather had already died, although other living relatives, such as uncles, could have done so as well. 67 Apuleius was not yet Pudens’ stepfather (Apol. 73.9), but even had he been when Pudens was ready to don the toga, it seems highly unlikely that he would have given Pudens the toga since Pudens and Pontianus did not approve of him as their mother’s future husband and their stepfather. 68 non tibi deformes obscuri sanguinis ortus / nec sine luce genus, quamquam fortuna parentum / artior expensis. etenim te divite ritu / ponere purpureos Infantia fecit amictus / stirpis honore datos et nobile pectoris aurum. For non-elites, especially those of the lower orders, assuming the toga was a very practical celebration of free birth and the brighter future it might engender for subsequent generations. This emerges from a unique document that has not previously been examined in treatments of the rites (though see now Dolansky 2006: 84–6). A Latin papyrus from Alexandria (P.Mich. 7.433), dated to 110 ad, has been identified by its editors as a ‘certificate of the toga pura.’ It states that it is a copy of the original posted in the Forum of Augustus in Rome. Since boys were enrolled in their voting tribes soon after donning the toga, the editor suggests that the certificate was a substitute for official enrolment in Rome since this would be impossible for those living in the provinces (Sanders 1947: 19). Other commentators propose that the document might have been needed if the boy was the son of a veteran since the boy would have been entitled to Roman citizenship after his birth if his father had already retired from military service: see the entry for P Mich. 7.433 (listed as P Mich. inv. 512) in the University of Michigan’s Advanced Papyrological Information System [APIS], available at http:// images.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=apis&page=index. 69 Apul. Apol. 87.10–11 (the translation of cives denuo ad sportulas convolarent is from Butler 1909). Pudentilla’s disbursement of HS 50,000 for the joint celebrations of her elder son’s marriage and younger son’s assumption of the toga was a considerable sum, comparable to other sportulae attested epigraphically: see Duncan-Jones 1982: 106. Furthermore, the fact that a small estate in second-
70 Fanny Dolansky century Tripolitania is valued at HS 60,000 (Apul. Apol. 101.5), helps to put Pudentilla’s distribution in context. 70 An inscription from Sardis concerning Gaius Caesar’s assumption of the toga (IGRR IV 1756, lines 1–21 = EJ no. 99, tr. Braund 1985: 59–60, no. 124) illustrates the way in which the ceremony might be appropriated by people outside the family to draw attention to its potential, in this case dynastic. The inscription, dated to 5–2 bc, is a copy of a decree to Augustus conveying the Sardians’ congratulations on Gaius’ achievement since ‘all mankind is rejoicing at the sight of their prayers on behalf of his children coming to fruition for Augustus.’ The decree also announces the Sardians’ establishment of an annual festival to commemorate the occasion during which people were to wear wreaths and white clothing, sacrifices would be made to the gods and supplications made for Gaius’ health, and a statue of the new togatus would be placed in the temple of his father. For commentary on the significance of the decree and Augustus’ response, see Sherk 1969: 346–7. 71 For evidence for the endurance of the rite into late antiquity, note Serv. ad Ecl. 4.49 (fourth century); August. De civ. D. 4.11 (early fifth century). Versions of this essay were presented at the University of Chicago’s ‘Rhetoric and Poetics Workshop’ and the ‘Children and Childhood in Greco-Roman Antiquity’ conference at the University of Notre Dame, and I thank the members of those audiences for their helpful comments. I am grateful to Keith Bradley and the two anonymous readers for their valuable critique of earlier drafts, as well as the editors for their careful attention and encouragement. Any errors that remain are my own.
3 The Double Identity of Roman Portrait Statues: Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome michael koortbojian In a famous account of the funeral rites of the Romans, Polybius described for his Greek audience the unusual masks worn at aristocratic funerals and later kept in conspicuous wooden cupboards in the atrium of the family’s house. Polybius notes that these masks captured not only the features but the even the complexion of the dead with remarkable fidelity. Their usage was no less remarkable (6.53.6): They take out these masks during public sacrifices and compete in decorating them. And whenever a leading member of the family dies, they introduce them [the masks] into the funeral procession, putting them on men who seem to be most like them in height, and in the shape and coloring of their faces.
Similarly, when describing the nearly contemporary funeral of L. Aemilius Paullus, Diodorus is reputed to have said (possibly echoing Polybius deliberately) (31.25.2 ap. Phot. Bibl. 383B): Those of the Romans who are the most well-born and are distinguished by the glory of their ancestors are portrayed after death in a way which is most like their features and which represents their whole bodies. They use actors who have observed a man’s bearing and the details of his individual appearance throughout his whole life.1
While the distinctiveness of the masks was intended to allow the ready identification of the ancestors by all those in attendance – in a ritual that would play a continuing role in Roman tradition down to imperial times2 – the claim for the individuality of their bodies, which the actors were explicitly chosen to replicate, is surely less persuasive, and seldom remarked.
72 Michael Koortbojian Other than extreme cases, how distinctive might such togate figures be? Cognomina, notably pejorative cognomina, might help, unless, of course, they were inherited. Indeed, were C. Considius Longus or L. Manlius Vulso Longus sufficiently tall to have warranted the name? Was L. Aemilius Paullus really short? M.’ Aquilius Crassus truly fat?3 Thus, one rightly asks, how recognizable was the physique beneath the folds of the toga – even the shorter version, the toga exigua that was worn during the later Republic? Some sense of the difficulty may be gleaned from a small bronze relief (fig. 3.1), of Claudian or Neronian date, on which the relative statures of an older man and a youth are barely discernible beneath their togas, despite their being rendered with attention.4 The two men are only vaguely clarified in scale, in body type, and in carriage, and all these aspects serve to underscore their distinctively individuated portrait features – but only just. One realizes from this example how, especially with the advent of the more voluminous toga of the imperial period – worn by the elder of the two figures here – a particular sense of the stature and carriage beneath its folds would surely prove to be less than perspicuous. Indeed, the nearly identical appearance of sculpted bodies on so many Roman monuments – from those on the processional friezes of the Ara Pacis to those on the fourth-century panels on the Arch of Constantine – demonstrates their stereotypical treatment, and the stability of the form throughout the imperial period confirms the costume’s signal character as an expression of civic ideology.5 Thus, what is striking in the two passages from Polybius and Diodorus is the twin claim: the body, just as the face, was associated with a particular individual. That is, despite the crowd of ancestors so portrayed, and the generalizing, indeed homogenizing effect of the Roman national costume worn by all and sundry who played a role in an institution such as the aristocratic funeral, both of our authorities specify that identity entailed both head and body, both face and physique. At such events, history (and not just family history) was on display – and the protagonists of that history had to be recognizable. But recognizable in what sense? Both passages go on. First, Polybius (6.53.7–8), then Diodorus (31.25.2): These men [sc. the actors] assume [the deceased’s] costume in addition, if the person was a consul or praetor, a toga with a purple border, if a censor, the all-purple toga, but if someone had celebrated a triumph or done something like that, a gold embroidered toga. These men now ride on wagons, and the rods and axes [i.e., the fasces] and the other customary equipment of those in power accompanies them according to the dignity befitting the rank and station achieved by each man in politics during his lifetime.
73 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome * In the same way each of the ancestors marches in procession having such dress and emblems of office so that the spectators can tell from their appearance how far each had advanced in rank and had enjoyed his share of honors in the realm of politics.
So, one recognizes that, although their bodies were disguised beneath the folds of the toga, it was not only by their faces that such illustrious individuals might be known: their costumes and the regalia of their status signalled that other facet of their identities – their societal roles. Their bodies, just as they served as the pedestals for heads that proclaimed distinctive individuality, served as well to support and to animate the costumes that assimilated them to those public offices that defined all Romans in the eyes of their fellow citizens.6 Thus, we recognize, embedded in these two descriptions of second-century bc practices, a quintessentially Roman double sense of identity, at once individual and institutional. I It was not only costume and attributes, but in some cases, bearing and grooming, that participated in what the Romans called habitus – all might be held to testify to a display of individuality.7 This was, paradoxically, a matter of convention. One identified, indeed individuated oneself, by adopting the conspicuous appearance that was synonymous with a distinctive social role. An anecdote reported in the mid-second century ad by Aulus Gellius expands the definition and its possible modes of employ (NA 9.2.1–5): To Herodes Atticus, the ex-consul, renowned for his personal charm and his Grecian eloquence, there once came, when I was present, a man in a cloak, with long hair and a beard that reached almost to his waist, and asked that money be given him ‘for bread.’ Herodes asked him who on earth he was, and the man, with anger in his voice and expression, replied that he was a philosopher, adding that he wondered why Herodes thought it necessary to ask what was obvious ... ’I see a beard and a cloak,’ said Herodes, ‘but I don’t see a philosopher.’
For this most presumptuous of suppliants, what mattered was neither his individual, specific visage nor his distinctive stature, but the conventional type whose costume he affected. For the long hair and beard, together with the pallium, were the standard habitus of the sage (see fig. 3.2),8 and Herodes’ suppliant expected to be numbered among them – on the grounds
74 Michael Koortbojian of appearance alone. For the ex-consul, a renowned sophist, he was a joke; the appeal of even as long-entrenched a convention as that of the philosopher’s appearance had its limits.9 The anecdote from Aulus Gellius, and the witticism of Herodes Atticus that it attests, had a long life. In the biography of the third-century emperor Tacitus included in the Historia Augusta, it is adapted and embroidered as a fitting jest for one of eminent station. Tacitus, a former consular, came to power late in life, reputedly at the age of seventy-five, and was hardly a suitable candidate for those dynamic forms of representation long employed by his predecessors. As the Historia Augusta reports (Tac. 16.2–4): His portrait (imago) was placed in the house of the Quintilii, representing him in five ways on a single panel, once in a toga, once in a military cloak (chlamys), once in armour, once in a Greek mantle (pallium), and once in the garb of a hunter. Of this portrait, indeed, a writer of epigrams made mock, saying, ‘I do not recognize the old man in the armour, nor in the military cloak ... but I do recognize the man in the toga.’
The author of this passage grasped the fully symbolic character of this array of images, yet acknowledged the realism of only one of them. Indeed, surviving statues testify to these diverse conventions of represented appearance. A well-known trio of statues, now in the Villa Doria Pamphilj at Rome, display the same mid-third-century man in three differing guises. One depicts him togatus (fig. 3.3), and the other two in the nude: first, in military guise (fig. 3.4), wearing the paludamentum and holding a sword, in the pose of Polykleitos’ Diomedes; and second, as a hunter (fig. 3.5), with paludamentum draped over his shoulder, a dog at his feet, in the pose of Polykleitos’ Doryphoros.10 The three statues were clearly intended to represent three distinct aspects of Roman virtus – civic/political, military, and that virtuous aspect of otium in which the hunt figured as the corollary of martial prowess. These were role portraits, designed to define their subjects, to establish their places in society, and to communicate those institutional affiliations that individuated them. That they did so here, in two instances, by means of the borrowed (and possibly recognizable) forms of famous Greek statues, only reinforced their exemplary character. One needs to recognize that, despite the distinction raised in the Historia Augusta about which of Tacitus’ images conformed to real life, all such statues were unnatural; they were all symbols, whether or not they might be held to mirror-lived reality. This fundamentally symbolic character of the portrait is readily grasped by scholars when confronted by the awkward and unnatural juxtaposition of idealized, youthful bodies and aging, realistic
75 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome heads – whether male or female. Yet what is lacking in most recent discussions of the problem, all of which specifically address the oddity of the wellknown hybrids,11 is a recognition that even those works that appear, by contrast, as representatives of a decided naturalism, such as the Villa Doria Pamphilj togatus (fig. 3.3), must be understood as conforming to this same pattern. What is truly distinctive about all such Roman statues is that both head and body always served to articulate visibly now the particularity, now the generality, of any given portrait. The nearly identical nature of togate bodies, all the more evident in statuary groups,12 demonstrates not simply the ‘ready-made’ character of such sculptural forms as standardized workshop productions, but that near identity signals their divorce from the particularities attendant on our modern notion of the portrait as well as from that organic cohesion that unified Greek figural representations. The toga itself was a symbol, and when comprehended as such, it too ceases to correspond to our conception of the natural.13 This fundamentally symbolic role of the sculpted portrait body is attested by monuments throughout Roman times, as the examples adduced here, whether literary or sculptural, have demonstrated. This is not to say, of course, that the individuality of faces was diminished. A late-second-century ad inscription from Tergeste (modern Trieste) that once adorned a monument to the senator L. Fabius Severus not only adduces all those fundamental aspects of such an honour – its placement, its type, and its purpose – but specifies the significance of the honoree’s features: Since we have resolved that, burdensome as this duty of ours will be for him, that it was proper, certainly before this, that a gilded equestrian statue be made for him, as soon as possible, and be set up in the most frequented part of our forum, and having inscribed on its base this decree and our consensus, so that the face of this most distinguished man might be known to our descendants, just as his deeds ...14
Nevertheless, the body’s role as a symbolic aspect of such monumentalization is central to the nature of the monuments themselves – on that of Fabius Severus as on so many others. Such symbolism is readily apparent, for example, on the well-known series of second- and third-century biographical sarcophagi, where the constituent characteristics of the honorific portrait are mirrored in the standardization of costumes and the social roles they employed. Moreover, these were works often prepared in anticipation of purchase, and of their imagery’s fulfilment by the completion of individuated portrait heads. The same may be said for other forms of relief, even those of specifically ‘historical’ subjects, as the substitution of the head of
76 Michael Koortbojian the emperor Nerva for one of his predecessors (Domitian?) on the so-called Cancelleria A makes clear.15 The essentially independent signifying role of both head and body was the same in all three genres – statue, sarcophagus, and relief – each of which articulated the synthetic nature of such social portrayals and those suprapersonal associations upon which the full force of their meaning depended: both heads and bodies played their roles. That of the latter is manifest nowhere more forcefully than in those cases, in all three of these genres, where bodies might serve as the support, in succession, for a series of differing portrait features. The practice of exchanging the heads on statues was apparently widespread, and the interchangeability of bodies it implies was, at times, extended even to the portrait features themselves. Such extreme cases were effectively lampooned by Dio Chrysostom in his thirty-first Discourse (31.9–10): For whenever you vote a statue to anyone – and the idea of doing this comes to you now quite readily because you have an abundant supply of statues on hand – though for one thing I could not possibly criticize you, I mean for letting a little time elapse and delaying action; for, on the contrary, as soon as any person is proposed for the honor by you – presto! there he stands on a pedestal, or rather, even before the vote is taken! But what occurs is quite absurd: your chief magistrate, namely, merely points his finger at the first statue that meets his eyes of those which have already been dedicated, and then, after the inscription which was previously on it has been removed and another name engraved, the business of honoring is finished; and there you are! The man whom you have decreed to be worthy of the honor has already got his statue, and quite easily, it seems to me, and at a good bargain, when you look at the matter from this point of view – that the abundance of supply is wonderful and your business a thing to envy, if you are the only people in the world who can set up in bronze any man you wish without incurring any expense, and in fact, without either yourselves or those whom you honor putting up a single drachma. Who, pray, from this point of view, could help admiring the cleverness of your city?
II The Doria Pamphilj statues (Figs. 3.3–3.5) were almost certainly private portraits. While their findspot is uncertain, they most probably figured in a self-aggrandizing display in an exalted individual’s villa, for such forms of self-representation were apparently not uncommon among the upper echelons of Roman society.16 Two similarly differentiated bust-length portraits of another third-century man, found at a villa on the Quirinal, are known (Figs. 3.6 and 3.7).17 There too, costume – in its broadest sense18 – distin-
77 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome guishes two variations on the heroic nude: one, embroidered by the paludamentum (fig. 3.7), the other not (fig. 3.6). Unlike the Doria Pamphilj statues, in this instance slight differences in physiognomy and technique suggest that the portraits were produced over a span of time; one thus ‘reinterprets’ the heroic language of the other, reinforcing its hyperbolic mode of self-representation. The phenomenon’s conventionality is revealed by yet another example, a pair of Severan bust-length portraits now in Munich.19 These similarly contrast the same middle-aged man, once again in differing guises, togatus and paludatus (here worn realistically, over the tunica). All these instances post-date the year 200, and thus testify to the consolidation of what was a long-entrenched tradition. For the earlier aspects of this tradition, the example of Julius Caesar is telling: we hear of a statua loricatus in foro suo, a statua equestris also in his forum, a Hellenistic-style statue on the Capitol standing above a representation of the oikoumene, and others, as well, of which we know next to nothing.20 Yet even these few monuments attest the diversity of forms and costume, and the differing significance they held for the public. The distinctions might be even more subtle; according to Dio (44.4.4–5), it was ordered by decree of the senate that he [sc. Julius Caesar] should have a statue in the cities and in all the temples of Rome, and they set up two also on the rostra, one representing him as the saviour of the citizens and the other as the deliverer of the city from siege, and wearing the crowns customary for such achievements.21
While the garb of the two statues on the rostra is unknown (although it is likely, given the deeds the statues represented, that they were in military guise, either loricatus or paludatus),22 one wore the oak-leaf crown, the corona civica, the other the ‘siege-crown’ of grass, the corona graminea or obsidionalis.23 The specific honour each statue recorded and the public institution to which each referred were merely an early refinement of the broader, more conventional repertory we have been examining. What all these examples, especially the surviving sculptures together with the description of Tacitus’ painted portraits, demonstrate is the traditional repertory for such depictions, whether in public or in private. But these evocations of civic and political responsibility, of military prowess, and of virtuous otium (whether martial, as in the case of the Doria Pamphilj ‘hunting’ statue, fig. 3.5, or intellectual, as in the case of Tacitus’ portrait in the Greek philosopher’s pallium; cf. fig. 3.2), were not the only possibilities for projecting one’s social role. There were other costumes that evoked yet other dimensions of social life, and other modes of portrayal that visualized differing social institutions. For example, none of those mentioned thus far
78 Michael Koortbojian have touched upon religion nor have any of them presented their subjects, explicitly or implicitly, in anything other than an isolated standing pose. The divisions of the repertory were numerous, their formats varied, their iconographies diverse. III What was the full repertory? Its very conventionality seems to have precluded a comprehensive ancient enumeration. What do survive are the barest suggestions.24 Pliny the Elder, in his discussion of bronze statues, offered an assessment of Greek traditions and Roman innovations. At the start of a long passage that treats the various statue types and monumental forms, he enumerates the most basic kinds (HN 34.18–19): In the old days the statues dedicated were simply clad in the toga. Also, naked figures holding spears, made from models of Greek young men from gymnasiums – what are called figures of Achilles – became popular. The Greek practice is to leave the figure entirely nude, whereas Roman and military statuary adds a breastplate: indeed the dictator Caesar gave permission for a statue wearing a cuirass to be erected in his honor in his Forum. As for the statues in the garb of the Luperci, they are modern innovations, just as much as the portrait-statues dressed in paenulae that have recently appeared. Mancinus [cos. 137 bc] set up a statue of himself as he appeared when he surrendered to the enemy. It has been remarked by writers that the poet L. Accius also set up a very tall statue of himself in the shrine of the Camenae, although he was a very short man.
Pliny focuses here on standing figures;25 discussion of their various monumental supports would follow. The toga obviously needed little explanation – the Romans were, after all, the gens togata; it is other types introduced to the statue repertory that Pliny here endeavours to explain.26 His ‘historical’ account reveals not only the complexity of that repertory but also how its numerous categories seem to overlap. Moreover, the rhetorical organization of the passage suggests that, just as he does in the case of other books of his Natural History, Pliny has here selected and assembled examples according to certain principles of order that, to his mind, unify the sequence of his presentation, and thus lend coherence to the various ‘costumes.’27 Clearly, the history of nude statues posed problems. The Greek custom of portraying athletes in the nude had no real Roman counterpart, although it is hard to imagine that the Romans failed to comprehend the relationship between gymnos (‘naked’) and the gymnasium.28 And it is striking how Pliny shifts his discussion from athletic to military imagery, as if acknowl-
79 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome edging how a Roman sense of virtus had rightfully supplanted that Greek evocation of arete.29 The implication is that the cuirass statue replaced that of the Greek nude athlete, as if assuming that for a Roman audience what was explicit in the former was implicit in the latter. His example of those Lupercorum habitu was similarly vague, and perhaps equally misleading. For the Luperci were those semi-nude young men of the equestrian order who took part in the festival of the Lupercalia (15 February), and ran through the streets naked or dressed only in goat-skin loincloths, all the while flogging bystanders with leather thongs; here nudity was clearly legitimated, if not sacralized, by Roman religion.30 While the appearance of statues arrayed in this costume might be new, as Pliny says, the rite itself was archaic; moreover, it is paired here with those who were represented wearing the paenula, the heavy travelling cloak, which was often hooded – the very antithesis of the costume of the Luperci. Pliny’s concern with the nude, and the antithetical structure of his account, continues with the example of Mancinus. Only those who knew their Republican history would notice how, with this example, Pliny implies a moral opposition between the nude body and that encased in the cuirass (the thorax militaris) – for C. Hostilius Mancinus had erected a votive that represented him as he was to surrender himself to the Numantines, in disgrace: naked, with his hands bound behind his back.31 With the example of L. Accius, Pliny once again implies an antithesis. In contrast to Mancinus, whose disgrace and redemption were forged on the battlefield, Accius was a poet. Reputed to be short in stature, he was not only ostentatiously represented much larger than life, but in the shrine of the Camenae, long regarded as sacred to the Muses, with whom his presumably votive statue associated him.32 IV Pliny’s account, as it attempts to provide a history of innovations, conflates and confuses the diversity of the portrait repertory. Nevertheless, he subtly acknowledges the signal quality of costume by means of which individuals identified themselves with recognizable social institutions. It was thoroughly Roman to grant that appearance mattered and that, in the case of the portrait – especially a public portrait – imagery was reality. Thus, amid the welter of our source material – literary, epigraphic, as well as monumental – certain basic discriminations may be made that allow us to understand how such a reality was manifest. First, and most obviously, a distinction must be made between the individuated iconographies of particular public offices and institutions: each had its own imagery. As if to offset the toga’s fundamental sameness, Rome’s standard civic dress for males might
80 Michael Koortbojian be variously embellished to signal rank and status.33 The basic white garment of all citizens, which Augustus had decreed as the only suitable attire for the forum,34 would be abandoned upon attainment of the higher reaches of the cursus. As we have seen, Polybius attested a long-standing tradition of coloured garments; unfortunately, how vividly these distinctions functioned, and the extent to which they served to individualize, can only rarely be measured by surviving sculptural representations. That they once did so, and that over time, the significance of these costumes changed, is described by Festus (228 L): What is now said to be the toga picta, was formerly called purpurea, which was without imagery. The proof of this is ... depicted in the Temples of Vertumnus and Consus, where the triumphatores M. Fulvius Flaccus (in the former) and T. Papirius Cursor (in the latter) were painted.35
On rare occasions, such distinctions were carved in marble or cast in bronze, and survive;36 it is more likely that these details were added in paint, and before the advent of the later imperial toga with the markedly wider border (the toga contabulata) (see fig. 3.3), the full effect of such status distinction is better gleaned from wall paintings.37 Indeed, these statues were designed so as to evoke a sense of exceptional circumstance and extraordinary accomplishment. The status distinctions that the monuments preserved had been regularly displayed in life, when men were allowed to wear their regalia – most notably at the ludi – as a vivid reminder of accrued honours. The momentous character of new honours might even be underscored, as when sculptors carefully registered the large grid of fold-lines on a statue’s apparel that signified, rather ostentatiously, that this was a clean, new, and just unfolded garment (see fig. 3.8).38 A second distinction amid the evidence for portrait statue types may be made, between generalized format and individuated iconography, each of which might have institutional associations. Pliny’s account implies as much, when, continuing the passage quoted above, he shifts his attention to other monumental forms (HN 34.19–20): Assuredly equestrian statues are popular at Rome, the fashion for them having no doubt been derived from Greece; but the Greeks used only to erect statues of winners of races on horse-back at their sacred contests, although subsequently they also erected statues of winners with two-horse or four-horse chariots; and this is the origin of our chariot-groups in honor of those who have celebrated a triumphal procession ... The custom of erecting memorial chariots with two horses in the case of those who held the office of praetor and had ridden round the circus in a chariot is
81 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome not an old one; that of statues on pillars is of earlier date, for instance, the statue in honour of G. Maenius who had vanquished the Old Latins ...
What emerges from Pliny’s historical survey is a sense of the repertory of forms and their various meanings, irrespective of whom they were enlisted to honour. That is, the difference between a standing figure togatus (see fig. 3.3) and another in the cuirass, paludatus (fig. 3.9), is different in kind from that between either of these and an equestrian portrait (fig. 3.10). This is true even if we grant that the equestrian format has a distinctive iconographic character; but it expresses that iconography in a significantly different manner. For an equestrian portrait can be togatus, cuirassed and paludatus, or even in heroic nudity; in each instance, the costume changes, but the form, to which it is subordinated, remains, and retains its associations of elevated status.39 The point is all the more forcefully made by the much less prevalent chariot groups, where the grandeur of the form itself conveyed unusual distinction. Similarly, but less ostentatiously, seated figures had distinctive connotations, whether they were in military or civic attire; the difference between the commander’s sella castrensis and the magistrate’s sella curulis notwithstanding, it was a mark of rank and distinction to sit while others stood.40 In all such cases one recognizes the signal character of the format, its suprapersonal associations and its purely formal (as opposed to iconographic) means of establishing the subject’s status. And a third distinction may be made. With respect to habitus and costume, it is necessary to differentiate between what might be appropriate now in public, now in private; each aspect of life had its institutions. Away from the forum, the men of the toga might adopt other attire; but not only in places of leisure. Cicero flamboyantly decried the practice (Rab. Post. 26), lamenting: Not only Roman citizens but high-born youths, and even some senators of eminent family, wearing dark tunics – for their own pleasure and delight – not in their gardens or their suburban villas, but in Naples ...
Gardens and villas were places of leisure; there Romans might do as they pleased, away from the requirements of political life and the demand to conform to civic values and the mos maiorum.41 Greek dress was an affectation – an outward sign of philhellenism, and a declaration that otium was the only business at hand. Thus, according to Suetonius, Tiberius’ costume, during his exile on Rhodes, could be held to have acknowledged his political fate: ‘He gave up his usual exercise with horses and arms, and laying aside the garb of his country, took to the pallium and crepidae’ (Suet. Tib. 13). The dark tunic mentioned by Cicero (the tunica pulla of foreigners, to be distinguished from
82 Michael Koortbojian the Romans’ toga pulla worn in mourning),42 and especially the cloak known as the pallium and the sandals known as crepidae, were visible tokens of the vita graeca (fig. 3.11),43 and might be worn as a proclamation of affinity with Greek traditions, and, above all, with Greek philosophy.44 And Naples, the Greek city in Italy, was thus, one might assume, like the garden or villa, a fitting place for such costumes – Cicero’s outrage notwithstanding. In fact, the accusation made by Cicero was both a conventional slander and a traditional practice. All men of his ilk adopted such attire, just as they adopted all the customs associated with the life of otium; they equally hurled the practice in the face of their political enemies when the occasion demanded. To ‘put on the pallium and crepidae’ – in the political arena – was synonymous with everything un-Roman.45 Attitudes to Greek costume were, at heart, ambivalent; the issue was one of both propriety and that dignitas so dear to the Romans, and who was going to define it. So, we may grasp how the Romans could erect, on the Capitol, a statue of L. Scipio Asiaticus, ‘wearing not only the chlamys, but the crepidae.’ Cicero refers to the statue immediately after the passage quoted above, but does not comment; Valerius Maximus hazards that ‘no doubt he wished his effigy to be sculpted and set up in that attire because he had sometimes used it’ (3.6.2). While there is good reason to believe that he had, this cannot suffice as an explanation. Indeed, Livy reports that the senators censured P. Scipio Africanus for this same affectation while he was in Syracuse: ‘wearing a Greek mantle and sandals [as] he strolled about in the gymnasium, giving his attention to books in Greek and physical exercise’ (Livy 29.19.12–13). The two examples serve, aut in bono aut in malo: in one instance (Africanus’ behaviour), we see the castigation of a leader who might adopt such an inappropriate costume and the ‘unmanly’ pursuits it seemed to bring in its train – an outrage in a time of war; and in the other (Asiaticus’ statue), we recognize how the costume might present a victorious Roman commander as not only the defender of the state but also as the champion of Greek culture, reasserting the long-standing claim for the supremacy of west over east. V A now-famous inscription celebrating L. Volusius Saturninus preserves the broad repertory of public offices and honours for which costumes might signal status differences: For L. Volusius Saturninus, son of Lucius, grandson of Quintus. He was consul, augur, a member of the solidalities dedicated to Augustus as well as to Titus Tatius, proconsular governor of Asia, legate of Divus Augustus and Tiberius Caesar Augus-
83 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome tus in the province of Dalmatia (?), city prefect of Rome for 16 (?) years, in whose honor, when he died while in this office in his 93rd year, the senate, on the proposal of Nero, decreed him a public funeral, and on account of his funeral, a postponement of legal business, and also the erection of these statues: a bronze statue, in triumphal dress, in the Forum of Augustus, and two of marble in the new Temple of Divus Augustus; one in consular dress in the Temple of Divus Julius, another on the Palatine within the three-arched portal, a third in the area of the Temple of Apollo in view of the senate chamber; one in augural costume at the Regia; an equestrian statue near the Rostra; another, seated on the magistrate’s curule chair, in the portico of the Lentuli at Pompey’s theatre.46
Among this inscription’s many interesting aspects is its vivid demonstration of how the statuary repertory was directly linked to the cursus honorum. Saturninus received seemingly unprecedented honours upon his death in the year 56 at the age of ninety-three, of which this text, discovered at Lucus Feroniae, preserves the record.47 He was awarded statues that reflected the full gamut of Rome’s highest honours: we read of statues triumphalis, consularis, equestris, in sella curuli, and auguralis; each marked the attainment of ever-higher status, whether elective office or official honour, whether civic, military, or religious.48 Of the five types, two were immediately recognizable by their format – on horseback (equestris) or seated (in sella curuli) – while the others, all togati, must have been distinguished more subtly by aspects of costume and attribute. The triumphator wore the toga picta, with its painted or dyed decoration.49 The consul’s toga sported a wide purple border, an easily recognizable sign of rank.50 And the statua auguralis was readily identifiable from the priesthood’s distinctive implement, the lituus. Each of these costumes was a conspicuous sign of status; each declared its subject’s role within Roman society; each provided a highly visible exemplum – a model of accomplishment – for the populus Romanus; and each did so independently of Saturninus’ actual persona. Indeed, the grant of the statues was posthumous, and so, despite their costumes’ obvious relationship to the cursus, it is unlikely that such an implicit chronological distinction was parallelled by the rendering of Saturninus with progressively aging features. The bodies and costumes of all these statues – not the facial features – were to carry the burden of these honorific monuments’ message.51 Yet conspicuously absent from the long list of Saturninus’ honours was a statue that would have represented him in the nude. Such ‘heroic nudity’ was conventional, even by Saturninus’ day, and is amply demonstrated by the archaeological discovery of such statues (see figs. 3.4, 3.5, and 3.12).52 That these statues were indeed regarded as ‘heroic’ is demonstrated by an inscription set up by L. Munatius Hilarianus in ad 194 in response to
84 Michael Koortbojian honours bequeathed to him and his son by the phratry of the Artemisii at Naples in gratitude for his benefactions.53 In expressing his thanks to the phratry, Munatius referred to his son as their ‘hero’ – filio meo heroi vestro – and this should be taken to imply the fact that he was already deceased, a fact that would have been manifest unambiguously if he were depicted in the nude, as the other statuary examples that survive suggest; only with Claudius did even the emperor presume to employ the practice in his lifetime.54 While the explicit designation of such a statue as ‘heroic’ was perhaps exceptional amid the record of our surviving monuments, it is unlikely that it was unprecedented; yet, despite the survival of numerous nude statues of the type, the practice still requires explanation. The tradition of nude statues was an old one – precisely how old has long been a matter of dispute, but at least as old as the sixth century bc – and quite probably represented actual practice.55 In this sense, the nude depiction of athletes differs fundamentally from that of the Greek gods or heroes, since, if it reflects the habit of competing without clothing, it represents real men really naked, artistic style and ideology notwithstanding. Given its differing context and content, the unreality of a nude statue like the one we presume to have been dedicated to the deceased son of Munatius Hilarianus was, by contrast, patent; such a statue was all symbolism. But why should those who appear in the nude be deemed heroes? Heroes were the offspring of the gods and mortals – a Greek conception, yet one known to the Romans from early on: we need only recall Romulus, Aeneas, and Hercules, all men who, when they died, became gods.56 The nude or semi-nude representations of such mythic heroes had long served in the Greek world as the model for Hellenistic rulers who aspired to convey a sense of themselves as though beyond the merely mortal. Later, in Greece and at Rome, the tradition was continued, and augmented, by the conspicuous employment of the recognizable forms of famous Greek statues to serve for the bodies of contemporary portraits. Nudity, together with an idealized physique and an often larger-than-life scale, served to visualize a sense of more-than-mortal status and to assimilate such figures to those gods and ancient ‘heroes’ whose appearance they emulated. In such cases, nudity clearly meant ‘god-like.’57 In contrast, however, to the vivid portrayals of living Hellenistic kings, the hallmark of the adoption of nudity in Italy is its clear association with the dead. While this was also a feature of Greek funerary tradition (note, for example, the funerary relief from the banks of the Ilissos River in Athens: fig. 3.13), the Etruscan adaptation (fig. 3.14) of the custom of wearing the himation without the tunic produced a striking emphasis on the seminudity of those who were depicted reclining on klinai, where the garment so
85 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome often slips from the shoulder, revealing the naked torso. The same thing is seen on Roman examples, as on a funerary relief from the Trajanic period (fig. 3.15). Our earliest statuary example, the so-called Tivoli General, dating to ca. 100 bc (fig. 3.16), was, if not actually funerary in context, most likely a posthumous honour, as were those of C. Ofellius Ferus and the socalled Pseudo-Athlete on Delos (probably a generation earlier in date), as well as the similar statues from Foruli (fig. 3.12), and elsewhere.58 Although the findspots of almost all such statues are either unknown or inconclusive, it has long been recognized that such nudity was a form of idealization unsuited to the living. Most of these statues must come from either private honorific contexts or tombs, as in the case of a funerary relief with nude portrait found along the Via Appia (fig. 3.17) – contexts in which the strict decorum of the visual language of honours, the established social hierarchies, and their corresponding symbols of status need not be observed.59 We find here, in the case of nude statues, another example of the third of our distinctions – between what was deemed decorous for erection in public, at public expense, and what might be effected in the private sphere.60 Such imagery was what we might call, for lack of a better term, a form of visual metaphor. Its message was serious, but not one to be taken literally, as the appearance of prominent individuals in the nude would have made plain; this was, and was comprehended as, a conventional symbol. In contrast to the traditional depiction of the gods, where nudity so often distinguished their status, in the case of mortals, its dramatic un-naturalism signalled its symbolism. Dignified Romans did not appear publicly in the nude; this was an unambiguous cue that such figures were to be regarded as representations of ideas. This was manifest in the case of the invention, apparently in the first century bc, of the visual personification of the Roman people, the Genius populi Romani, represented on coins and silver tableware of the period (figs. 3.18 and 3.19). Like the roughly contemporary Tivoli General (fig. 3.16), its costume suggested an association with, if not the gods themselves, those divine forces that had long been personified and endowed with cult in Roman religious practice.61 VI But everything was to change at the close of the Republic, and this poses the problem with which this discussion must conclude. In 42 bc, Caesar, now two years dead, was decreed to be a god, Divus Julius. The early coinage depicted his cult statue not only togate, with covered head, but also semi-nude, wearing the hip-mantle (fig. 3.20).62 Caesar’s status, and hence his image, was no longer merely a metaphor; it was now produced and dis-
86 Michael Koortbojian played at public expense in the temple dedicated to his divinity. That the semi-nude figure was indeed the form of his cult statue is guaranteed by a number of monuments that record the same figure in contexts that allow it to be convincingly identified with the newly divinized Caesar; for example, on the cuirass of a statue from Mauretania (fig. 3.21) or on a relief now in Algiers (fig. 3.22).63 Once it was appropriated to serve as the costume of the new Julio-Claudian god, this semi-nude form was no longer merely one more instance of a conventionalized, aggrandizing iconography that served as an aspect of aristocratic self-assertion. Now that imagery was to serve as the representational vehicle of a new social, political, and religious institution – the new divus – and here we have perhaps the most striking example of how a given iconography might have its own distinctive institutional symbolism. If the widely held interpretation of these monuments associated with Caesar’s cult statue is correct, it strongly suggests that the hip-mantled figure of Divus Julius united the tradition exemplified by the Tivoli General (fig. 3.16) with that represented by the Genius populi Romani (figs. 3.18 and 3.19). For the representation of Divus Julius was not only a profound innovation because it employed this aggrandizing nudity in an official, public image, but also because it did so within the religious sphere. It should be recalled that the Genius populi Romani had represented the extension of the traditional Genius familiaris of every household’s pater to the status of pater of the entire populus: he was a personification of that sacred power that had been granted in the private sphere to the head of every Roman household according to mos maiorum, and subsequently offered in the public sphere, first to Romulus, to Cicero, and then Caesar, with the title of pater (or, parens) patriae.64 The new imagery employed for Divus Julius amalgamated these two traditions: the visual rhetorics of extravagant honor and sacred officium. The image of Divus Julius not only literalized the conventional visual metaphor of ‘god-like-ness’ (for Caesar was indeed a god), but equally it actualized one of the fundamental concepts of which the Genius populi Romani had been the abstract personification: that sense of paternitas that had always formed a central element of mos maiorum. For what had been merely an honorific title of the former pater patriae was now recognized as both a legal and religious reality, one defined by a series of inscriptions: Genio deivi Iulii parentis patriae, quem senatus populusque Romanus in deorum numerum rettulit (‘To the Genius of Divus Julius, parent of his country, whom the Senate and the People of Rome have returned to be numbered among the gods,’ ILS 72 = CIL IX 2628, Aesernia).65 The image, and indeed, the costume, of the first of the Julio-Claudian gods was thus a symbol of not only a new institution but also of a new reality.
87 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome Soon, and inevitably, that costume, like the new institution of the divus it was employed to figure, would become the prerogative of the imperial family. Just as Divus Julius had appeared, so too would Divus Augustus (see, for example, fig. 3.23). But the old significance of imagery dies hard in a highly conventional and conservative tradition. Despite the usurpation of this imagery to serve in the representation of the new institution of the divus, the old imagery did not cease to be employed in the private sphere. Nor did its role stabilize as the visual symbol of divinity, as statues of Tiberius (fig. 3.24) and the depiction of what is most probably Germanicus on the Ravenna relief (fig. 3.25: the third figure from the right) make plain. Even what are arguably direct quotations of the lost Divus Julius cult statue would be employed by the mid-first century, in the municipalities of Italy and in the provinces, for the representation of private individuals (see, for example, fig. 3.26) as well as members of the imperial house. What is clear is that traditional usage proved stronger than any sense of a new and specifically imperial symbolism. While the ‘power of images’ played a major role in conveying many of the innovations of the imperial system, one recognizes here that that power had its limits. Conclusion A society that held honours to be the proper recompense for accomplishment required an adequate symbolism for those honours. This had long been established by Republican tradition: the very form of honours had significance; whether those honorific forms had been bestowed by the state or merely assumed by private initiative was decisive for their meaning; and when they were public honours, these forms had to reflect clearly the various public institutions with which these honours, and these honorands, were associated. But, as this chapter has tried to show, institutions and their symbolism are transformed under the pressure of historical change. The Republican ideology of the gens togata was ultimately to clash with an imperial system that dramatically altered the traditional cursus honorum; eventually, aristocratic competition for honours would collide with a new reality in which public offices and the status they entailed no longer carried the powers and prerogatives of former times. The traditionally Roman social vision of a fundamental aristocratic collegiality would bow to a new order in which one might be princeps. Representations responded to such change.66 This is nowhere more apparent than in the case of the late-Republican honorific portrait. Those distinctive individuals whose veristic portraits declared both the long-standing reality that accumulated honours were a corollary of seniority and the positive interpretation of the infelicities of age as evidence
88 Michael Koortbojian of accomplishment would soon give way to a new, forward-looking sense of vigor epitomized by the young princeps. Yet the repertory of body-types, those vehicles for the expression of social roles and the virtues and values they embodied, was remarkably stable – with the exception, as has been suggested here, of the case of nudity (figs. 3.16, 3.17, 3.23, and 3.26). The fundamental roles – civic, military, and religious – did not change, nor did their symbolism, but the force of that symbolism was curtailed, especially in the case of monuments erected at private expense, on private ground, when public honours began to be increasingly reserved for the imperial house.67 Nudity, thanks to its new relationship to the divi, was to establish its own separate category, although, as we have seen, not for long. Despite the dramatic political and social change that transformed Rome from Republic to Empire, most long-established institutions – legal, political, and religious – survived, even when that change robbed them of profound purpose and significance. Thus, as they survived, so too did that central tenet of Roman self-representation: the ‘double identity’ – institutional as well as individual – of Roman portrait statues.
Notes
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9
This chapter is an expansion of the talk given at the York conference as well as an earlier version that was presented at Yale University; I am grateful for the comments offered by the audiences on both occasions. Richard Brilliant and Christina Corsiglia read an earlier draft of this contribution, and I have profited from their criticisms. Its faults are my own. Translations from Flower 1996: 309–10 and 293 (respectively), with her commentary at 36–8, 100, and 104–5. See further Sumi 1997; Bodel 1999, both with the earlier bibliography. I borrow these examples from the extensive lists in Kajanto 1965. Kozloff and Mitten 1988: 329–33, cat. no. 63 (J. Hermann). The relief measures 26 cm high by 13.8 cm wide. For illustrations of this phenomenon, see, for example, Kleiner 1992: figs. 74–77, 216, 309, 413; cf. Eck 1984: 145, on the ‘monotonous’ character of the visible honours. This was possibly a Republican development: see Bonfante Warren 1970: 60, arguing for a common form of Etruscan dress. On habitus as ‘beliefs embodied,’ see Corbeill 2004: chap. 4, esp. 109–10, following Bourdieu 1977: esp. chap. 2. Discussion in Zanker 1995; Borg 2004. The antipathy of the sophists for the habitus et habitudo of the philosophers was
89 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome
10 11
12 13 14
15
16 17 18 19 20
21
22
23 24
legendary: cf. Philostr. VS 2.567, for the story of Aristokles, who, when he went over to the sophists from the Peripatetic school, abandoned his slovenly and unkempt appearance and ‘began to be fastidious.’ See von Heintze 1962; Maderna Lauter 1990: 383, with further bibliography. See recently, Stewart 2003: 47–54; for women, see especially D’Ambra 1996 (‘dichotomy’); Walker 1995: 79 (‘odd hybrids to the modern eye’); cogent bibliographic analysis in Tanner 2000: 20–1, yet his overly psychologized explanation as a manifestation of clientela is unpersuasive. Eclecticism: Perry 2004: 111–12. Numerous examples in Rose 1997. Pointed out, explicitly, in Brilliant 1974: 166–8, although less so in his original formulation in Brilliant 1963: 10, or recently in Brilliant 1994: ii. CIL V 532 = ILS 6680: quoniam certum est nobis, onerosum ei futurum t[a]le nostrum officium, illut certe proxime fieri opo[r]tet {o} statuam ei auratam equestrem primo quoque tempore in celeberrima fori [n]ostri par[te] poni et i[n] basi eius hanc nostram c[o]nsensionem adque hoc decretum inscribi, uti ad posteros nostros tam volt[us] amplissimi viri, quam facta per[m]aneant. See further the comments of Erkelenz 2005. Sarcophagi: Rodenwaldt 1935; Kampen 1981b; Reinsberg 1984; Reinsberg 1999; Wrede 2001, with Ewald 2003; Muth 2004. Statues: Blanck 1969. ‘Cancelleria A’: Bergmann 1981. See Neudecker 1988: 74–84. Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini inv. III. 83–84; illustrated in Bertoletti et al. 1997: 103. See Bonfante 1989. Boschung and Pfanner 1988. Loricatus: Pliny HN 34.18; Pliny Ep. 8.6.13, with Corbier 1997; equestris: Suet. Iul. 61; Pliny HN 8.155; Stat. Silv. 1.1.84–86; statue on the Capitol: Dio 43.14.6– 7, 32.2; see further Lahusen 1983: 51–2, 57, 9 (respectively). For a survey of the epigraphic evidence from the Greek East, see Raubitschek 1954. Cf. App. B Civ. 2.106: ‘He was represented in different characters, and in some cases crowned with oak as the saviour of his country, for by this crown those whose lives had been saved used formerly to reward those to whom they owed their safety.’ For statues in military garb, see the remarks in Cic. Off. 1.61 (statuas quoque videmus ornatu fere militari); cf. Stemmer 1978: 145; Sehlmeyer 1999: 283 and n59; contra Lahusen 1983, 52 and n51. Further discussion in Koortbojian forthcoming. Weinstock 1971: 148; cf. Pliny HN 22.6. See the account of Lahusen 1983: esp. 45–65; Sehlmeyer 1999; Erkelenz 2003: 90–119.
90 Michael Koortbojian 25 Isager 1991: 86–8. 26 Gens togata: Verg. Aen. 1.282, cited and discussed by Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume; Stone 1994 (with further sources). For Etruscan and early Roman correspondences to Pliny’s list, see the examples adduced in Richardson 1953. Innovations: cf. Sehlmeyer 1999: 139–41. 27 On Pliny’s juxtapositions, see Conte 1994: 67–104; on antithesis, Murphy 2004: 29–48. 28 McDonnell 1991: 183. 29 See also Picard 1957: 168. 30 For sources, discussion, and bibliography on the Lupercalia, see Beard, North, and Price 1998: 2.119–24; for the iconography and statuary, with illustrations, see Wrede 1983. 31 For the sources, see Broughton, MRR, sub anno 137; for Mancinus’ nudity, see Vell. 2.1.5; for discussion, see Lahusen 1983: 55–6; Crifò 1986; Sehlmeyer 1999: 166–7; Cordier 2005: 351–6; Hallett 2005: 64–5, 94–6. Historical narrative reconstructed at Brennan 2004: 50–5. 32 Pliny HN 34.19. For the Camenae, see the discussion of the fons et lucus Camenarum in LTUR I, 216 (Rodríguez Almeida); cf. however, the associations of the Camenae with the Aedes Herculis et Musarum: see LTUR III, 17–19 (Viscogliosi). 33 Note, for example, Dio 75.4.2–5.5 on Pertinax’s funeral, where ‘the magistrates and the equestrian order dressed as was appropriate to their status.’ For further discussion, see Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. 34 Suet. Aug. 40; Ov. Rem. am. 152. 35 Discussion in Bonfante Warren 1970: 64; Zinserling 1959–60: 404, cat. nos. 1 and 3, 429; recently, Holliday 2002: 30–1, 46. 36 Note the narrow decorated border on the statue of the ‘Arringatore’ in Florence, illustrated in Goette 1990: Taf. 13.3; other examples adduced, ibid., 5 and n33, with Taf. 13.4–6. 37 See, for example, the altar of the Lares from the House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1): colour illustration in Goette 1990: Farbtafel 1; cf. now the reconstructions in Brinkmann and Wünsche 2004: esp. 212–15 (B. Freyer-Schauenburg on the ‘Sternenmantel’ of Trajan). 38 Regalia of honours: for example, the senate decreed that tribunes had the right to don triumphal robes at the circus during the Augustalia (Tac. Ann. 1.15; Dio 56.46.4–5; Rowe 2002: 57). Fold lines are visible on the himation of the Cleveland bronze (see fig. 3.8) and on the Villa Doria Pamphilj togatus (see fig. 3.3); cf. Granger-Taylor 1987: esp. 116–18. 39 Togate equestrian: see Pliny NH 34.23: et ante aedem Castorum fuit Q. Marci Tremuli equestris togata. Statue from the Temple of Fortuna Augusta, Pompeii, now in Naples: Bergemann 1990: cat. P35 and Taf. 68–71. Cuirassed equestrian: M. Nonius Balbus (?), from Herculaneum, now Naples (idem, cat. P32 and Taf.
91 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome
40
41 42 43 44 45 46
47
59–62). Nude equestrian: from Rome, now in London (idem, cat. P27 and Taf. 50– 53). On the preference of Servilius Sulpicius for the more moderate form of commemoration signified by a statua pedestris, see Cic. Phil. 9.13. One should recall that while an appearance on horseback might inevitably associate the honorand with the equester ordo, those who celebrated an ovatio (or minor triumphans: Pliny HN 15.19; Serv. ad Aen. 4.543) entered the city on horseback (Val. Max. 2.8.7; Suet. Tib. 9.2; Gell. NA 5.6.27), wearing not the triumphal insignia, but the toga praetexta (Dion. Hal. 8.67.10). For analysis, see Versnel 1970: 165–71; Eck 1984: 144, with notes. There were even equestrian monuments at reduced scale: see Eck and von Hesberg 2004. Sella curulis: see Goette 1990: Taf. 67 (statue in Rome, Villa Massimo); sella castrensis: idem, Taf. 68,1 (silver cup from Boscoreale showing a seated Augustus). The significance of the status distinction is attested by the famous story of Julius Caesar’s failure to rise before the senators (Suet. Iul. 78). Seated statues of women were, however, not unusual: cf. the statue of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, sedens: Pliny HN 34.31, and the discussion of Sehlmeyer 1999: 187. See the examples adduced by Val. Max. 3.6 (‘Of which men of mark indulged themselves in dress or other style more freely than ancestral custom permitted’). Cic. Vat. 12.30, 13.31; Festus 272–273 L (praetexta pulla). Zanker 1988: 30 and fig. 24; Neudecker 1988: cat. no. 14.32 (‘sicher ein späthellenistischer Redner’). Much of the evidence is collected in Heskel 1994: 133–6. See further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. I give, with slight variation, the text from Eck 1972 (= AE 1972, 174), as revised in Panciera 1982, adding another fragmentary copy of the text (with slight differences) found in the Forum Romanum (AE 1982, 268); I have also taken account of the version of I. Di Stefano Manzella in Sgubini Moretti 1998: 42–3, with fig. 55 (photo of reassembled fragments): [L(ucio) Volusio L(uci) f(ilio) Q(uinti) n(epoti) Sa]turnino, co(n)s(uli). | [augur, sodalis Augustal]is, sodalis Titi, proc[o(n)s(ul) Asiae], | [legatus divi Augusti et Ti(beri) Caesa]ris Aug(usti) pro praetore in [provinciis] | [- - - et Dalmatia, pra]efectus urbis fuit [annos XVI (?), in quo] | [honore, cum nonagesimum tertium] annum agens dec[essisset, senatus] | [auctore Nerone Claudio Aug(usto) German]ico funere publico [eum efferri] | [censuit, vadimoniis exsequi]arum [ei]us causa dilatis, item statuas ei | [ponend]as: tr[ium]fales(!) in foro Augusti aeneam, in templo novo div[i Au]gus{s}ti | [m]armoreas [du]as; consulares unam in templo divi Iuli, alteram [i]n | [P]alatio intra tripylum, tertiam in aria(!) Apol(1)inis, in conspectum(!) curiae; | auguralem in regia; equestrem proxime rostra; sella curuli residentem at(!) | theatrum Pompeianum in porticu Lentulorum. For the obituary, Tac. Ann. 13.30.2; for the text and discussion, see Reynolds 1971: 142–4; Eck 1972 (revised at Eck 1996); Eck 1973; I Volusii Saturnini 1982;
92 Michael Koortbojian
48
49
50 51 52 53 54
55 56 57
58
Orlandi 1995. Corroborative epigraphic evidence for Saturninus’ honours is given in Boatwright 1982: 8n6. Statuae consulares are otherwise attested, e.g., in the acta of the Arval Brethren: see Scheid 1998: nos. 12c, line 62 (ad 38) and 13a-d, line 9 (ad 39). For another case of multiple statues celebrating a single individual, M. Marius Gratidianus, tr. pleb. 87 bc, see Cic. Off. 3.80; Pliny HN 34.27; analysis in Sehlmehyer 1999: 199–201; note also the honours awarded to M. Baebius Suetrius Marcellus, flamen divi Vespasiani, at Histonium in Samnium: a statua equestris, clipeus argenteus and statua pedestris (CIL IX 2855 = ILS 5501). Polyb. 6.53.7: ‘gold embroidered’ (diachrysous); cf. Livy 10.7.9; 30.15.11–12, with Goette 1990: 6; also known as the tunica palmata (Festus 228 L) with its wide, embroidered border, for which see Ryberg 1955: 20 and fig. 13, a Praenestine cista in Berlin. For a statua pedestris ... triumphali ornatu: ILS 140, line 37 (Pisae); see also Livy 38.56.13 on an image of Scipio, triumphali ornatu: a fulllength statue, so Hölscher 1978: 326n45 = Hölscher 1994: 212n45. Periporphyrous: Polyb. 6.53.7; cf. Livy 34.7.2; cf. Lahusen 1983: 48–9; Goette 1990: 4–5. For ‘symbols of consensus,’ see Hölkeskamp 1993. See Hallett 2005; Cordier 2005. AE 1913, 134; Fishwick 1989, with earlier bibliography; Ferrone 1988. So, too, Fishwick 1989: 178. For the advent of nude depictions of the emperor in the Claudian period, see Rose 1997: 74–5; cf. the nude (now headless) portrait of Patraos from Palatiano: see Zafiropolou 1972 and, for the broader context, Hallett 2005: 41–2 and fig. 3. McDonnell 1991; more broadly, Bonfante 1989. Cf. Cic. Leg. 2.7.19; Nat. D. 3.16.41, 18.46, for his justification of such a practice. Thus, the appropriation of the naked bodies from depictions of the gods was recognizably tendentious: so, for example, whether the famous Louvre statue represents either Marcellus or Germanicus (see Maderna 1988: 222–4), in either case one concedes that the statue is posthumous. Nevertheless, one might well have conceived the gods differently: cf. Livy 5.41, where we read of how the Gauls in 399 bc thought that the splendid ornament and apparel of the Roman elders, seated in their vestibules, was ‘more reverend than human dress’ (humano augustiorem), and they were ‘very similar to gods’ (simillimos dis). On this passage, see further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. The recent argument of Tanner 2000: 40–5 that nudity in a statue emphasized its subject’s qualities as a saviour (soter), adds little; in Greek tradition, to be soter, or to be soter-like, was to be godlike. The bibliography on all these examples is given in Tanner 2000, whose discussion presumes, a priori, despite our lack of evidence, the production of such statues during their subjects’ lifetime as an aspect of patron–client relations.
93 Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome 59 See also Wallace-Hadrill 1990: 146 and passim (most Republican statues as private honours). For heroon as a tomb in Latin epitaphs, see ILS 1921, 8093, 8230; cf. the unusual form of AE 1976, 624: D(iis) H(eroibusque[?]) I(nferis) M(anibus). 60 The legal status of statues: Musumeci 1978; Erkelenz 2005. 61 Kunckel 1975; cf. the recent analysis in Gradel 2002: 132–9, 188–9. 62 RRC 540. I refer here to one of two distinct die designs, showing two different costumes: one togate, capite velato, the other in the hip-mantle; the distinction is not noted by Crawford, ad loc. For another illustration (its location is not noted), see Fuchs 1969: Taf. 5, 58; see now Spannagel 1999: 311–12 and n342. 63 Fittschen 1976. 64 Romulus: Enn. Ann. 113 Vahlen; Cic. Div. 1.3 (parens Romulus); Livy 1.16.3 (regem parentemque urbis Romanae). Cicero: Cic. Pis. 6; Sest. 121; Plut. Cic. 23.6. Caesar: App. B Civ. 2.106, 144; Dio 44.4.4; Livy Per. 116; Nic. Dam. 22.80; Suet. Iul. 76.1; Flor. 2.13.91; discussion in Weinstock 1971: 200–5. 65 Cf. Gagé 1953: esp. 226–7. For the formula Divo Iulio iussu populi Romani statutum est lege Rufrena (‘This was set up in honour of Divus Julius by order of the Roman People according to the terms of the Rufrenan law’), note CIL VI 872 = ILS 73 = ILLRP 409 (Ocriculum); cf. CIL IX 5136 = ILS 73a (Campovalano in Picenum); AE 1982, 149 (Minturnae). 66 See Koortbojian 2006; cf., recently, Hölkeskamp 2000: esp. 223, on ‘ institutionalized political inequality.’ 67 The decline of private prerogative had already begun in the Republican period, with the clearing from the forum in 158 bc of ‘all the statues ... of men who had held office as magistrates ... except those that had been set up by a resolution of the people or the senate’ (Pliny HN 34.30). On the new imperial monopoly of forms of public display in Rome, see Bodel 1997: 18, 30, following Eck 1984: 141–2; Wallace-Hadrill 1990: 161–6.
4 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga michele george
On the face of it, ancient Rome was rife with numerous forms of visibly hierarchized dress and accoutrements that were restricted by status and law, and that additionally implied socially sanctioned behaviour, such as moral rectitude and sexual fidelity. Among the critical markers of public display were the bulla, the protective amulet of the freeborn boy; the anulus aureus, the gold ring of the equestrian; and the stola, a dress resembling a slip that was by law exclusive to women married to freeborn men. In public contexts, these elements of Roman dress gave immediate and conspicuous notice of the wearer’s rank and respectability.1 It is the toga, however, that is generally acknowledged, both in modern conceptions of Rome and among the Romans themselves, as the quintessential garment of social distinction and Roman identity. An inventory of the toga’s numerous specialized variations encompasses manifold aspects of public activity and social status, especially (although not solely) for Roman males. There was the toga praetexta, the purple-bordered toga worn by magistrates as well as by children, boys, and girls; the toga candida, the white toga, for political candidates; the toga picta, the embroidered toga, for triumphant generals; and finally, for mourning, there was the dark toga, the toga pulla.2 Quintilian, in his handbook on oratory, furnishes a detailed prescription for the toga’s correct appearance as well as its use as an effective prop in forensic speeches (Inst.11.3.137–149), and statues of togate men in public and private space constituted one of the most popular forms of self-representation. Vergil’s famous nomination in the Aeneid of the Roman populace as the gens togata, the ‘toga’d race,’ is notable for its twinning of peace and stability with military hegemony, a juxtaposition that represents a key element in the symbolism of the toga in Roman thought.3 For emperors and the general citizenry alike, the toga represented the other side on the coin of mar-
95 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga tial activity, signifying engagement in public life, the imperium of Roman law over the earth, the auctoritas of the city, and therefore by extension the auctoritas of those who wore it. Moreover, the right to wear the toga was withheld by law from non-citizens, foreigners as well as slaves, rendering it an exclusive badge of citizenship and the sartorial manifestation of Roman identity.4 Codified dress of the sort represented by the toga in its many versions gave individuals a means of displaying their personal achievements as well as their membership in the polity of Rome. Yet, precisely because it was a symbol of status and power in Roman culture, the toga had different meaning for people who occupied different points along the Roman social spectrum. The conventional view of the toga and its central role in the construction of social status reflects above all the concerns and interests of the Roman elite, who had the greatest investment in the archetypal power of the garment. Drawing on the critiques of contemporary social life in the satiric epigrams and prose of Martial and Juvenal, it is possible to supplement this elite view of the toga with a consideration of the outlook of another social group, the clients (clientes) of wealthy men, who occupied an intermediate position in Roman society and for whom the significance of the toga was rather more ambiguous. In this examination of selected texts of Martial and Juvenal, I hope to adumbrate and offer comment on one specific element in their works, that is, the consistent and repeated use of the toga as a negative rather than a positive cultural symbol, and as a metaphor for social oppression rather than social success.5 Satire, which J.P. Sullivan called a ‘denigration of the real’ rather than a ‘depiction of the real,’ cannot be naively read as if it were a straightforward account of real life.6 In order for it to be effective, however, satire must be firmly grounded in underlying social truths, and it is the truths on which these satiric texts are based that are relevant to the subsequent discussion. This exploration of the ‘dark side’ of the toga is, therefore, an effort to retrieve a perspective on the toga that has generally escaped notice, one that, unlike the conventional view, was conditioned and shaped not by social privilege but by social limitation. Ideal versus Reality Although the toga was deeply imbued with meaning as a cultural ideal, there was a gap between theory and practice. The toga’s practical disadvantages reduced its appeal for those who had to work for a living and presented more compelling problems than the positive connotations of its cultural symbolism, so that by the late Republican era the toga had already lost its primacy of place to the tunic as normal daily attire. In recording Augustus’
96 Michele George efforts to enforce laws that compelled all citizens to wear the toga in certain public contexts such as the forum and theatre, Suetonius refers to the toga as the ‘the ancient fashion of dress.’7 The emperor’s anxiety about visible status distinctions in dress and his legislative efforts to revive the toga’s popularity among Roman citizens illustrate the degree to which the garment had become reserved for purely ceremonial purposes. Augustus’ attempts to reverse the decline apparently proved ineffective, and later in the first century ad the historian Tacitus could refer to the general populace as the vulgus tunicatus, the ‘tunic crowd’ (Dial. 7), while the satirist Juvenal infamously asserted in the same era that in much of Italy no one wore the toga except when dead (Sat. 3.171–172).8 As with so many other kinds of distinguishing features, the display of status through dress seems to have been most important to those whom it most benefited, and was subsequently less significant to those outside the upper ranks of Roman society. While the elite rightly viewed the toga as the costume, in the real sense of the word, of public life, most of the Roman populace had relatively little to gain by wearing it. The vertically articulated social context of Rome required the wealthy to display their status in highly public ways and to mark themselves off from everyone else; those of lower social status, however, were apparently less concerned about marking themselves off from one another. The decision to wear or to spurn the toga depended largely on social status and on the individual’s place in the complex network of privileges and obligations that defined social interaction at Rome. Members of the lower ranks of Roman society might cherish the right to wear the toga in the abstract despite simultaneously eschewing it on a daily basis, recognizing that at Rome wealth and the right social connections played a greater part in advancing a career than merely wearing the toga. Patron and Client in Martial and Juvenal Clients at Rome, however, comprised a category of the population for whom the toga was an essential form of dress, regardless of its inconvenience or expense, foremost because of its value to their patrons’ status. In their satiric attacks on Roman patronage, which constitutes a major theme in the works of both Martial and Juvenal, the real and the ideal of the toga collide, resulting in a portrait of the garment that highlights the nature of its role in Roman social life and the ambivalence it generated. Their use of the toga as a symbol of social subordination provides an instructive antidote to the conventional view of the toga described above. The harassed clients in their satiric treatments wear the toga not in a proud display of citizenship or polit-
97 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga ical achievement but because they must, in order to meet the coercive demands of their patrons and so fulfil their part of the patron–client exchange. In Roman clientela, the system of reciprocal benefits and services that dominated many aspects of Roman social life, the client was a dependant who relied on his patron for financial subsidies and other favours; in return, clients were required to give the patron support of various kinds by rendering certain services (officia).9 Among the major manifestations of this support was the morning call (salutatio), the daily social ritual that constituted an important gesture of deference from client to patron. The size of the client horde that gathered in the patron’s atrium was a direct reflection of his status, for the more dependants he was seen to have, the more wealth it was assumed he could distribute and the more extensive his influence. For similar reasons of status display, a patron needed to be seen in public contexts accompanied by a cadre of dependants – freeborn clients, freedmen, and slaves – as visible testimony to his social position.10 For his services, the client hoped to receive a sportula, a monetary handout on which many counted as a necessary supplement to their income.11 This togate throng was obliged to escort the patron as he moved throughout the city, from house to bath, to the theatre, and to the forum, as well as to any social calls he himself might make on others, for patrons could themselves be clients. Although the gulf between patron and client could be wide, this was not always the case; the status distinctions in Roman society at large were mirrored in the hierarchies of clientship. Tacitus locates clients in a respectable position in the middle of the social pecking order between equestrians at one end and the ‘sordid’ plebs at the other, and describes them as ‘irreproachable’ (integra) and associated with great houses (Hist. 1.4). The social inferiority implied by the term cliens was avoided by authors such as Cicero and Pliny the Younger by the substitution of amicus (‘friend’), a more palatable and elastic description of social relationships which masked, if it did not hide entirely, subtle status differences among the elite themselves.12 With characteristic exaggeration, the satirists ignore small gradations in status between patron and client and instead simplify the social landscape by assuming the persona of the most oppressed client, openly labelling the social dependency that is the target of their criticism.13 Some clients might receive only the sportula, while others of higher status were on occasion invited to dinner, where they were put on display as proof of the extent of their patron’s wealth and influence, and where they were expected as a matter of course to praise effusively their patron’s hospitality and generosity. Juvenal’s summary of the client’s day represents the typical activities and also the tone of lament that marks the client’s voice in both authors:
98 Michele George The day itself is marked out by a fine round of business. First comes the dole (sportula); then the courts and Apollo learned in the law, and those triumphal statues among which some Egyptian Arabarch or other has dared to set up his titles (i.e., a trip to the forum area); ... Wearied and hopeless, the old clients leave the door, though the last hope that a man relinquishes is that of a dinner; the poor wretches must buy their cabbage and their fuel.14
Clients were not a silent group, but were compelled to give vocal support to their patron as he pled a case in court, as well as to shove through the crowd as his litter progressed through the street, and, if necessary, even to carry his litter.15 Within the satiric topos of patronage, the client was the impoverished little guy in a toga (togatulus), perpetually querulous and perpetually hungry, enduring a narrow, marginal life of oppression and passive subservience. Martial and Juvenal target both patron and client for comic effect using similar themes, and lampoon the client’s efforts to meet his patron’s many demands, including the daily anxiety over dinner invitations, the patron’s proverbial stinginess, and the relentless requirement that clients always wear the toga in their patron’s presence. Martial, born in Spain and writing most of his epigrams in Flavian Rome, and Juvenal, who was active into the Trajanic and Hadrianic eras, explore the injustices of the patronage system by making the client an object of both scorn and pity. Although they draw on the figure of the parasite familiar from the tradition of Roman comedy and earlier satiric authors such as Horace, their frequent sympathy for the client offers a different perspective on the patron–client relationship.16 Generally, both Martial and Juvenal offer a more compassionate angle on the client by adopting the client’s persona, thereby locating their authorial voice within the milieu they are critiquing and thus more effectively expressing the client’s vulnerability.17 In underlining the client’s dependency and universal state of despair, they highlight the essential inequities of this asymmetrical relationship. The representation of patronage in both authors furnishes a wide scope of patron–client relationships. Juvenal’s client is generally positioned in the lowest economic stratum, which more easily enables him to rant against virtually everyone else in Roman society. Martial represents clients of different means on the social and economic ladder, and also portrays literary patronage as a special element, detailing the particular hardships of the poet as an artistic client reliant on a patron for support in order to create verse. More readily than Juvenal, Martial ridicules clients themselves as well as patrons, satirizing more generally the system of social dependency and sycophancy that comprised patronage in the Flavian era. In reality, Martial’s own personal means, while apparently not enough to support him in the style he preferred,
99 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga were probably substantial, relative to the impoverished clients of his epigrams, who are often portrayed as barely clinging to a minimum level of subsistence. Martial, however, was himself also a client, and although belonging to the upper sphere of Roman patronage, his insights into the inner workings of clientship must have been at least partially born of personal observation.18 The Toga as Symbol of the Client’s Hardship Embedded in the trials and tribulations of the beleaguered client’s obligations lay the toga, resulting in an attitude which can be described as at best ambivalent. Rather than serving as a lofty symbol of Roman identity, the toga is regularly used metonymically to represent the broad range of indignities inflicted on the client by an arrogant and overbearing patron. In the landscape of social satire, with its heightened version of reality shaped to the satirist’s rhetorical purposes, the toga assumes an entirely negative connotation, metamorphosing from a symbol of citizenship and status to a symbol of social inferiority and dependence on one’s betters. Characterized as unwieldy, excessively hot, easily stained, and hard to launder, the toga engenders more resentment than praise from those who were compelled to wear it by their patrons as a token of social subordination. Made of wool and therefore heavy, the toga’s design reflected its primary function as the attire for formal occasions rather than for the realities of daily life. Putting it on required a second pair of hands (the slave vestipicus), and a process of careful wrapping and folding; once on, it restricted mobility in the arms and resulted in a slower, more stately way of walking. The pale colour of the fabric led to frequent staining and subsequent cleaning, and the weight even of light wool made it burdensome in warm weather.19 Martial addresses to togas two epigrams that feature the whiteness of the garment and the challenge of keeping it sufficiently clean. One praises a toga given to him by a poet friend for its pristinely white condition by furnishing a far-ranging and poetically obscure list of wool sources and by comparing its purity favourably to lilies, swans, pearls, and snow before ending with the wry observation that its very cleanliness will put his dirty cloak to shame (Ep. 8.28). In the matching poem (Ep. 9.49), Martial apparently refers to the same toga, once so white it shone, but now, worn and threadbare with age, it is fit only for a pauper, no longer for an eques: Once it was Parthenius’ gown, a poet’s memorable gift. I used to go about in it, a conspicuous knight, while it was new and shone resplendent with its bright wool, while it was worthy of its giver’s name. Now it is an old crone scarce worth acceptance by a doddering pauper.20
100 Michele George In the first two lines of the same epigram, Martial acknowledges the prominent position occupied by the toga in his own writing, and even hints, however ironically, that it is so particular a feature of his work that it is recognized by his audience: ‘This is the gown much sung of in my little books, the gown my readers have learned by heart and love.’21 Martial refers to the toga in the epigrams as gifts between friends who are apparent peers as well as from patron to client, a reflection of its position as an essential element in the contemporary social scene.22 But it is in the satiric portrayal of the relationship between patron and client, and its inherent social tensions, that the toga looms largest in Martial’s epigrams. For Martial’s and Juvenal’s client, the toga is an uncomfortable but necessary evil that was an integral aspect of the patronage system and one that symbolized its greatest humiliations exactly because of the garment’s generally noble associations. Heightening the potency of the satiric effect, the frequent use of the diminutives togula, little toga, and togatulus, little toga’d man, sometimes implies sympathy, sometimes contempt, but the diminutive form in itself suffices to position the client in these texts at the bottom of the social order, or at least lower in the social hierarchy than he felt he deserved to be. In Martial’s and Juvenal’s satiric sketches of Roman patronage, the toga appears repeatedly as one of the fundamental tools of social control wielded by the patron against his client as the essential uniform for all occasions on which patron and client are seen together, including the morning salutatio, even though it took place within the house. Requiring his presence in the wee hours of the morning, the salutatio was considered a formal event entailing formal attire, that is, the toga. Yet, despite his efforts to look respectable, merely to arrive at his patron’s door the poor togate client had to endure a multitude of degrading circumstances for which the garment was not intended, and for which it was ill-suited. In epigram 5.22, Martial picturesquely describes the beginning of the client’s day, as he struggles to reach his patron’s house on the Esquiline hill: I must surmount the uphill path from Subura with its dirty stones and steps never dry, and I am scarcely able to break through the long trains of mules and the marble blocks you see hauled by many a rope.23
Finally, after all his efforts, exhausted, his little toga drenched in sweat, he finds that his patron is not even home, but, adding insult to injury, is himself out making calls on his patron: What is worse still, Paulus, worn out after a thousand labours, I am told by your janitor that you are not at home. Such is the outcome of my vain effort and my poor
101 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga soaked gown (togula): It would hardly have been worth it to see Paulus of a morning.24
The patron’s careless neglect is a handy foil for the client’s desperate travails which so often in Martial and Juvenal eventuate in scant reward, but it is the pathetic though amusing vision of the client that leaves the most vivid impression. Dressed in the elegant, heavy, and ungainly toga, he is forced to lumber through treacherous city streets in a garment designed more for state processions than for scurrying up and down the city’s seven hills. Impeding him at every turn, the toga is the garment he must nevertheless by all means wear, a garment that generally signifies social status but is here included in a litany of social humiliations. In a similar vein, Juvenal laments the rough competition for an inadequate handout once the client manages to reach his patron’s house: ‘Look now at the meagre dole set down upon the threshold for a toga-clad mob to scramble for!’25 The scene is more suited to a wrestling match in the arena than the patron’s majestic atrium, and the joke is vividly conveyed in the Latin. The humour, however, is derived from the incongruity inherent in the image of dignified Romans in togas clambering over each other and grasping desperately at the few coins tossed their way. A repeated lament in both writers is the early hour of the salutatio, and the resultant constant weariness of the client. The lowliest client must arrive first, at the crack of dawn or even while it is still dark, running along in his toga to his patron’s house so that his patron can make morning calls of his own (Juv. Sat. 3.126–130).26 The reward for his troubles, the sportula, whether in the form of money or food, is characterized as insufficient and barely enough to keep body and soul together: out of the sportula the client must pay for his toga (togula), rent on his dingy room (fusca cella), entrance fees for the baths, and, as the comic punchline, the cost of a prostitute, included as one of life’s necessities (Mart. Ep. 3.30).27 Far from the usual associations of nobility and status, the toga is instead part of the cramped, marginal existence of the socially underprivileged. Martial makes the appropriate calculation and concludes that the costs, in tedium and in togas, of performing a client’s duties are not worth the effort: You invite me for three denarii and tell me, Bassus, to attend your hall in the morning, gowned (togatum); then to keep at your side, walk in front of your chair, and go with you to ten widows, more or less. My poor gown is worn and cheap and old, but, Bassus, I don’t buy it for three denarii.28
The toga, the noble garment of the gens togata, here represents the genteel poverty of the poet or hanger-on who, with no inherited wealth, powerful
102 Michele George family ties, or other means of support, relies on his patron’s generosity to maintain his present status, the appearance of that status, or at least for his next meal. It is an emblem of the obligation owed to the patron by the client, and an essential tool in a system that both Martial and Juvenal criticize as inherently fraudulent and morally corrupt. Drastic efforts were made by patrons to achieve the effect of a substantial entourage, even to the point of going into debt. Martial describes the hapless Saufeius, ‘surrounded by togas, fore and aft’ (cinctum togatis, post et ante), whose numbers produce envy in onlookers, but who, according to Martial, were not genuine clients but were merely rented by Saufeius from two individuals, who were possibly moneylenders, especially for the purpose of display (Ep. 2.74). Another nameless aspirant wanders conspicuously around the Saepta Iulia in a newly outfitted litter surrounded by a veritable herd of togate followers and long-haired slave-boys (grex togatus sequitur et capillatus), but must, according to Martial, pawn his ring to pay for his own dinner (Ep. 2.57). The pressure applied to clients by their patrons to dress appropriately and the lengths taken to create the impression of wealth indicate the critical importance of keeping up appearances at Rome. With his characteristically bitter edge, Juvenal points to the importance of the entourage to the lawyer’s chances of success: ‘The first thing a litigant looks to is, have you eight slaves and a dozen retainers? Have you a litter to wait on you and togas (i.e., clients in togas) to walk in front of you? When is eloquence ever found beneath a shabby coat?’29 It was, therefore, necessary that a client be dressed in a manner befitting his patron’s status and dignitas; anything less would render the display futile. The client’s wearing of the toga was a reflection of the patron’s power, not the client’s, and of the patron’s ability to control the appearance of his dependants. Within this social hierarchy, the toga’s importance as an exclusive sign of citizenship and status is inverted and becomes for the client a badge of social subordination rather than social empowerment. The morning call was only the first event of the client’s long day, for he had to be ready, fitted out in his toga regardless of its discomforts, to accompany his patron on his peregrinations around town. The tasks themselves do not sound terribly onerous, but with satiric exaggeration both authors present them as gruelling drudgery, a tedious list of subjugation to the demands of a narcissistic patron that Martial characterizes as the ‘futile weariness of the toga’ (vanae taedia ... togae, Ep. 3.4.6). The client was expected to wear his toga, cumbersome and uncomfortable as it was, as he accompanied his patron to the baths or the theatre, traipsing through the mud in front of the patronal litter with other clients while the patron’s slaves walked behind, pushing through the crowd as necessary to make way for the
103 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga retinue. He was expected to wear his toga as he escorted his patron on visits to the patron’s social peers or superiors, to the forum, where he had to applaud his patron’s political speeches regardless of their quality or content, and to dinner, where he entertained his patron with witty repartee, or, in the case of Martial, with witty epigrams. According to Martial, opera togata, toga work, was sine fine, never ending (Ep. 3.46.1). The full phrase, operam sine fine togatam, echoes the famous phrase in Vergil’s Aeneid in which Jupiter promises Rome ‘empire without end’ (imperium sine fine, Aen. 1.279), and playfully highlights the satiric reversal Martial works on the toga of epic by associating it not with endless power but with endless toil.30 On the client, the proverbial garment of auctoritas is thus transformed into the costume of the powerless, and the degradation of its symbolism mirrors the degradation of those compelled to wear it. By contrast, leisure time meant freedom from donning the toga and its related irritations, including the domineering patron who insisted on it. To ‘escape the toga’ is a metaphor for a holiday in Juvenal, while Martial includes a scarcity of togas in a list of life’s pleasures (Ep. 10.47.5) and refers to the ‘tunicate quiet’ (tunicata quies) found at a friend’s villa beyond the clamour of the capital (Ep. 10.51.6).31 Martial also contrasts the pleasures taken at his own estate in Bilbilis in Spain, where the toga is unknown (ignota), with the plight of poor Juvenal back at Rome, who must ‘wander restlessly in the noisy Subura or tread Lady Diana’s hill (i.e., the Aventine), while your sweaty toga (toga sudatrix) fans you as you cross the thresholds of the powerful.’32 Meanwhile, Martial, now retired from active client duty, enjoys ‘an enormous and indecent amount of sleep,’ recompense, he says, for his thirty years of early rising as a client. Clientship and Slavery The inverted symbolism of the toga in these satiric sallies has yet another dimension that bears attention, and that is the association that is made between the toga and slavery. If the toga and its noble reputation provide Martial and Juvenal with a startling and unorthodox weapon to wield in their attacks on clientela, more radical still is their equation of client and slave, a shocking comparison from the Roman perspective that demonstrates the profound depths to which the client must sink in order to satisfy his patron. To compare a free Roman to a slave was perhaps the greatest insult possible within the Roman context. Roman slaves had no autonomy and no rights under Roman law; viewed as inferior and criminal by nature, they were human property subject to their master’s bidding and vulnerable to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at his hands.33 Connecting the free
104 Michele George client, and by extension the toga, with the slave completes the satirists’ depiction of the topsy-turvy state of Roman society and represents the garment’s decline in the starkest terms. The comparison between client and slave is built upon a series of small jokes that invert normal expectations for the slave and the free man. Both Juvenal and Martial rankle at the social inequities of the patronage system, and especially at the increased burden of social subjugation for the truly unfortunate client whose patron is himself a client, a circumstance which creates an uncomfortable parity between patron and client, but which also pushes the inferior of the two still further down the pyramid of Roman society, inching ever close to the bottom, where the slaves are. An equation between the social inferiority of the client and the slave, where patrons are called ‘kings’ and clients ‘slaves,’ occurs in several epigrams, as Martial complains that his patron Maximus is himself the client of another man: I angle for a dinner invitation from you, Maximus (to my shame I say it, but it’s true); but you do the same from somebody else. So we are even thus far. I go to your levée in the morning, you are said to have already gone to one. So we are even thus far. I escort you, walking in front of my pompous king (rex, i.e., patron). You escort somebody else. So we are even thus far. It’s enough to be a slave. I won’t be a slave’s slave any longer. A king, Maximus, should not have a king.34
The togate entourage of clients is thus equated to a group of slaves, a nicely ironic twist, given that the toga was a sign of citizenship, which slaves by law were forbidden to wear. Although the object of their anger is the patron, and more generally the insults of the patronage system, both Juvenal and Martial apportion some of the blame to any client who is prepared to endure such degrading treatment for a free meal. In epigram 2.53, which is addressed again to Maximus, Martial recognizes the loss of self-respect that is engendered by client status, but acknowledges that the loss is a calculated one, repaid in manifold small comforts such as better wine, better tableware, better togas, and better women: You want to become a free man? You lie, Maximus; you don’t want. But if you do, this is how you can. You will be a free man, Maximus, if you don’t want to dine out, if Veii’s grape quenches your thirst, if you can laugh at unhappy Cinna’s gold-inlaid dishes, if you can be content with a gown (toga) like mine, if you go with a vulgar tart for a couple of asses, if you can’t get into your quarters without stooping. If you have strength and willpower enough for that, you can live more free than the king of Parthia.35
105 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga If Maximus genuinely wanted to be a free man, Martial argues, he need only exercise his own willpower and simply refuse the benefits of clientship (cf. Ep. 2.68). It is the client’s own weakness, his own ‘enslavement’ to his desire for the better things in life, that keep him in this form of social subservience. While repeated humiliation is predictable for the slave, it contravenes the dignity of a Roman citizen, especially one whose citizenship is displayed through his toga. For Juvenal, the desperate hunt for dinner invitations is played for laughs as the chief goal of the client’s day and one for which he is prepared to go to great, often ridiculous, lengths. Unlike the client, Juvenal implies, the slave will always be fed by his master, while the client can only hope to stay in his patron’s good graces. The full treatment of this theme appears in Juvenal’s fifth satire, in which the gluttonous patron Virro gives his clients a meal that is grossly inferior to his own as a demonstration of the status distinctions between them. The account is revelatory of Roman attitudes towards patrons and clients as well as masters and slaves.36 Social distinctions among clients are mirrored not only in the substandard food, wine, and tableware they are offered, but also by the unsuitable slaves; groomsmen who are fit only for coarse work outside the house are assigned to serve up his wine, while the master enjoys an effeminate young cupbearer. Trying in vain to catch their attention, Juvenal bemoans the slaves’ disdain towards the most marginal clients, an accurate reflection of their master’s contempt.37 Aware of the client’s hunger, the patron delights in his ability to exert some measure of control over his client, just as he could with his slaves (Sat. 5.156– 157, 158–162): You may suppose that Virro begrudges the expense; not a bit of it! His object is to give you pain ... to pour out your wrath in tears, and to keep gnashing your squeaking molars. You think yourself a free man, and guest of a grandee, but he thinks – and he is not far wrong – that you have been captured (i.e., captured like a slave) by the savoury odours of his kitchen.38
The point of such treatment by the patron, Juvenal asserts, is not so much domestic economy as the public reiteration of status distinctions and social power through humiliation, much as a master might punish a slave merely because he could. Like Martial, Juvenal blames the client for enduring such degradation, and for voluntarily surrendering his free status to be treated like a slave merely for the sake of a dinner: ‘For who that had ever worn the Etruscan bull (i.e., the bulla) in his boyhood, – or even the poor man’s leather badge – could tolerate such a patron for a second time, however destitute he might be? It is the hope of a good dinner that beguiles you.’39 Here
106 Michele George Juvenal substitutes one signifier of free status, the bulla, for the one he more commonly invokes, the toga. The effect, however, is much the same: by his humiliation in front of other guests, the degraded client violates the dignity of the toga and therefore nullifies his own free status. Even a poor man with his leather bulla, in contrast to the gold version apparently preferred by the elite freeborn, had enough self-respect to eschew such self-abasement. It is the patron–client relationship, Juvenal suggests, that reduces a free man to a state of virtual servitude, with the patron wielding a unique form of torture. As Juvenal presents it, clientela functioned much like slavery, in that the patron exerted his authority over the client simply because he could, as a demonstration of his social status, much as the total control of master over slave was reasserted in numerous ways, including torture and other physical and psychological punishments, simply for its own sake and as a way to reinforce his power. On one level, the equation of clients and slaves is grounded in the reality of institutionalized slavery at Rome and reflects the ubiquity of slaves and their integration into the Roman mentality. For the satirist keen to portray the client’s lot as one of abject misery, the circumstances of real slavery provided a handy comic parallel that would be familiar to all. The satiric effect is based on the underlying sense of outrage that the client, as a Roman citizen, a free man and not a slave, could be thus humiliated by his social situation, and furthermore that free men could be willing accomplices in their own disgrace.40 For the Roman audience, the element of surprise in the comparison and the role reversal between client and slave doubtless created both humour and pungent social criticism. As presented in these texts, client and slave share several circumstances. Both must rely on the kindness of their social superiors, one on his patron, the other on his master, for their very survival. Both must perform certain duties in order to earn their keep and in doing so must meet specific and sometimes idiosyncratic demands. Moreover, the display, and therefore the reinforcement, of their inferior status, especially in public contexts, is an essential aspect of their function. For the slave, this meant humiliation and abuse at the master’s hand in the presence of guests; for the client, it meant the constant wearing of the toga as merely one of the officia owed to his patron.41 Martial and Juvenal could not have chosen a more effective way to illustrate the complete and utter degradation of the client than to draw parallels between his condition and that of the slave. Although complicit in his own humiliation, it is not the client who is the main target of their satiric portrait, but the patronage system itself, an arrangement that combined economic dependency and the public reiteration of social inferiority to reduce Roman citizens to behaviour that, in the eyes of the satirists, scarcely dif-
107 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga fered from that of slaves, a Roman citizen’s human property. The final irony of the satiric comparison between clients and slaves is that the slave is denied the right to wear the toga, while the client, a free man, is compelled to wear the toga against his will, thereby changing the toga from a symbol of freedom to a symbol of enslavement. By linking the toga to slaves and servile behaviour, Martial and Juvenal furnish the ultimate proof that clientela diminishes the dignity of the citizen and, by extension, the nobility of the garment that symbolized citizenship and autonomy. Conclusion The more subtle and less idealized view of the toga thus advocated in no way vitiates its potency as a symbol of authority; on the contrary, by concentrating it in the highest echelons of power the garment’s symbolic value is only enhanced. Togas, like the Romans who wore them, were not created equal; citizenship at Rome did not entail membership in an undifferentiated collective, but in a highly stratified social system in which elements on visible display such as dress assumed enormous significance. As a powerful cultural symbol, the toga was a means to an end whose significance varied according to status. The wealthy embraced its positive connotations of civic engagement, of moral righteousness, and, more fundamentally, of Roman identity as part of their social entitlement. Other status groups, clients and others, who profited less easily from it, could regard the toga more realistically, without the roseate glow of social privilege. Donning the toga was, therefore, a pragmatic matter, a strategic choice that reflected social power or social ambition, depending upon the position its wearer occupied in the hierarchy. At Rome, the conspicuous exhibition of power and social identity through status markers such as the toga helped strengthen the dominance of elites and maintain existing social distinctions. By employing the toga as a symbol of social vulnerability, Martial and Juvenal furnish a bracing antidote to its much-vaunted reputation as the ennobling and exclusive garment of Roman citizenship. This brief examination of the ‘dark side’ of the toga delineated in these two authors reveals the inversion of this symbolism for the less fortunate in Roman society, for whom the toga represented social aspirations that could never be fully realized. Bound to his patron in a form of genteel social servitude, the client of Martial and Juvenal, rising at dawn, sweaty, hungry, and exhausted by noon, was forced to wear the toga despite its many discomforts. In implicating the toga in the social tensions among different status groups at Rome, they also force the modern reader to view the toga from another point on the social spectrum, adopting the gimlet eye of the socially disadvantaged, rather than
108 Michele George blindly accepting the idealized elite version encountered in most extant Roman sources. The satiric portrait gleaned from these texts serves as a trenchant reminder that the cultural values that underlie the noble rhetoric of Vergil’s gens togata also produced the wretched togatulus, doomed forever to trudge up and down Rome’s seven hills, trailing his worn and shabby toga through the muddy streets, chasing up his next meal.
Notes
1
2
3 4
5
6
7 8
Many thanks go to Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith for serving as efficient conference organizers and as judicious editors, to the anonymous referees, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support of my research. Stola: Scholz 1992; Sebesta 1994a: 48–9; bulla: Palmer 1989 [1998]; anulus aureus: initially reserved for those who had held curule office and their male descendants, the right to wear it was extended to those of equestrian rank in 216 bc, but was limited by the emperor Tiberius to third generation ingenui in an effort to deny it to freedmen: see Pliny HN 33.8, 10, 18. On the toga generally, see Goette 1990 (with a catalogue of literary references to the toga, 10–19); Stone 1994; Heskel 1994; Vout 1996; Dyck 2001; see also Edmondson, chap. 1, Dolansky, chap. 2, Koortbojian, chap. 3, and Olson, chap. 6, in this volume. Gens togata: Verg. Aen. 1.282; toga as a metaphor for peace: Cic. Pis. 29.72; De or. 3.42.167. On Cicero’s use of the toga as a symbol of good Roman character in his forensic works, see Dyck 2001; denial of toga to peregrini, see Suet. Claud. 15.2. For many of the issues just raised, see Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. This chapter does not therefore pretend to be a literary interpretation. For satire generally, see Braund 1989; Freudenburg 2005; for Martial, see White 1975, 1978; Saller 1983; Sullivan 1991; Grewing 1998; Howell 1980 and 1995; Watson and Watson 2003; for Juvenal, see Duff 1957; Gérard 1976; Courtney 1980; Cloud 1989; Braund 1996; Freudenburg 2001; for the parasite in satiric authors, including Martial, see Damon 1997. Sullivan 1991: 73; cf. White 1993: 85: ‘More than any other kind of poetry, satire regaled its readers with the spectacle of a world they knew and that gave it a popularity which it held to the end of antiquity.’ Suet. Aug. 40.5: habitus vestitusque pristinus; see also Suet. Aug. 44.2; Claud. 15. Augustus: Pliny Ep. 4.11.3; Juv. Sat. 3.177–179, where aediles along with everyone else once more wear white tunics in the theatre, in violation of the Augustan
109 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga
9
10
11
12
13 14
15
legislation. Vout 1996 outlines the gap between reality and symbolism with particular reference to the use of the toga in statuary. See also Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. On Roman patronage and the distinctions between patrons, clients, and friends (amici), see Friedländer 1968: 1.195–202; Saller 1982; Brunt 1988: 382–442; Wallace-Hadrill 1989; specifically in satire, see White 1975; Mayer 1989; Kleijwegt 1998 and 1999. On the patron’s entourage, see Tac. Dial. 6, where the successful orator is accompanied by a comitatus togatorum. Some patrons went to the expense of giving togas to clients, no doubt to ensure that the proper attire was worn by clients as required (e.g., Mart. Ep. 12.36). There is conflicting evidence regarding the nature of the sportula and its development throughout Roman history. Suetonius records that Nero reduced formal dinners (cenae rectae) for clients to handouts of actual food as sportulae (Nero 16), and that Domitian’s subsequent effort to return to formal dinners was unpopular with clients as well as patrons, who both preferred a direct cash payout (Dom. 7). Saller (1982: 128nn57, 58) suggests that cash payouts probably occurred in the Republican period, which raises the possibility that the cenae rectae referred to by Suetonius were for clients of higher status only, and that the rest continued to receive money alone. In Martial and Juvenal, reference is made to handouts of both cash and food. Braund and Cloud (1981) argue that Juvenal conflates the morning salutatio with the evening sportula in this satire (but not others) for comic effect. On sportulae, see Duff 1957: 116; Le Gall 1966; Cloud 1989. On the distinctions between patrons, clients, and friends (amici), see Friedländer 1968: 1.195–202; White 1975, 1978; Saller 1982; Brunt 1988: 351–81. Saller (1982: 7–39; 1983; 1989) rejects White’s (1978) assertion that amicus in Martial’s epigrams must imply social equality. See also Sen. Ben. 6.33.3, which warns against considering those who gather in the atrium in the morning as genuine amici. On the persona used by Martial, see Watson and Watson 2003: 5–7. Juv. Sat. 1.127–130, 132–134: ipse dies pulchro distinguitur ordine rerum: / sportula, deinde forum iurisque peritus Apollo / atque triumphales, inter quas ausus habere / nescio quis titulos Aegytius atque Arabarches, / ... vestibulis abeunt veteres lassique clientes / votaque deponunt, quamquam longissima cenae / spes homini; caulis miseris atque ignis emendus. See further Braund 1996; Mart. Ep. 3.36. All translations taken from the Loeb editions of Juvenal and Martial, with occasional emendations. Ep. 3.46, although in this epigram Martial ascribes this somewhat excessively enthusiastic support to his freedman, whom he sends in his place; in 6.48 he attributes shouts of support by the togate throng (turba togata) to the prospect of
110 Michele George
16
17 18 19 20
21 22 23
24
25 26
27 28
29
a good dinner rather than to any genuine oratorical prowess the patron might possess. On patrons and clients in Martial, see Garrido-Hory 1981: 187–97; Gérard 1976: 157–205; Kleijwegt 1998; in Juvenal: Cloud 1989; Garrido-Hory 1998; poets and patrons: White 1993. On the parasite, see Damon 1997: chaps. 5 and 6. For a discussion of the satiric author as participant in the world he criticizes, see Freudenburg 2001. White 1975; Saller 1983; Sullivan 1991: 26–8. Discomfort: Mart. Ep. 12.18.5 (sudatrix toga); difficulty of keeping a toga from fading: Mart. Ep. 9.49, 57. Ep. 9.49.2–8: Partheniana fuit quondam, memorabile vatis / munus: in hac ibam conspiciendus eques, / dum nova, dum nitida fulgebat splendida lana, / dumque erat auctoris nomine digna sui: / nunc anus et tremulo vix accipienda tribuli. See also Mart. Ep. 3.30; 4.26; 9.100; 10.74; 11.24. On a toga worn out by a client’s use: Ep. 3.36.9; 14.125. Ep. 9.49.1–2: haec est illa meis multum cantata libellis, / quam meus edidicit lector amatque togam. As gift from peers: Ep. 2.85; 7.86; 10.15, 73; from mistress to lover: 4.28; from patron to client: 12.36; as apophoreta at the Saturnalia: 14.124 and 125. 5.22.5–8: alta Suburani vincenda est semita clivi / et numquam sicco sordida saxa gradu, / vixque datur longas mulorum rumpere mandras / quaeque trahi multo marmora fune vides. On this, see Howell 1995: 104. 5.22.9–12: illud adhuc gravius, quod te post mille labores, / Paule, negat lasso ianitor esse domi. / exitus hic operis vani togulaeque madentis: / vix tanti Paulum mane videre fuit. Sat. 1.95–96: ... nunc sportula primo / limine parva sedet turbae rapienda togatae. On this passage, see Braund 1996: 97–98. Early morning: Mart. Ep. 12.68 (matutine cliens); also Ep. 10.82.2; 14.125; Juv. Sat. 5.76–77; at dawn: Mart. Ep. 3.36.3; before dawn (nocte): Juv. Sat. 3.127; weary clients: Juv. Sat. 1.132; Mart. Ep. 10.74.2. See also Watson and Watson 2003: 172–5. Juv. Sat. 1.119–120 lists ‘toga and shoes, bread and fuel’ (hinc toga, calceus hinc est / et panis fumusque domi) as items that must come out of the dole. Mart. Ep. 9.100: denaris tribus invitas et mane togatum / observare iubes atria, Basse, tua, / deinde haerere tuo lateri, praecedere sellam, / ad viduas tecum plus minus ire decem. / trita quidem nobis togula est vilisque vetusque: / denaris tamen hanc non emo, Basse, tribus. See also Ep. 4.26. Juv. Sat. 7.141–143, 145: respicit haec primum qui litigat, an tibi servi / octo, decem comites, an post te sella, togati / ante pedes. ... rara in tenui facundia panno. For a client in debt over a toga, see Mart. Ep. 7.10.11: pro togula debes.
111 The ‘Dark Side’ of the Toga 30 See Vout 1996: 216. 31 Juv. Sat. 11.203–204: nostra bibat vernum contracta cuticula solem / effugiatque togam; Mart. Ep. 10.47.1–5: vitam quae faciant beatiorem, / iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt: / res non parta labore, sed relicta; / non ingratus ager, focus perennis; / lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta; Ep. 10.51.5–6: quos, Faustine, dies, quales tibi Roma †Ravennam† / abstulit! o soles, o tunicata quies! The younger Pliny expresses similar concepts in his letters: for the toga ‘being on holiday’ (toga feriata) at a country villa, see Pliny Ep. 7.3.2; for the conceptual equation of togati with urban-dwellers (urbani), as opposed to countryfolk (rustici), id. 6.30.4; for peace and quiet, no need for a toga, and no bothersome neighbours at his own rural villa, id. 5.6.45. 32 Mart. Ep. 12.18.1–6, 17–18: dum tu forsitan inquietus erras / clamosa, Iuvenalis, in Subura / aut collem dominae teris Dianae; / dum per limina te potentiorum / sudatrix toga ventilat vagumque / maior Caelius et minor fatigant; ... ignota est toga, sed datur petenti / rupta proxima vestis a cathedra. On these lines, see Watson and Watson 2003: 140, 147–8. See also Ep. 1.49.31–36; 4.66.3; 10.96; 12.68; 14.142. 33 On Roman slavery, see in particular, Bradley 1994; Garnsey 1996. 34 Ep. 2.18: capto tuam, pudet heu, sed capto, Maxime, cenam. / tu captas aliam: iam sumus ergo pares. / mane salutatum venio, tu diceris isse / ante salutatum: iam sumus ergo pares. / sum comes ipse tuus tumidique anteambulo regis, / tu comes alterius: iam sumus ergo pares. / esse sat est servum, iam nolo vicarius esse. / qui rex est regem, Maxime, non habeat. See also Ep. 5.22; 10.10; 10.96, where rex is also used to refer to a patron. 35 Ep. 2.53: vis fieri liber? mentiris, Maxime, non vis: / sed fieri si vis, hac ratione potes. / liber eris, cenare foris si, Maxime, nolis, / Veientana tuam si domat uva sitim, / si ridere potes miseri chrysendeta Cinnae, / contentus nostra si potes esse toga, / si plebeia Venus gemino tibi iungitur asse, / si tua non rectus tecta subire potes. / haec tibi si vis est, si mentis tanta potestas, / liberior Partho vivere rege potes. 36 Braund 1996: 275–308. 37 Sat. 5.52–59, 60–69; see also 5.125–127. 38 Sat. 5.156–157, 158–162: forsitan inpensae Virronem parcere credas. hoc agit ut doleas; ... ergo omnia fiunt, / si nescis, ut per lacrimas effundere bilem / cogaris pressoque diu stridere molari. / tu tibi liber homo et regis conviva videris:/ captum te nidore suae putat ille culinae. 39 Sat. 5.163–165: ... quis enim tam nudus, ut illum / bis ferat, Etruscum puero si contigit aurum / vel nodus tantum et signum de paupere loro? 40 The tendency to blame the victim in Juvenal and Martial, to identify the client’s expensive tastes as his own fault, mirrors rationalizations for Roman slavery, in which the slave’s so-called natural inferiority is reason enough to justify his
112 Michele George servile status. The crucial difference, of course, is that the client, however difficult his circumstances and however limited his options, did in fact have choices in ways that slaves did not. On the theory of natural slavery, see Garnsey 1996: esp. 11–14, 76–8, 105–17 (Aristotle), 138–52 (the Stoics). 41 For mistreatment of slaves at banquets as a display of status, see D’Arms 1991.
5 (Un)Dressed to Kill: Viewing the Retiarius michael carter
Effeminate Gladiators? Towards the end of his second satire, Juvenal describes the disgusting display of a certain Gracchus, a nobleman who entered the arena to fight as a gladiator. According to Juvenal, Gracchus’ public appearance was an embarrassing and cowardly spectacle (2.143–148): vicit et hoc monstrum tunicati fuscina Gracchi lustravitque fuga mediam gladiator harenam et Capitolinis generosior et Marcellis et Catuli Paulique minoribus et Fabiis et omnibus ad podium spectantibus, his licet ipsum admoveas cuius tunc munere retia misit. Yet this outrage is surpassed by Gracchus, wearing a tunic and with a trident in his hand, who as a gladiator traversed the arena as he ran away, a man of nobler birth than the Capitolini and Marcelli, than the descendents of Catulus and Paulus, than the Fabii, than all the spectators in the front row, even if you include the very man who staged that net-throwing show. (Tr. Braund 2004)
Gracchus’ arena debut comes at the end of a long passage in which the same man is held up as an example of contemporary lewdness and effeminacy. As a whole, the second satire deals with the decadence of the elite, especially those who transgressed sexual and social boundaries in some way. Juvenal assails contemporary lewdness and the sordid effeminacy that he sees all around him now. And Gracchus is its poster boy. He married another man – a trumpeter of all things – and it is clear that Gracchus played the passive
114 Michael Carter role in the marriage: he was ‘the woman’; Gracchus paid a dowry; he wore the bridal gown and veil; and at the wedding banquet, he reclined in the lap of his new husband (2.117–126). This was all the more galling to Juvenal because noble Gracchus, we are told, was also a member of the college of the Salii, the priests of Mars. So Juvenal demands to know what Mars thinks of all this and, hearing no complaint from the old god, he concludes that that the old god must no longer care about Rome.1 It is as the culmination of this unmanly, effeminate behaviour that Juvenal gives us Gracchus’ arena performance. Indeed, Gracchus’ gladiatorial antics are presented as the extreme example of womanish ways; that is, Juvenal is not just describing noble Gracchus as a shameful, run-away gladiator, but specifically placing his arena appearance in the context of unmatched effeminacy. This is astonishing. What is so effeminate about being a gladiator? Even if Gracchus was defeated, he still had ‘the balls’ at least to fight in single combat in public. If anything should connote manly behaviour, it should be such ostentatious single combat.2 Moreover, the sexual prowess of Roman gladiators was proverbial. Indeed, in other places Juvenal himself plays on their noted erotic appeal and the passions that they aroused in some women. In the sixth satire, for example, a senator’s wife, a certain Eppia, ran away with the scarred-up gladiator Sergius, one of whose eyes continually oozed puss. Why did she do that? sed gladiator erat. facit hoc illos Hyacinthos (6.110): ‘but he was a gladiator; this makes them Hyacinths.’ Why were women attracted? ferrum est quod amant (6.112): ‘it’s the sword that they love.’ Tertullian similarly despaired over those men and women who gave themselves, body and soul, to charioteers, actors, and gladiators (Tert. de Spect. 22). And we need not rely on stuffy moralists to find such adulation. A number of graffiti from Pompeii record the breathless devotion of lovestruck female ‘groupies’: the retiarius Crescens is dom(in)us puparum or puparum nocturnarum and the thraex Celadus is suspirium puellarum and decus puellarum.3 Some in the crowd looked to the gladiators for more than their martial abilities. Why then does Juvenal paint the gladiator Gracchus as an effeminate? So strange is the Gracchus passage that at least one early editor, O. Ribbeck in the 1860s, doubted its authenticity altogether and struck it from his text.4 More recently, C. Williams suggests that Roman readers might have understood Gracchus’ effeminate behaviour as a sort of disease which manifested itself not only in a desire to be sexually penetrated but also to put oneself on display.5 In such discussions the all-encompassing term ‘gladiator,’ it seems to me, is too broad; we need instead to consider the attitudes towards different types or classifications of gladiators. Gladiators themselves, to judge from their epitaphs, never referred to themselves simply and generically as ‘glad-
115 (Un)Dressed to Kill iators,’ but always preferred specificity and described themselves according to the style of armament or costume that they wore in the arena. Perhaps these different types provoked different responses from the Roman spectator. Indeed, a closer look at the text above indicates that it is specifically the fuscina – that is, the trident – of the tunic-clad (tunicatus) Gracchus that so surpasses the monstrosity of his womanish ways. The trident was the stereotypical weapon of the retiarius. So could it be Gracchus’ appearance as a retiarius that was for Juvenal degenerate and effeminate? Is there something specifically effeminate about that type of gladiator? The Retiarius The retiarius was, and continues to be, one of the most immediately recognizable gladiators in the various media in which they were depicted. So, for example, a late-second-century ad cup from Camulodunum (Colchester) in Britain (fig. 5.1) clearly shows a retiarius (right), defeated, raising the index finger of his right hand (i.e., in the act of surrendering), as a more heavily armed secutor advances from the left. The retiarius was equipped with a net, a trident (or fuscina), and often a dagger. He had little armour – no helmet or greaves or shield – but only wrapping (manica) on his left arm, a galerus protecting his left shoulder and neck, a broad belt (balteus), and a loincloth (subligaculum), all visible on the cup from Colchester. The galerus was held in place by a strap, which ran across the gladiator’s chest.6 Of all the gladiatorial classifications (usually referred to as armaturae), the retiarius is the only one, with the possible exception of the little-known and seldom attested veles,7 to have appeared in the arena equipped so lightly. Such armament, although affording much less protection than that of more heavily armed gladiators, did allow the retiarius considerable mobility and agility. While heavily armed gladiators were generally equipped with a short sword meant for close combat, the agile retiarius with his trident and net could strike from beyond the reach of his bulky adversary. The trident could be thrust, or even thrown, from a distance, and the net could be swung as an offensive weapon in its own right – it probably was ringed with lead weights8 – or cast to entangle an adversary. The retiarius’ lack of concealing armour also allowed for personal recognition: the helmet worn by the other types of gladiators not only protected their faces but also disguised them from the spectators. The face of a retiarius, as Gracchus found out, was plainly visible to the gathered crowd. The retiarius is not attested until the first century ad. Suetonius describes the appearance of retiarii in the reign of Caligula (ad 37–41): a group of five retiarii refused to fight a similar number of secutores, and when the enraged
116 Michael Carter emperor threatened to have them killed, one of the retiarii jumped up, grabbed a fuscina, and somehow killed all the unprepared secutores (Suet. Calig. 30.3). Claudius, we are told, liked to watch retiarii, specifically because he could see their unconcealed faces as they died (Suet. Claud. 34.1). Suetonius was writing in the early second century, but Martial provides a contemporary witness to date the retiarius to at least the (later) first century: he describes the superstar, multitalented gladiator Hermes as, among other things, aequoreo minax tridente (threatening with his marine trident, 5.24.12). The retiarius seems to have evolved to present the opposite armament (and so tactics) to the heavily armed gladiator against which he was matched. As Suetonius’ description of the fiasco at Caligula’s munus suggests, the typical opponent of the retiarius was the secutor: literally ‘chaser.’ That is what Isidore of Seville believed: ‘he is called secutor from the fact that he pursues a retiarius’ (Isid. Etym. 18.55: secutor ab insequendo retiarium dictus). We are told that Commodus, a secutor, won a thousand gladiatorial palms, either by defeating or by killing retiarii (SHA Comm. 12.11). The secutor was a heavily armed gladiator who carried a large rectangular shield (scutum) and a sword (gladius), and wore a visored helmet with a simple crest, a subligaculum with a wide belt, a manica on his right arm, and a greave on his forward leg, as is also clear on the cup from Colchester (fig. 5.1: the figure on the left).9 Like the retiarius, the secutor seems to have evolved in the early first century ad.10 The term, secutor, however, may suggest that tactics rather than arms were the primary semantic consideration; the secutor was one who pursued an opponent.11 Artemidorus, in his book of dream interpretations (the Onirocritica) from the mid- to late-second century ad, to which we shall return at the end of this chapter, says that the secutor always chases (a)ei\ diw&kei).12 By contrast with the nimble and quick retiarius, the secutor was probably slow and plodding. Very much like a Roman soldier, the heavily armed secutor crouched behind his shield, his head protected by a helmet, his sword arm protected by the manica, and his forward shin protected by his greave. He advanced slowly but deliberately against his opponent. These tactics seem quite like those described by Livy of a Roman soldier in single combat. In Livy’s famous description of T. Manlius’ single combat with an enormous Gallic warrior, Manlius, easily evading the downward thrust of the Gaul, uses his shield to push aside the Gaul’s shield, works his way in close, and with his sword point turned up stabs him with two quick thrusts into the belly and groin.13 Heavily armed gladiators like the secutor fought the same way that Roman soldiers did.14 Until recently most of what we knew about the details of gladiatorial combat had to be reconstructed from reliefs and mosaics depicting gladiators
117 (Un)Dressed to Kill in action, from scant literary descriptions, and from logical inferences derived from their armatura: all poor second choices to actual experience. Fortunately, we now have the benefit of the trials in gladiatorial combat with reconstructed armour and weapons conducted by M. Junkelmann.15 From his investigation he has concluded that much of the fighting was actually done with the heavy shields, like a Roman soldier, pushing, feinting, and striking, and that as a result of the armament worn the swords were most useful to thrust and jab rather than to slice or cut.16 The secutor thus employed tactics quite the opposite of his typical opponent, the retiarius. Because he especially pursued the retiarius, several scholars equate the secutor with the lesser known contrarete (also known as the contraretiarius or >RET.), a specialist obviously meant to fight against the retiarius. P.J. Meier, followed by G. Lafaye, first argued for the equivalence between the secutor and the contrarete, pointing to an inscription from ad 177 in which the names, armament classifications, and legal status of a number of gladiators in a gladiatorial familia from Rome are listed.17 Most of the expected gladiatorial types are represented: there are Thracians, hoplomachi, essedarii, myrmillones, provocatores, and retiarii; only the secutor would seem to be missing. Its absence is puzzling since the secutor was widely attested in the later second century ad. But while there is no secutor mentioned in the inscription, there are several examples of a gladiator identified as ‘>RET,’ presumably the contrarete. Meier reasoned that these numerous contraretes were in fact the inexplicably missing secutores, especially since the secutor was known to have been specifically pitted against the retiarius. Other evidence, however, suggests that it was the myrmillo (or murmillo) who fought the retiarius. Quintilian, for example, imagines the myrmillo chasing the retiarius (Inst. 6.3.61, see below). Like the secutor, the myrmillo was also heavily armed, with a large scutum, visored helmet, manica (wrapping) on his sword arm, and greave on his forward shin. The Latin term, myrmillo, was based on the Greek, mu&rma (or mormu&roj, mormu&loj), a type of fish which is thought to be that sometimes depicted on the helmet of the gallus and the myrmillo. Thus we would have the classic confrontation of fisherman (retiarius) versus fish (myrmillo), a matchup alluded to in a passage of Festus.18 It was long thought that the secutor and myrmillo evolved independently from the Republican Samnis and Gallus, respectively,19 though Junkelmann has persuasively argued that the myrmillo evolved first from the Republican heavy gladiators and that the secutor then evolved from the myrmillo.20 Certainly, the myrmillo is known from the late Republic, long before the first attested secutor: Cicero, for example, publicly attacked L. Antonius, the brother of Marcus, for associating with a gladiatorial familia and fighting as a gladiator – specifically as a myrmillo – while in
118 Michael Carter Mylasa in Caria.21 Moreover, the similarity between the secutor and the myrmillo is suggested by a stele from Marcianopolis in Moesia Inferior for the gladiator Polyneikes, who was first a secutor but then became a myrmillo.22 It is reasonable to assume that the fighting styles were sufficiently similar. Polyneikes’ transformation may have been motivated by perceptions of prestige: a myrmillo may have been considered more prestigious than a secutor. The ‘missing link’ to connect the myrmillo to the contrarete as the opponent of the retiarius may be found in a number of inscriptions in which a gladiator seems to be identified as a myrmillo contrarete. The contrarete (who was sometimes referred to, as we have seen, as contraretiarius) is an enigmatic armament type. It is attested in just a handful of Latin inscriptions, although only a single extant example provides the technical term in full: D(is) M(anibus). | Lyco lib(ero or -erto) mur(milloni) | scaev(ae), pugna(rum) IIII, | fec(it) Longinas | lib(er or -ertus) contrarete | fratri b(ene) m(erenti).23 To the Immortal Shades. For the freeman (or freedman) myrmillo, Lycus, the lefthanded gladiator, who fought 4 times, Longinas the freeman (or freedman) contrarete made this for his brother well-deserving.
A number of other inscriptions from the Latin West establish a direct relationship between the myrmillo and the contrarete. Most explicit is an epitaph for the gladiator Probus from Corduba in Baetica identifying him as a ‘MUR· >R,’ which the first editor of the text reasonably interpreted to mean a myrmillo contrarete.24 A similar epitaph also from Corduba identified the deceased more simply as a ‘M>R,’ presumably also myrmillo contrarete, although A. García y Bellido, the editor princeps, understood it only to mean myr(millo).25 Such gladiators are not found only in Spain. The gladiator Ursio from Nemausus (Nîmes) was apparently also a myrmillo contrarete, though the abbreviation is unusual: M ⊃ R | VRSIO LVG | ⊃ · XIIII | CASCELLIV | SODALIS. C. Vismara and M. L. Caldelli have convincingly expanded this as: M(yrmillo), ((contra)) r(etiarius) | Ursio Lug(dunensis) | ((coronae)) XIIII, | Cascelliu(s) | sodalis.26 While there may be some relationship or similarity between the myrmillo and the contrarete, the fact that they were distinct classifications is implied by the epitaph (quoted above) for the deceased myrmillo, Lycus, set up by his frater, the contrarete Longinas. Had the two types been synonymous, surely Longinas would have said so. Moreover, the inscription from Rome from ad 177, which provides the names and classifications of a num-
119 (Un)Dressed to Kill ber of gladiators (also mentioned above), likewise indicates that the myrmillo and contrarete were distinct, since there are gladiators identified as one classification or the other. The myrmillo contrarete, therefore, seems to have been a subcategory of myrmillo, who specialized in fighting the retiarius, a new classification in the first century ad. Given the significant amount of evidence which also presents the retiarius’ opponent as a secutor, it seems reasonable to equate the contrarete with the secutor and also to assume that this new classification evolved in the early first century ad to oppose the new retiarius. For this reason, it is possible that certain authors knew that the secutor fighting a retiarius was really a type of myrmillo and called him that. Thus Quintilian (Inst. 6.3.61) describes the myrmillo chasing the retiarius as follows: et Pedo de myrmillone, qui retiarium consequebatur nec feriebat: ‘vivum’ inquit ‘capere vult.’ And Pedo said of the myrmillo who was chasing a retiarius but did not strike him: ‘I want to catch him alive.’
The verb consequor is key: the opponent of a retiarius chases him.27 What is important in all of this from our point of view here is the observation that the opponent of the retiarius, whether called a contrarete, a secutor, or even just a myrmillo, was heavily armed and that the retiarius was considered the opposite of that. Moreover, the myrmillo / secutor / contrarete with his heavy armament, helmet, shield, and gladius in many ways embodied the style and virtues of a Roman soldier, who fought with shield and sword, especially stabbing the enemy. It was also these martial values that so appealed to many Romans. The retiarius, however, had equipment not simply different, but distinctly opposed to those of the myrmillo / secutor / contrarete. Opposing equipment meant opposing tactics. Now if it was the equipment and tactics of the heavy gladiators that were assimilated to Roman martial, masculine values by the watching spectators, did they then see the opposite values in the light, nimble, exposed retiarius? The lightweight nimbleness of the retiarius combined with his naked face and body may additionally suggest that this armament classification was held to be especially licentious. Let us consider the retiarius Thelonicus from Salona in Dalmatia: here is his epitaph erected by his colleagues Xustus and Pepticius: D(is) M(anibus) | homini pagano | Thelonico quendam (=quondam) | retiario qui pietate | populi rude | liberatus est | Xustus amicus | et Pepticius sodalis.
120 Michael Carter To the Immortal Shades. For the paganus (civilian) man, Thelonicus, once a retiarius who was freed with the rudis by the piety of the people, Xustus his friend and Pepticius his comrade (erected this).28
J. Colin argued that the name Thelonicus derived from the Greek qhlu/nh, meaning effeminate, while Xustos (Greek custo/j) perhaps meant something like ‘Depilated’ or ‘Beardless’ and Pepticius perhaps derived from Greek pep & tw and meant something like ‘Softy.’ Such smoothness or hairlessness was traditionally equated with youth, though also with effeminacy and hence the availability to be penetrated.29 For many Romans Greek athletics – or the Greek gymnasium in particular – were thought to have introduced lax sexual morals, and no practices more so than nakedness on the one hand and the stress on rhythm and harmony and gracefulness on the other. Whatever its role in training soldiers or in producing heavy athletics in earlier times, the Greek gymnasium by the Roman period aimed to produce beautiful and graceful young men. Success was often measured in terms of aesthetics rather than athletic victory. Qualities such as eu0eci/a (physical condition), eu0ruqmi/a (rhythm), eu1ruqmoj ki/nhsij (rhythmic movement), and eu0trapeli/a (harmony of movement) were all inculcated in Greek gymnasia.30 However much some retiarii might have boasted of their nimbleness and however much many in the crowd might have appreciated and enjoyed it, gracefulness was not a traditional Roman military virtue. The retiarius Draukos is worth considering in this context. He was buried in Corinth by a doctor secutorum (expressed in Greek as an e0pista&thj sekouto/rwn), an instructor who specialized in the training of secutores.31 In Latin, the term draucus seems to have referred to a lightweight athlete, but especially one who could be the (passive) object of sexual desire. As an adjective, it is found several times in the poems of Martial, usually to indicate an athlete who trained naked, perhaps even infibulated to prevent sexual intercourse.32 A draucus could refer to any lightweight, graceful athlete, and so it was for that reason perfectly suited to a retiarius.33 But the sexual overtones of the word are also significant: first, it suggested, to a Roman ear at least, the passive (and hence effeminate) object of sexual desire; and secondly the gracefulness of the draucus may well have further evoked effeminacy and for that reason may have been an especially suitable name for a retiarius.34 Juvenal and the Retiarius The effeminacy and sexual deviation associated with the retiarius is evident in several passages from Juvenal. We have already seen the outrage that he
121 (Un)Dressed to Kill directs against a certain noble Gracchus who appeared in the arena as a retiarius. What is especially surprising is the fact that Juvenal treats Gracchus’ appearance as a gladiator to be somehow indicative – the culmination even – of his effeminate behaviour. Gracchus’ appearance must have been memorable, for Juvenal returns to the image of this nobleman disgracing himself in the arena in his eighth satire, where he again attacks the elite for their corruption and general worthlessness. Coming at the end – the culmination once again – of a list of distinguished Romans who had degraded themselves by appearing on stage, Gracchus’ combat is described in more detail (8.199–210): ... haec ultra quid erit nisi ludus? et illic dedecus urbis habes, nec murmillonis in armis nec clipeo Gracchum pugnantem aut falce supina; damnat enim talis habitus [sed damnat et odit, nec galea faciem abscondit]: movet ecce tridentem. postquam vibrata pendentia retia dextra nequiquam effudit, nudum ad spectacula voltum erigit et tota fugit agnoscendus harena. credamus tunicae, de faucibus aurea cum se porrigat et longo iactetur spira galero. ergo ignominiam graviorem pertulit omni volnere cum Graccho iussus pugnare secutor. ... Beyond this, what is there except the gladiatorial school? And that’s where you’ve got the disgrace of Rome: a Gracchus fighting, but not in a murmillo’s gear, and not with the shield or curving blade. He rejects that sort of get-up, you see: look, he’s brandishing a trident. Once he has poised his right hand and cast the trailing net without success, he raises his bare face to the spectators and runs off, highly recognisable, all through the arena. There is no mistaking his tunic, stretched out golden from his throat, and the twisted cord bobbing from his tall hat. And so the chaser (secutor) told to fight against Gracchus suffered a loss of face more serious than any wound. (Tr. Braund 2004)
There are several observations to make here. First, Juvenal notes that when he decided to appear in the arena, Gracchus specifically rejected the heavy armour of the myrmillo or the thraex and (as we know) chose instead the lightweight and revealing equipment of the retiarius.35 The heavy, warlike equipment of the myrmillo was not suitable for, or desired by, the effeminate Gracchus. For Juvenal, the rejection of the heavy equipment in favour of a trident is naturally to be expected from someone like this Gracchus; he
122 Michael Carter rejects the equipment used by the polar opposite of a retiarius. In other words, an effeminate, disgraceful man chooses the retiarius costume, rejecting the masculine costume of the myrmillo / secutor / contrarete. The costume of the retiarius is not what a ‘real man’ would have chosen. We learn here also that a fight of sorts did take place, though after Gracchus missed when he cast his net at his opponent, he ran away in full view of everyone. So he disgraced himself not only by appearing in the arena but also by the cowardly and womanly nature of his performance there. The real shame, however, was felt by the secutor who had been Gracchus’ opponent. Though he was probably a slave, he is presented by Juvenal as much more a ‘man’ than the noble Gracchus. To these two passages dealing with the retiarius has been added a third discovered only a century ago, the Winstedt fragment (also known as the Bodleian fragment or simply as the Oxford fragment). Though its authenticity has been questioned by some, most scholars now accept it as genuine and locate it in Juvenal’s sixth satire (following line 345).36 The passage compares private households unfavorably with the gladiatorial ludus. In private households, women are often corrupted by sexually aggressive, even deviant, cinaedi, whereas the gladiatorial ludus at least keeps these creatures separated off from the real gladiators (O 1–13): in quacumque domo vivit luditque professus obscenam et tremula promittens omnia dextra, invenies omnis turpes similesque cinaedis. his violare cibos sacraeque adsistere mensae permittunt, et vasa iubent frangenda lavari cum Colocyntha bibit vel cum barbata Chelidon. purior ergo tuis laribus meliorque lanista, in cuius numero longe migrare iubetur psillus ab euhoplo. quid quod nec retia turpi iunguntur tunicae, nec cella ponit eadem munimenta umeri †pulsatorisque† tridentem qui nudus pugnare solet? pars ultima ludi accipit has animas aliusque in carcere nervos. In any house where a professor of obscenity lives and sports, his fidgety right hand suggesting he stops at nothing, you’ll find that everyone is disgusting – no better than pathics (cinaedi). These creatures they allow to pollute the food and to stand close by the sacred table. The crockery which should be smashed once Gourd or bearded Swallow-tail has drunk from it they simply have washed. That makes the gladiator trainer’s establishment purer and better than your holy hearth. In his troop
123 (Un)Dressed to Kill Skin is told to keep well away from Loaded. Then there’s the fact that the nets aren’t kept alongside the tunic of disgrace, and that the shoulder guards and the trident of the gladiator who fights naked are not stored in the same locker. (Tr. Braund 2004)
Soon after the discovery of this fragment, A.E. Housman connected the turpis tunica worn by some retiarii here with Gracchus’ tunica (2.143 and 8.207) and suggested that there were in fact two classifications of retiarii: real ones ‘who are accustomed to fight naked’ (qui nudus pugnare solet) and ridiculous or lewd ones who appeared in the arena wearing a tunica. This would seem to explain the significance of Gracchus’ tunica: the tunica would have indicated the moral degradation of the wearer.37 Almost immediately, however, S.G. Owen called Housman’s suggestion into question. He noted that there was nothing effeminate in a tunica itself; indeed Romans once drilled on the Campus Martius in a tunica, as Cicero recalled from his youth (Cael. 5.11). Quintilian assumes that centurions wore the short tunic (Inst. 11.3.138).38 Moreover, the tunica, rather than the toga, was the everyday dress of the Roman: rather than Vergil’s gens togata, the Romans were more often Tacitus’ tunicatus populus (Dial. 7.4). So a tunic itself can hardly have been a signpost to lechery.39 The only other literary reference to retiarii tunicati is found in Suetonius’ biography of Caligula, mentioned earlier. Here five retiarii tunicati matched against five secutores surrendered without a fight, and when the enraged emperor Caligula ordered them all killed, one of the retiarii picked up a weapon and slew the secutores (Calig. 30.3). Owen observed that there was nothing about this passage to suggest that the retiarii were somehow of lower status or particularly lecherous, as would be indicated by Housman’s tunica. Instead, given that the passage is found within a larger context of the emperor’s cruelty to Roman citizens, it may well be that the passage makes more sense if we understand that these retiarii tunicati were in fact Roman citizens: free volunteer gladiators. This would also perhaps explain why the lone retiarius to fight was able to kill all five secutores single handedly: they did not feel that they could harm him. So that poor secutor ordered to fight our Gracchus could hardly strike back and kill a noble if womanly coward.40 But if we understand the tunica of a retiarius to imply only that he was a free volunteer, we should consider why it would have been a turpis tunica. For Owen, it is not the tunica that is turpis (O 9–10), but the one who donned it to enter the arena. Any free noble Roman who entered the arena to fight as a gladiator risked infamia and would be considered turpis. The infamia suffered by gladiators and other performers in Roman society was a social and quasi-legal disability involving the loss of reputation (fama) and
124 Michael Carter good name (existimatio); it was imposed on criminals, those found guilty of a breach of faith, and those engaged in certain disreputable professions, especially if so engaged for pay.41 On this point the senatus consultum of ad 17 found at Larinum is pertinent (AE 1978, 145 = 1983, 210, lines 5–6): ... ad eos qui contra dignitatem ordinis sui in scaenam ludumv[e prodirent ?seve auctora|rent] u(ti) s(ancitur) s(enatus) c(onsultis) quae d(e) e(a) r(e) facta essent superioribus annis, adhibita fraude qua maiestatem senat[us minuerent ...] ... to those who contrary to the dignity of the order to which they belonged, were appearing on stage or at games [or were pledging themselves to fight as gladiators (?)], as forbidden by the SCC that had been passed on that subject in previous years, employing fraudulent evasion [to the detriment of] the majesty of the senate ... (Tr. Levick 1983)
A free (especially noble) Roman who volunteered to join a gladiatorial ludus and to fight on the sand before the eyes of all condemned himself as infamis. This is, after all, the point of Gracchus’ later reappearance in the eighth satire: Juvenal is deriding those famous Romans who performed in public. That one would choose to do so in the effeminate guise of the retiarius made it all that much worse. That is the problem with Gracchus: not only did he play the passive role of a bride to his trumpeter-husband, but he increased his disgrace by appearing publicly in the arena as the womanish retiarius. Then he ran away. The foul men who polluted the ludus, then, would seem to have been those free volunteers who became not simply gladiators, but retiarii. Indeed, they were even worse than ordinary retiarii, since they actively sought that elegant and exposed armament type. The distinction between the two kinds of retiarii is the clearest division made in the passage.42 But since it would presumably have been more tolerable if these free volunteers had signed up to fight as secutores or myrmillones (Juvenal even says as much at 8.200– 201: see above), we can say that it was considered especially foul to fight as a retiarius. This would suggest, therefore, that the disgraceful creature in the gladiatorial ludus who is separated off from the ‘men’ is the retiarius himself, and not some even more depraved subset of the retiarii who wore a ‘foul tunica.’ This is perhaps the meaning of the division that Juvenal gives us right away: psillus is kept a long way from euhoplus.43 In Greek, a yilo&j is a lightly armed soldier, while euhoplus means well equipped with heavy armament. It appears that Juvenal is drawing a distinction between the lightly armed gladiator – the retiarius – and the other heavily equipped gladiators.44
125 (Un)Dressed to Kill It is not only Juvenal who speaks of such a division in a gladiatorial ludus; Seneca also describes the separation of the real gladiators from the obsceni (Sen. Q Nat. 7.31.3): cotidie comminiscimur per quae virilitati fiat iniuria, ut traducatur, quia non potest exui; alius genitalia excidit, alius in obscenam ludi partem fugit et locatus ad mortem infame armaturae genus, in quo morbum suum exerceat, legit. Every day we invent ways through which insult may be done to manliness, to ridicule it since it cannot be cast off. One man cuts off his genitals, another flees into the obscene part of the gladiatorial school and, hired for death, he chooses a disgraceful (infame) type of armament in which to practice his sickness.
It is evident from context that morbus (sickness) here refers to sexual or effeminate fantasies, since that is Seneca’s overall topic.45 But we should note especially that according to Seneca those in the obscene part of the ludus are specifically described as a genus armaturae: a specific type of gladiatorial armament type. Moreover, this gladiatorial type is itself infamis. Housman suggested that Seneca meant the retiarius tunicatus. But there is nothing said here about a subset of gladiators. Instead it is preferable to understand the infame genus armaturae as the retiarius himself. But even worse than the ordinary retiarii are those free volunteers, the tunicati, who play at being retiarii in order that they might appear and perform in public. They, though clothed in a tunica, are worse even than the retiarius, ‘who is accustomed to fight nudus,’ since they actively seek the opportunity to expose themselves, gracefully and effeminately, in public. When the whole passage is considered, we see that it is the retiarius who is to be compared to the untrustworthy cinaedus who perverts the household and makes everyone in it turpis (O 3). In Juvenal’s mind at least, the retiarius himself can be likened to a cinaedus. That is why any self-respecting lanista keeps them away from the rest of the familia. Though most scholars see the ki/naidoj / cinaedus as simply an effeminate (passive) type of homosexual, J. Davidson has argued that such a figure ought instead to be interpreted as any insatiable, uncontrollable sex fiend, indeed the paradigm of insatiability. In Davidson’s words, he is ‘a nymphomaniac, full of womanish desire, who dresses up to attract men and has sex at the drop of a hat.’46 Given ancient beliefs that women’s sexual desires were uncontrollable, it is not surprising to see the cinaedus portrayed as passive and receptive. According to Williams, he was a man who was ‘socially deviant’; he was not fully masculine, and his effeminacy manifested itself in his preference for women’s clothing, his mannerisms, and his lascivious and oversexed
126 Michael Carter demeanour; all this typically betrayed a desire to play the passive role in anal intercourse.47 Yet he could be aggressive and active too. Even in Juvenal here, the cinaedus is later described as a threat to bed the lady of the house (O 25: hic erit in lecto fortissimus).48 Best to keep the cinaedus away from all the rest. And if the retiarius were a comparable figure, it is understandable why Juvenal would expect any self-respecting lanista to separate his retiarii from the rest of the men. Can we then get at a cultural meaning that the costume of the retiarius commonly elicited? The retiarius, unlike other gladiatorial types and especially unlike his opponent, the heavy myrmillo / secutor / contrarete, was a lightweight, nimble gladiator who fought with little protective – or concealing – clothing. For many Romans his gracefulness and nudity would have made him suspect. Not only did the retiarius boast equipment and employ tactics that were distinct from those of his more martial opponent, but it is probable that the popular attitudes that his equipment and tactics engendered were very different from those of his opponent. Whereas heavily armed gladiators presented traditional Roman military values, the retiarius was seen to be effeminate and even morally corrupt: the polar opposite of the heavy military opponent, he had to be segregated in the shameful part of the ludus. The Retiarius: A Greek View Gladiatorial spectacles not only spread throughout the Roman Empire, especially during the imperial period, but their appearance in provincial areas is often taken as a sign of the Romanization of the region. The hundreds of gladiatorial epitaphs that survive from the Greek East attest to the popularity that gladiators came to enjoy there. Latin loanwords were proudly inscribed as gladiators boasted of being (or of having been) a qra|~c (Thracian), a sekou=twr (secutor), a proboka&twr (provocator), murmi/llwn (myrmillo), e0sseda&rioj(essedarius), or r9htia&rioj (retiarius). These terms were surely meant for popular consumption at some level and therefore reflected a degree of prestige attached to being a gladiator.49 Ordinary Greeks could be ‘fans’ just as Romans were: there are attested filopli/a (arms-loving) organizations from Ephesus and a parmularius (i.e., a supporter of Thracians, who used round shields or parmulae) even left his mark on a seat at the theatre in Aphrodisias.50 But is this all just surface-level Romanization? Certainly gladiatorial combats were exciting and could engender mass appeal. We watch fake combats made in Hollywood win Oscars and we can visit a library in Vancouver that looks like the Colosseum. Yet we are not somehow
127 (Un)Dressed to Kill more ‘Roman’ for it. Did the importation of Roman gladiatorial combats have a deeper impact on Greek culture and affect the way in which the people thought about their world? What meaning did the Greeks, for example, give to the spectacle? And what role did gladiatorial costume play? These Roman spectacles did, indeed, have an impact on Greek culture. Artemidorus, who was originally from Ephesus, but took the name ‘Daldianus’ (‘of Daldis’) from his mother’s hometown, in the mid- to latersecond century ad wrote a large and detailed book on the interpretation of dreams: the Onirocritica. He was not surprised to find that dreams about gladiators were common enough to require explication.51 In his view, a dream about a gladiator is a good dream, or at least a useful one, since it can foretell the character of one’s future spouse. What is particularly notable about this section of his work is the degree of gladiatorial detail that Artemidorus expects to find in the dreams of his (Greek) readers (Onir. 2.32): monomaxei=n de\ dika&sasqai shmai/nei h2 a!llhn tina_ sta&sin h2 ma&xhn maxe/sasqai. kai\ ga_r h9 pugmh_ ma&xh kalei=tai, ei0 kai\ mh\ di 0 o03plwn gi/netai, a# dh\ ta_ e1ggrafa kai\ di/kaia tw~n maxome&nwn shmai/nei: a)ei\ de\ ta_ me\n tou= feu/gontoj o03pla e0gklhqh=nai shmai/nei, ta_ de\ tou= diw&kontoj e0gkale/sai. e0th/rhsa de\ e0gw_ polla&kij kai\ ga&mon to\ toiou=ton o1nar proagoreu=san gunaiko\j toiau&thj, oi[a a!n h|] o03pla e1xwn oi3w| a!n tij u9pola&bh| pukteu&ein. e0peidh\ de\ a!neu tw~n o0 noma&twn au0tw~n ou0k a@n ei1h safw~j parasth=sai ta_j a)podei/ceij, xrh&somai kai\ toi=j o0no&masin.
To fight as a gladiator signifies that a man will be involved in a lawsuit or in some other dispute or battle. Indeed, a fight (pugmh&) is also called a battle (ma&xh), even if it is not fought with weapons, which signify the documents and legal writs of those fighting. The weapons of the man pursued always signify the defendant; those of the pursuer signify the plaintiff. I have often observed that this dream indicates that a man will marry a woman whose character corresponds to the type of weapons (o03pla) that he dreams he is using or to the opponent against whom he is fighting. Since without using the names (of the gladiators) it is impossible to offer clear explanations, I will use the names.
Artemidorus’ apology to his Greek readers for the use of Latin technical vocabulary of the arena is meant to be a compliment to them: he does not want to insult them by assuming they would know or use such language. It is also in keeping with the general avoidance of Latin loanwords in Greek literature of the period. Nevertheless, he does tacitly expect that his readers do know these terms, and that is interesting, for it speaks to the degree of understanding of the arena held by many ordinary Greeks.
128 Michael Carter Even more interesting, however, is the detailed knowledge that he expects from his readers, for he then proceeds to consider a number of different gladiatorial armament classifications and the type of spouse each portends. So detailed does he expect their knowledge to be in fact, that most classifications are simply named and the resultant uxorial characteristics stated. The passage continues with the Thracian used as an example and fully explained: oi[on ei0 me\n qra|ki\ pukteu/oi tij, lh/yetai gunai=ka plousi/an kai\ panou=rgon kai\ filo&prwton: plousi/an me\n dia_ to\ kateskepa&sqai toi=j o03ploij, panou=rgon de\ dia_ to\ mh\ o)rqo_n e1xein to_ ci/foj, filo/prwton de\ dia_ to_ e0pibai/nein.
For example, if one should fight against a Thracian, he will marry a woman who is rich, cunning and fond of being first. She will be rich because the Thracian’s body is entirely covered with his armour; cunning, because his sword is not straight; and fond of being first because of the attack.
Thus wealth will be indicated by the gladiator’s armament, and indeed Artemidorus in the chapter immediately preceding this one (2.31) has explained that armament such as shields and helmets appearing in a dream foretold wealth. The character of one’s wife seems in part dependent upon the weapons and tactics employed by the gladiator. The next gladiator discussed is uncertain, because the text is corrupt: ei0 de/ tij ** met 0 a)rgure&wn o03plwn pukteu&oi, lh/yetai gunai=ka eu1morfon kai\ h0re&ma plousi/an kai\ pisth\n kai\ oi0kouro\n kai\ peiqome&nhn tw~| a)ndri/: kai\ ga_r u9pobai/nei kai\ e0ske&pastai, kai\ eu0morfote/ra h9 panopli/a au3th th=j prote/raj.
If one should fight ** with silver arms, he will marry a wife who is attractive, moderately rich, faithful, a good housekeeper, and obedient to her husband. For this gladiator gives ground and is covered with his armour and his armour itself is more attractive than the previous.
The identity of this gladiator has been debated, but because the oldest (in the imperial period), most prestigious, and most widely known armament classification – the myrmillo – is otherwise missing from the list, it seems most probable to insert it here to read something like ei0 de/ tij meta_ mormi/llonoj o03plwn pukteu&oi ...52 The fact that the secutor is placed by Artemidorus next, followed by the retiarius, seems additionally to suggest that the myrmillo ought to be found here. There follows, more briefly, the secutor and then the retiarius:
129 (Un)Dressed to Kill ei0 de\ sekou&tori, eu1morfon me\n lh/yetai gunai=ka kai\ plousi/an, mega&la de\ fronou=san e0pi\ th=| ou0si/a| kai\ dia_ tou=to katafronou=san tou= a)ndro_j kai\ kakw~n pollw~n ai0ti/an e0some/nhn: a)ei\ ga_r diw&kei. ei0 de\ r(htiari/w|, lh/yetai gunai=ka a!poron kai\ e0rwtikh\n kai\ foita&da r9a~|sta tw~| boulome/nw| plhsia&zousan.
If one should fight against a secutor, he will marry a beautiful and wealthy woman, but she will be very proud of her wealth and because of this disdainful of her husband and the cause of many evils. For the secutor always pursues. If one should fight against a retiarius, he will marry a woman who is poor and sexually aggressive and madly roaming about and very readily joining with any man willing.
While the secutor and myrmillo are, as we might expect, similarly equipped, the tactics of the secutor are implied to be different from those of the myrmillo. This difference, however, is no doubt the result of the opponent against whom the secutor was regularly marched: the retiarius. We will return to the retiarius in a moment, though it may be profitable to examine the remaining gladiators: i9ppeu\j de\ th\n gunai=ka plousi/an me\n ei]nai le/gei kai\ eu0genh=, frenw~n de\ ou0 mete/xousan. o9 de\ a)ssida&rioj a)rgh\n kai\ mwra_n ei]nai th\n gunai=ka shmai/nei. o9 de\ proboka&twr eu1morfon me\n kai\ xari/essan, lamura_n de\ kai\ e0rwtikh&n. dima&xairoj de\ kai\ o9 lego&menoj a)rbh&laj h1toi farmako\n h2 a!llwj kako/tropon h2 a!morfon ei]nai th\n gunai=ka shmai/nousi. tau=ta ou) piqaneuo&menoj ou)de\ kata_ to\ ei0ko\j suntiqei\j lo&gouj gra&fw, a)lla_ a)po_ pei/raj tw~n e9ka&stote a)pobaino&ntwn polla&kij e0th/rhsa.
The horseman signifies that the woman will be rich, noble, but with limited intelligence. The essedarius signifies that the woman will be lazy and stupid. The provocator signifies that the woman will be beautiful and graceful, but greedy and sexually aggressive. The dimachaerus and the so-called arbelas signify that the woman will be either a poisoner, or else malicious or ugly. I write these things not relying on conjecture or on probabilities, but on experiences; I have often observed how each of these dreams have come true.
It is interesting that he feels little need to explain in detail the reasons for each equation. We are supposed to know what about an essedarius would imply a lazy and stupid spouse. Artemidorus is, therefore, assuming a considerable knowledge of the institution from his audience. His own accuracy in naming the types is supported by the discovery that the arbelas is now known to have represented an actual gladiator.53 To return to the retiarius. That poverty should be implied by this gladiator is obvious enough and internally consistent with what Artemidorus has
130 Michael Carter argued elsewhere. Since the retiarius did not have a shield or helmet at all, and since these paraphernalia were indicators of wealth, it is logical that a retiarius-wife would bring no money to the marriage. Compared with the other, heavily armed gladiators, who wore shiny helmets and other equipment, the retiarius did indeed look poor. The reasons for the extremely lewd, wanton character, however, are less easy to explain. Indeed, elsewhere Artemidorus notes that nakedness in a dream is ambiguous: for a poor man it is good but for others it is not good and signifies the loss of the embellishments of life (2.3). Instead of having an internal rationale, I would argue that the attitude implicit in Artemidorus’ text regarding the retiarius comes from outside the text, that is, from the popular conceptions concerning this gladiatorial costume; that is, that the retiarius represented a lewd, effeminate, and sexually aggressive character, somewhat akin to a cinaedus. Given Juvenal’s attitude to this type of gladiator, discussed above, it may not be surprising to find this attitude in Artemidorus, too.54 Yet that was a Roman attitude – not necessarily a Greek one. Moreover, much of that attitude was formed against a backdrop of anti-Hellenism. We should remember what Juvenal had to say about the Graeculi who had come to make Rome their home (3.58–125). Furthermore, athletic nudity had long held a central place in how the Greeks viewed themselves. L. Bonfante has called it a ‘costume’ in its own right.55 The gracefulness and elegance of the retiarius, which made him suspect among Romans, were qualities admired and inculcated in the Greek gymnasium. The suggestions of effeminacy and gracefulness, qualities that led Juvenal at least, I have argued, to condemn the retiarius, were also more acceptable in the Greek East. Why should Greeks then find these same qualities so much to their displeasure in a retiarius? The answer may lie in the fact that traditional Greek athletics, which were practised naked, excluded women from the audience, whereas Roman gladiatorial munera did not. Indeed, some elite women in the Greek East even owned gladiatorial familiae as part of their responsibilities as priestesses of the imperial cult.56 For Plutarch, this form of disgraceful public male nudity was something with which the Romans had infected the Greeks. Plutarch not only records the elder Cato’s expected prudish suspicions of Greek nakedness, but he also observes what later happened to those virtues. Cato never bathed with his son and even Roman fathers-in-law avoided bathing with their sons-in-law since they were ashamed of their nakedness. Then things changed (Cato Maior 20.6): ei]ta me/ntoi par' 9Ellh/nwn to\ gumnou=sqai maqo/ntej, au0toi\ pa&lin tou= kai\ meta_ gunaikw~n tou=to pra&ssein a)napeplh/kasi tou\j 3Ellhnaj.
131 (Un)Dressed to Kill Then, after they had learned from the Greeks the freedom in going naked, they in turn infected the Greeks with the practice even with women present.
So lewdness may characterize a retiarius-dream because the graceful, mostly naked, and exposed retiarius appeared in public in front of women as well as men. But whence the extremely aggressive sexual behaviour portended by this type of gladiator? One explanation may be that the attitude of Greeks, as reflected in Artemidorus’ interpretation of this dream, had itself been ‘Romanized.’ Juvenal likened the retiarius to the cinaedus, typically an insatiable homosexual. Still, though homosexuality was in general more accepted in Greece than in the Roman West, the ki/naidoj was thoroughly dishonoured in Greek society. Seeing the retiarius as a ki/naidoj would explain the aggressive, insatiable, and uncontrolled sexual appetite in a future spouse portended by this type of gladiator. Artemidorus’ dreamers seem to have thought the same thing of the retiarius as did the Romans, and that is remarkable. It is one thing for a Greek to watch gladiatorial combats. It is quite another for him to see and understand them like a Roman.57
Notes 1 2 3 4 5
6 7
8 9 10
11
For Juvenal’s allusions to Martial here, see Colton 1965: 70. See, for example, Wistrand 1992; Wiedemann 1996. ILS 5142; see also Petron. Sat. 126.5–7. Ribbeck 1865: 104–6. Williams 1999: 140–1; cf. 245–2 for a broader discussion of marriage between men. He observes that Juvenal’s attack is confined to Gracchus, not the other man, because Gracchus played the passive role in the relationship. Mosci Sassi 1992: 162–4 (s.v. retiarius); Junkelmann 2000a: 94–5, 124–6. For the veles, see Isid. Etym. 18.57; CIL VI 37844 (a doctor velitum); CIL IX 466. See Mosci Sassi 1992: 181–2 (s.v. veles). Cf. Colin 1952–53: 357; Junkelmann 2000a: 128. See, for example, Shadrake 2005: 178. Mosci Sassi 1992: 171–2, s.v. ‘secutor’; cf. Lafaye 1896: 1584–5 and Meier 1881: 19–22. Ville (1981: 277–8n113, following Meier 1881: 19) rejects the possible emendation of scutorum to secutorum in Cic. Att. 7.14.2: scutorum in ludo (5,000) fuerunt, because there are no attestations of secutores in the Republican period. Robert (1940: 40n1) notes that the Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum provides the
132 Michael Carter
12 13
14 15 16 17
18
19
20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28
literal translation of secutor as a)ko/louqoj, though this word appears nowhere else in reference to a gladiatorial secutor. Artem. Onir. 2.32 (see below). Livy 7.10.9–10, with Oakley 1998: 113–48 for discussion; Livy (7.10.6) compares the image of the two men confronting one another to a gladiatorial spectacle (spectaculi magis more quam lege belli): see Oakley 1998: 140 ad loc. Welch 1994; Wiedemann 1996; Junkelmann 2000a: 145–55; cf. Junkelmann 2000c; Coulston 1998. Junkelmann 2000a: 129–55; more briefly Junkelmann 2000b and 2000c; see also Shadrake 2005. Junkelmann 2000a: 145–55. For the importance of the thrust (as opposed to the cut) in gladiatorial combat, see Carter 2006. CIL VI 631 = ILS 5084 = Sabbatini Tumolesi 1988: no. 45. For discussion, see Meier 1881: 22; Lafaye 1896: 1585; Schneider 1918: 777; Mosci Sassi 1992: 172. For a lengthier discussion of the secutor and contrarete, see Junkelmann 2000a: 103–10. Festus 359 L = 284 M, cited, among others, by Lafaye 1896: 1587 n. 18; Ville 1981: 408; Mosci Sassi 1992: 144: retiario pugnanti adversus myrmillonem cantatur :‘non te peto, piscem peto; quid me fugis, Galle?’ quia myrmillonum genus armatura gallica est insigne; myrmillones ante Galli appellabantur (This is sung by the retiarius as he fights the murmillo: ‘I do not seek you, I seek a fish; why do you flee me, you Gaul?’ He sings this because the murmillo is a Gallic type of gladiator and these murmillones were once called ‘Gauls’). Lafaye 1896: 1584 (Samnis) and 1587–8 (Gallus); cf. Mosci Sassi 1992: 168–9 (s.v. Samnis) and 144–5 (s.v. ‘myrmillo’). But see CIL IX 466 = ILS 5083a = Buonocore 1992: no. 68 from Venosa, dated to the first century ad, where there appears a Samnis (lines 23–24), several myrmillones (lines 14–20), and a Gallus (lines 29–30). For a Samnis called Germanus from Gades (Cádiz), cf. AE 1962, 58 = García y Bellido 1960: 139–40, no. 13, undated, but probably early imperial. Junkelmann 2000a: 110–11. See Cic. Phil. 3.31; 5.20, 30; 6.10, 13; 12.20; cf. Merkelbach 1995. Angelov et al. 1996. CIL VI 10180 = ILS 5105 = Sabbatini Tumolesi 1988: no. 75 (from Rome). CIL II²/7, 363; Piernavieja Rozitis 1971: 161–164, no. 2 = 1977: 162–163, no. 66. CIL II²/7, 361. For its interpretation as myrmillo contrarete, see Piernavieja Rozitis 1971: 162 = 1977: 159, no. 61; cf. García y Bellido 1960: 130, no. 4, reading myr(millo). ILGN 436 = Vismara and Caldelli 2000: no. 14 (pl. 11.1). For discussion, see Grodde 1997: 26–7. ILJug III 2617 = AE 1934, 284.
133 (Un)Dressed to Kill 29 Colin 1952–53: 345–6, noting also (343) the retiarius Licentiosus from the Villa Borghese mosaic. For a good discussion of the relationship between depilation and effeminacy, see Williams 1999: 26, 73–4 (with further references); for softness (mollitia) and effeminacy, Williams 1999: passim (with further references), esp. 127–32. 30 Crowther 1991; Dickie 1993; Slater 1994; Newby 2005: 38–44. See esp. Plut. Quaest. Rom. 40 = Mor. 274d. 31 For the inscription and much of what follows, see Carter 1999. Unfortunately, the draucus is not discussed by Adams 1982; see Richlin 1984: 492. 32 Mart. 1.96.11–12; 9.27.10–12; 11.72. At 7.67 and 14.48, the draucus is presented as a graceful, ball-playing athlete; cf. Dickie 1993: 118–120. 33 Carter 1999: 265–8, building on Housman (1930), who thought the draucus to be more of a strongman. 34 See, for example, Mart. 9.27.14, where reference to the draucus suggests male to male fellatio: so Housman 1930: 115; cf. CIL IV 2193 for Drauca, a prostitute at Pompeii. 35 Barton (1993: 26) also notes that Juvenal specifically describes Gracchus as a retiarius, but her focus is on the fact that the retiarius’ equipment left Gracchus completely exposed and his face visible, whereas the equipment of a heavily armed gladiator would have concealed his features and provides some anonymity. 36 For another recent confirmation of its authenticity, see Sosin 2000 (with bibliography and discussion, including a history of the debate). Unfortunately, Adams 1982: 221 has only the briefest of references to the Oxford fragment. 37 Housman 1904. 38 See Vout 1996: 209–13. 39 But other tunics could be. Those tunics that extended to ankle length, or tunics with long sleeves could indicate effeminacy, though in no place is the tunica of the retiarii described in this way. See further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume, discussing Cic. II Verr. 5.13.31 and 33.86 and Gell. NA 6.12; cf. Heskel 1994: 140; Owen 1905: 354, citing Plaut. Poen. 1303; Hor. Sat. 1.2.25; Cic. Cat. 2.22; Verg. Aen. 9.616; see also Colin 1952–53: 348. 40 Owen (1905: 356–7) goes on to argue that the golden tunica worn by Gracchus is in fact the costume of a priest of the college of the Salii. Cf. Mosci Sassi 1992: 162–4 (s.v. retiarius) for a summary of the arguments of Housman and Owen. 41 See OCD³ s.v. infamia; Levick 1983: 108–10; Ville 1981: 339–44; Wiedemann 1992: 28–9. The Tabula Heracleensis (FIRA I², no. 18 = Roman Statutes, no. 24), lines 112–113, dating to the late Republic, provides a list of those disqualified from the local ordo (including gladiators); although the decree itself does not specify infamia as the explanation for their disqualification, this disability can be argued to have been the reason. 42 For the logic of the Winstedt fragment as it pertained to the retiarii, see briefly
134 Michael Carter
43
44 45 46
47
48
49
50
51
52
Reeve 1973, concluding that the fragment can only be read to imply that ‘a retiarius who fights naked does not store his equipment in the same place as the retiarius who fights with a tunic.’ I have accepted the emendation of euhoplo for the MS eupholio. See Leo 1909 and Colin 1952–53 with Martyn 1987 and Braund 2004: loc. cit. Housman (following A. Platt) had preferred to emend it to euphono: see Housman 1931: xlviii and loc. cit., arguing that Roman satire ‘does not coin descriptive or etymological proper names.’ Clausen (1992) in the revised OCT and Willis (1997) in the Teubner left it as †eupholio†. So Knoche 1938: 205n26. Cf. Colin 1952–53: 343; Highet 1954: 251; Reeve 1973: 124. See Cerutti and Richardson 1989: 589–90; Williams 1999: 141. Davidson 1997: 179; see 167–82 for his entire discussion. Cf. Pl. Gorg. 493a-494e: the kinaidos is the paradigm of uncontrollable lust. A cinaedus is not necessarily an unmanly, poor fighter: see Phaedrus Per. 10 where a cinaedus in Pompey’s army (the dedecus castrorum) could still fight successfully in single combat. I would like to thank my colleagues Allison Glazebrook and Sarah Parker for valuable discussions on this matter. Williams 1999: 175–8 and 209–18. For ancient beliefs concerning women’s sexual desires, see Williams 1999: 153: ‘Also relevant are ancient beliefs that women craved or even needed sex more often than men; sex-craved men were then acting like women.’ See Edwards 1993: 83; Williams 1999: 206–8. For the cinaedus elsewhere in Juvenal, see 9.34–46 and 2.8–15. Cf. Petron. Sat. 21 for an active and aggressive cinaedus; so, too, the cinaedus Furius in Catull. 16. Richlin (1993: 533 and 549) suggests that those references to the cinaedus as a closet womanizer (as here O 20–34) are anomalous, though Davidson’s interpretation of the cinaedus as any uncontrolled, insatiable nymphomaniac, not simply a passive one, explains this aspect of the cinaedus. On ‘elite’ inscriptions, on the other hand, there is an almost complete absence of Latin loanwords associated with the arena, and this even as the person boasts of having presented monomaxi/a kai\ kunhge/sia (gladiatorial combats and venationes); see Robert 1940: passim. Robert 1940: 24–7. For a theatre seat from Aphrodisias with a graffito identified by an accompanying inscription as a Thraex, see Roueché 1993: 110 and plate XIV, suggesting reasonably that the figure was carved by a parmularius. Onir. 2.32 is the key passage, but for the same observation, see also 1.5; for dreams by a gladiator, see 1.16 and esp. 5.58. For the date of Artemidorus’ work and a critical text, see Pack 1963; for an English translation, see White 1975. For an interesting discussion of his work overall, see Price 1986. Hercher (1864: ad loc.) inserted the Samnis here, though this is impossible.
135 (Un)Dressed to Kill
53 54 55 56 57
Meier (1881: 42–3) proposed that the ‘missing’ myrmillo ought to be inserted into the crux. This reading finds some support in a manuscript gloss (in Lc) which supplies murmi/llwn in the margin. Robert (1940: 65n3) was silent on the crux. For discussion, see Carter 2001. We should recall also the gladiator Polyneikes, who changed from a secutor to a myrmillo (Angelov et al. 1996). This change may be seen as an advancement. See Ritti and Yilmaz 1998: 469–79; Junkelmann 2000a: 111–12 (with plates 158– 61); Carter 2001. So Pack 1960: 32n2. Bonfante 1989: 544. See, for example, Robert 1940: 221–2 no. 273; 189 no. 185; 226 nos. 289 and 290; Ritti and Yilmaz 1998: 448. I would like to thank Jonathan Edmondson and the two anonymous referees for their careful proofreading and thoughtful suggestions. They have greatly improved the chapter. Errors that remain are, of course, my own.
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PART II
Fashioning the Female
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6 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl kelly olson
Since the early 1980s Roman social historians have devoted significant attention to the Roman family. Children have become one of the focal points of this scholarship, and much of this work has incorporated iconographical sources.1 This is true for Greek childhood as well. As the editors of a catalogue prepared to accompany an exhibition on ancient Greek children have recently commented, the topic lies at the intersection of many related fields: social history, family and gender studies, the history of education, sociology, anthropology, medicine and health, and the history of art.2 Most significantly for the topic to be treated in this chapter, historians of the Roman family have successfully challenged the previously held assumption that ’childhood’ as a separate stage of life was only invented in early modern Europe.3 Most now believe that childhood was distinguished and marked off as early as the Roman period, while at least one scholar has argued that such a separation started as far back as the Aegean Bronze age.4 This distinction between childhood and adulthood was effected in part, it has been maintained, by clothing. A young girl, for instance, wore a special costume that distinguished her from the adult woman.5 Roman children’s physical appearance is, therefore, a pertinent question, and one in which historians of the family should not be uninterested, since it is often remarked that the Romans used clothing to mark gender, social status, and age.6 While the general statement that the Romans viewed childhood as a separate stage of life now seems uncontroversial, the supposition that Roman childhood was marked by a special form of dress is one that deserves close re-examination. This is the main aim of this chapter. The topic, however, is one on which it is difficult to make any definitive statements. The study of Roman girlhood, as opposed to Roman boyhood, is fraught with problems. Women did not usually become socially significant
140 Kelly Olson for the Romans until they married, and in literary texts boys are mentioned or described much more often than their female counterparts. (In addition, ancient authors do not often specify the actual age of the girl in question. In this chapter, by ’girl’ I mean a young woman or girl, eighteen years of age or under, and unmarried.) The costume of the Roman freeborn girl is thus on the whole difficult to determine in part because literary references to her clothing are not plentiful. Similarly, in the area of visual evidence, ’figures of either young or very little girls in Roman art are few in number.’7 As Huskinson has noted, the fact that visual representations often fail to offer clear distinctions between boys and girls is ’another factor which threatens the visibility of girls in many [sarcophagus] scenes’; ’the general picture is of many girls being depicted very much in male terms.’8 For all these reasons, the clothing of the young Roman female is often neither clearly visible nor easily identifiable in the historical record. This chapter, therefore, attempts, first, to draw together the scattered artistic and literary evidence to reconstruct some descriptive details of Roman girls’ appearance. Then it explores whether childhood as a separate phase of life was in fact reflected in female clothing, jewellery, and cosmetics; and finally, it investigates whether the description of girls’ clothing to be found in ancient and modern authors was indeed ‘the’ costume of the Roman girl. Because the sources are chronologically disparate and diverse in terms of their genre, I begin with a discussion of some of the key methodological issues underlying my study. Method This study will focus on the women and young girls of Rome and Italy, mainly in what has been termed ’the central period’ in Roman history: that is, roughly 200 bc to ad 200 (although certain pieces of evidence fall outside these chronological limits; see below). The problems inherent in using ancient literary texts to study Roman women are now widely recognized. Few sources exist that were written by women themselves,9 and those that mention women were written by males, and members of the elite at that, who tended to characterize women, when they mentioned them at all, as personifications of archetypes; that is, women are presented either as ideals of womanly virtue or as stereotypically and dangerously evil.10 In addition, these imperfect sources are diverse in terms of their date and type. There is no extended literary narrative on Roman women, children, or clothing.11 Thus, the authors considered in this chapter range in date from the first century bc to the sixth century ad. Although chronologically disparate, these sources do, I would argue, reflect something of the social
141 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl attitudes and cultural mores of the central period. In addition, the authors considered are drawn from many different genres of literature: satirists and erotic poets, but also moralists, historians, jurists, and (on occasion) later lexicographers and antiquarians. All contribute much that is pertinent to cultural history. Using such a piecemeal or ’mosaicist’ approach12 to a historical topic may seem dangerous to some: one of the traditional practices in Classical Studies has been to concentrate on a single genre and to respect the divide between literature and history.13 But because of the disconnected nature of the source material, those engaged in ancient cultural studies must draw together evidence from diverse authors and genres. Because many representations are inconsistent (’an important caveat against ever taking a single genre as “the” guide to ancient attitudes’),14 using a mosaicist approach can help to highlight interpenetration and similarities between and amongst sources. There are problems, too, surrounding the artistic evidence for Roman dress. As with the ancient literary sources, I apply a ’mosaicist’ approach here too, in that I consider, for instance, private funerary monuments alongside ’official art’ such as the Ara Pacis. My justification for doing this is that both the interplay between public and private art and the influence of one on the other have now been amply demonstrated by Roman art historians.15 In addition, I assume that because the nature of Roman art generally is public and status-oriented, what we see depicted on funerary reliefs, in official art, and in statues and portrait busts is not private or indoor clothing, but formal and ceremonial clothing, which we might expect a sitter to be portrayed in.16 Literary Evidence for the Tunic, Toga, Supparus, and Strophia The tunic (tunica) or underdress was the basic costume of all classes and both genders at Rome. We know from artistic evidence that the freed or freeborn girl’s tunic, like the sexually mature woman’s, reached to her instep or feet.17 In addition, a few authors tell us that the girl wore the toga praetexta, the toga bordered by a purple stripe, just as freeborn boys did.18 Why children wore the toga itself is unclear,19 but the wool of the garment and especially its purple band (likely woven directly onto the toga) had a general apotropaic significance.20 Persius described the purple stripe as the ’guard’ of pre-adolescence (custos purpura, Sat. 5.30); in a declamation attributed to the rhetorician Quintilian, the colour purple is described as the one ’by which we make the weakness of boyhood sacred and revered’ (quo infirmitatem pueritiae sacram facimus ac venerabilem, [Quint.] Decl. 340.13). It guarded the child and preventing him/her from seeing any bad
142 Kelly Olson omens, for instance. More importantly, however, the costume served to mark off those citizen boys and girls who were to be shielded from obscenity or sexual contact.21 Thus Festus reports that impure words were not to be uttered in the presence of a child clad in the toga praetexta.22 Valerius Valentinus boasted in a ribald poem that he had seduced a puer praetextatus and a freeborn girl, which was used in court to undermine his authority as prosecutor (Val. Max. 8.1 absol. 8). There are only a few sources (over a wide chronological range) which state that the toga praetexta was worn by girls, and they are worth quoting in full. Macrobius tells us that in the time of the third Roman king, Tullus Hostilius, praetextae were not worn by children, as this piece of clothing conventionally marked the holding of a magistracy;23 unfortunately, there is no way to know when girls adopted the praetexta. Cicero asks Verres, in relation to the daughter of P. Annius: ’Would you, therefore, tear off the toga praetexta from the pupil? Would you remove the ornaments not only of her fortune but also of her freedom?’24 Propertius states that unmarried girls wore the toga praetexta;25 Festus that ‘newly’ married women have laid it aside (see above, n22). In his address to pagan Romans in the latethird century ad, Arnobius asks, ’Do you still offer the little togas of maidens to Fortuna Virginalis?’26 I would argue that these authors, writing in varied genres and with a range of motives, all reveal that young girls wore this type of clothing.27 On reaching sexual maturity, the freeborn boy dedicated his bulla to the household Lar and assumed the toga virilis (Pers. Sat. 5.30).28 There are just two references to a Roman girl doing something similar. Varro stated that a girl would dedicate her toys along with articles of clothing to the Lares: ’To the Lares she hangs up little grotesques, soft balls, hairnets [or net bags], breast-bands.’29 Arnobius reminded his audience that a Roman daughter would dedicate her toga praetexta to Fortuna Virginalis on the eve of her marriage, as we have already seen (Ad. nat. 2.67, discussed above). As George notes, the relative obscurity of this rite in ancient literature could reflect either ’its relative insignificance in the female life-cycle,’ or possibly the ignorance of our authors on female ritual.30 It might also indicate its unimportance to male authors. The supparus is an undertunic, mentioned in connection with the costume of the young girl and the bride.31 The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines this article of clothing incorrectly, stating that perhaps it was a scarf or shawl (from Lucan’s description; see below). Although Varro defines it as a garment worn ’above’ (the tunic? supra, hence the name),32 an undergarment is clearly meant in the few passages in which the term is used.33 Nonius says the supparus is a linen covering for the thighs (linteum, i.e.,
143 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl any piece of linen cloth, or it could refer to a specific garment made of linen), which is worn underneath clothing (subtus) and which hangs to the feet (Non. 866 L = 540 M). In this same passage, Nonius quotes Varro’s Eumenides (line 121): ’Wrapped in a purple supparus she shone splendid here, [and] wore a crown sparkling with gold and gems.’34 Nonius also quotes Novius: ’A pure linen supparus, from Velia – Absolute bait!’35 Paul the Deacon, quoting Festus, states that the supparus is a piece of linen clothing for girls (he asserts it is equivalent to the subucula or camisia, a nightgown), and quotes a line from Afranius: ’I’m not a girl even if I am clothed in a supparus.’36 Lucan, the only author to describe the garment in detail, mentions it as part of the clothing of the bride, and seems to depict it as ’narrow,’ with short sleeves: ’No narrow suppara hanging from the tips of the shoulders enclosed the bare upper arm.’37 So the supparus seems to have been worn by or associated with the costume of the young girl. Girls also wore the breast-band or strophium, as did the sexually mature woman, and this article of clothing was common enough to be mentioned in a range of authors.38 Nonius says the breast-band is that which restricts or checks the growth of virgins’ breasts (863 L). In Terence’s Eunuch, Chaerea confides in his friend Parmeno that his love is: a girl not like the virgins in our society whose mothers try and fit them with falling shoulders and bind their breasts to make them slim. If one of them is a little plump they call her a boxer, and they reduce her food. She’s good by nature, but they make her by their care into a rush. Thus, they are loved [i.e., the girls attract suitors].39
Girls were ideally supposed to be slender: Vitruvius states that girls have slight figures (De arch. 4.1.8). On an examination of the evidence it is clear that the ideal shape of a woman was different in antiquity: the modern erotic ideal of full breasts, small waist, and rounded hips has not in fact been a cultural constant. An alluring Roman woman possessed small breasts and wide hips, an ideal that is borne out by artistic as well as literary evidence.40 Thus Soranus directed nurses to swaddle a female infant tightly at the breasts and more loosely at the hips, ’to take on the shape that in women is more becoming’ (Sor. Gyn. 2.15 [84]). Similarly, Pliny tells us that epimedion leaves beaten up in wine ’check the growth of maidens’ breasts’ (HN 27.76: virginum mammas cohibent). Vittae and Lunula Literary sources also mention vittae and lunulae. Propertius states that vittae (fillets) bound the young girl’s hair.41 Valerius Flaccus tells us that
144 Kelly Olson Medea before her flight ’kissed for the last time her virgin fillets.’42 Nonius, citing Varro, writes that young girls before they married ’went bare-headed, with hair combed and bound with vittae.’43 Like boys, girls ideally wore an apotropaic amulet: a lunula or moon-shaped pendant, which was the equivalent of the boy’s bulla.44 In Plautus’ play, Epidicus asks the young girl Telestis: ’Don’t you remember my bringing you a gold lunula on your birthday and a little gold ring for your finger?’45 Isidore of Seville provides an explicit definition: ’Lunulae are female ornaments in the likeness of the moon, little hanging gold bullae.’46 But in Plautus’ play Rudens Palaestra says her father gave her a golden bulla on the day of her birth.47 There is also some indication that babies of both sexes wore phallic amulets (cf. Pliny HN 28.39). Artistic Evidence for the Costume of the Young Girl Some Roman authors tell us, then, that before marriage the young girl wore the tunic and toga, bound her hair with fillets, and wore the lunula. But artistic evidence does not on the whole bear this description out. For instance, there is a relative paucity of togate girls in Roman art; in the fullest treatment of depictions of the toga currently available, Goette lists just fourteen examples.48 The earliest instance may be dated to the mid-first century bc; it is a statue-group from a funerary monument found in Rome depicting a mother and daughter: the girl is clad in a toga (see fig. 6.1).49 Two little girls also appear togate on the Ara Pacis; one on the south frieze (fig. 6.2),50 the other on the north frieze (fig. 6.3).51 The funerary relief of the Sertorii from Rome (fig. 6.4, part of the collection of antiquities from Ince Blundell Hall, Liverpool), dating to the middle of the first century ad,52 and the bust of a young girl from the Severan period (fig. 6.5; context unknown, now in the Musei Capitolini) also depict young girls draped in togas.53 Sometimes girls in Roman art are shown in Greek dress, or a modification of Greek drapery.54 Wilson termed this the Doric peplos or peplum, noting that the garment was sometimes worn as an overdress with a sleeved tunic under it.55 The number of girls depicted in Roman art, however, is so scant ’that one cannot make any positive statement as to when this garment was introduced ... It is probable that this pseudo-Greek dress did not come into fashion in Rome until about the beginning of the empire, or a little later, when contact with Greece brought the Hellenizing influence into many phases of Roman life.’56 More recently, it has been argued that depicting a young girl in Greek dress was a way for her parents to communicate their sophisticated tastes to the viewer, much like the possession of Greek or Greek-inspired art. The
145 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl little girl on the north frieze of the Ara Pacis (fig. 6.3), for example, wears a toga over the chiton, ’possibly as a classicizing element of the kind so characteristic of Augustan art.’57 A bust of a young girl in the Capitoline Museum, dated to the late Hadrianic or early Antonine period, shows a young girl in a chiton, often a motif found in representations of Aphrodite in this period.58 Sometimes girls appear to be clad only in the tunic, as, for instance, the young girl on a funerary relief now in the Villa Doria Pamphilj collection, ca. 13 bc–ad 5, showing a married couple and their child (see fig. 6.6). In such representations, the toga, the all-important ceremonial sign of rank and status, is nowhere to be seen. This disjunction between art and literature has not gone unnoticed by scholars. Wilson thought that the toga was worn by young girls only in a ’very early’ (unspecified) period, and by historical times was an occasional costume only.59 On the other hand, George has stated that ’the toga was the height of formality in juvenile dress for both sexes’ even into the second and third centuries ad;60 for young girls it is a garment rarely found even on funerary monuments. In addition, she observes that family status symbols were especially important to former slaves, many of whom are represented on such funerary art. Thus, girls in these reliefs, like their brothers, ’are simultaneously laden with both the servile past of her parents and the social expectations awaiting her as an ingenua.’61 The choice of a toga praetexta for a young girl’s wear outside the home or even for portraits must have depended to a large extent on the girl’s parents. The little girls on the Ara Pacis, for instance, may be clad in togas due to Augustus’ general insistence on reinstating old-fashioned traditions (Suet. Aug. 40.5). Other aspects of the young girl’s appearance in literary sources are missing from artistic evidence as well. The south frieze of the Ara Pacis (fig. 6.2) shows a little girl wearing a lunula around her neck, the only one I can detect in Roman sculpture.62 Of course, actual lunulae may have been placed around the necks of statues (in the same manner as earrings were inserted into piercings in statues’ ears), but otherwise lunulae on young girls in Roman art are almost non-existent. Where artistic depictions of lunulae do exist with greater frequency is in Egyptian mummy portraits from the Roman period.63 Furthermore, I have been able to find no artistic representations of young girls with their hair bound in fillets. When fillets are seen in art, they are usually infulae, woollen headbands knotted at intervals with ribbons or vittae, which hang down in loops over the shoulders. These were worn during a religious ceremony as a sign of priesthood and by sacrificial victims,64 and are found, very distinctly depicted, on portraits of grown women.65 Plain vittae, fillets woven into the hair, cannot be clearly seen,
146 Kelly Olson either on portraits of women or girls. Susan Wood has argued that the vittae may have been painted into the braids of hair on statues of women and girls – paint which has now of course disappeared – in much the same way as stripes on bordered togas and stolae may also have been painted on.66 This is certainly a possibility, and would explain their almost total absence in Roman art compared to their mention in literary evidence. One scholar believes that girls’ vittae were woven into a braid down the back, and the braid itself was tied with a fillet,67 but there is nothing to indicate this particular girls’ hairstyle either in artistic or in literary evidence. Sometimes a girl’s hair was worn in the ’melon hairstyle’ (Melonenfrisur); that is, twisted back from the crown in sections and wound into a bun at the back of the head (see figs. 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.6); ’in portraits it generally indicates that the subject is not yet married.’68 It is true that generally the hairstyles of young girls in Roman art tend to be simpler than their older counterparts’ often ’architectonic’ styles, but it is also true that there is no one hairstyle common to all young girls in the visual evidence, no matter what time period one is considering. Thus in one portrait-bust (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; fig. 6.7) dating to ca. ad 200 the hair of a young girl is shown hanging loose about her face;69 in another, a girl’s hair is bound simply into a bun, as in the bust from the Musei Capitolini (fig. 6.5). It is difficult to see what role vittae may have played in such hairstyles. Even the statement that girls had simple hairstyles may sometimes be challenged. Michele George has noted that there are several reliefs, showing a young girl and her mother or family, in which the girl’s hairstyle is more elaborate than the matron’s. In fig. 6.1, the daughter has a complicated ’top plait’ style, while her mother’s is noticeably more sedate.70 The relief of the Sertorii (fig. 6.4) also shows a girl (the second figure from the right edge) with a much fancier hairstyle than her mother (the last figure on the right), with rings of spit curls framing her face. The funerary altar of Iunia Procula from Rome, dating to the Flavian period, also shows a fashionably coiffed eight-year-old.71 According to Michele George, such an elaborate hairstyle on a young girl perhaps follows a Hellenistic tradition and thus subtly communicates the status and sophisticated taste of her parents; the mother’s simpler hairstyle fittingly reflects a matron’s propriety ... Young girl and adult woman are both therefore portrayed according to the fashions appropriate to their time of life; by acting as a foil, each reinforces the visual impact of the other and serves to emphasize their different social roles.72
I would like to suggest an additional reason for fashionable hairstyles on
147 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl young girls: that perhaps girls of a certain class, in the years before they were married, were adorned both to emphasize their status and their family’s status within Roman society, and in the hope of attracting a suitor (see further below). While prepubescence may seem an early age for such sexually charged adornment, we must remember that upper-class Roman girls at least tended to marry young.73 Ancient authors speak of veiling the head out of doors only in relation to married women (thus demonstrating the sexual significance of veiling),74 and indeed little girls in funerary reliefs do not wear the palla over their heads. Sometimes in funerary sculpture, however, the girl is clad in the palla (as a cloak) and stola of the grown woman (see fig. 6.7): her clothing indicates the maturity which she had never attained, thereby making her death all the more poignant. Our sources unfortunately remain silent on the colours of girls’ clothing, but surely they partook of many shades just as mature women’s did, if the girls did not habitually wear the toga praetexta.75 Adornment, Colour, Cosmetics There is some literary evidence for young Roman girls utilizing ornament and cosmetics, evidence which (again) occurs in a range of authors and genres. A fragment of the playwright Accius (who lived from 170 to ca. 86 bc) includes the phrase ’the father secretly in virgin’s finery’ (cum virginali mundo clam pater).76 In Terence’s Eunuch, Chaerea implies that young women use cosmetics when he says that the girl with whom he is in love (a citizen girl, whom he later marries) has verus color (318), and a ’fresh kind of face’ (nova figura oris, 317).77 In Livy’s account of the repeal of the lex Oppia in 195 bc, L. Valerius admits (34.7.11) that with the law’s repeal some men would have less control over the adornment of their female relatives (perhaps a concern for those who were upset at the visibility that adornment gave a woman): minus filiae, uxores, sorores, etiam quibusdam in manu erunt. Filiae of course can be of any age – but the point here is that Latin draws a distinction between wives (uxores) and daughters: filiae are unmarried. Ovid claims that ’even to virgins, their beauty is a care and a delight.’78 This last is a problematic statement for several reasons. Ovid may be prescribing here, not describing actual practice (on which see below); or he could merely be referring to spinsters, who ought to have no need of adornment since they lack admirers.79 Other authors, of diverse genres and chronological range, mention the adornment of unmarried girls. Plutarch, in explaining the origins of the Nonae Caprotinae, recounts that after the Gauls had captured Rome and been driven out by Camillus, a demand for Roman freeborn virgins as brides
148 Kelly Olson came from hostile Latins who were encamped near the city. Instead of acceding to this demand, however, the Romans sent out slave girls dressed as citizen virgins in ’fine clothing and gold,’ showing that Plutarch at least thought it was normal for young girls of marriageable age to be adorned in this manner.80 Claudian in the late-fourth century portrays a mother adorning her daughter in the hopes of attracting a suitor: And as a careful mother at the approach of her daughter’s lover does all that trembling hand can do to enhance (ornat) the charms in hopes of a proper marriage, often readjusts dress and girdle, confines her breast with bands of green jasper, gathers up her hair with jewels, sets a necklace about her throat, and hangs glistening pearls from her ears, so Rome, in order to be pleasing in your sight, offers herself to your admiring gaze more glorious and with hills made higher and herself greater than you knew her.81
Mothers were also reportedly guilty of enhancing or even supplying their daughter’s physical attractions (as in the passage from Terence’s Eunuch, discussed above). These varying passages, drawn from a range of authors and genres, all demonstrate a concern to ornament one’s unmarried daughter according to her station. There is some evidence in Roman art for the ornamentation of young girls with jewels. George has noted that the girl on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis (fig. 6.2) is wearing, as well as the lunula, three gems on her brow, possibly pearls.82 On the north frieze (fig. 6.3), the young girl wears pearls or gems on her forehead, earrings, and a necklace.83 The girl on the Sertorii relief (fig. 6.4, second figure from the right) has pearls interspersed amidst her curls.84 A late-second-century tomb of a young unmarried girl around twenty years old named Crepereia Tryphaena, excavated in Rome in 1889, contained the paraphernalia of adornment: haircombs, a beryl necklace, pearl earrings, mirrors, finger rings, as well as a beautiful jointed ivory doll.85 This may be a further indication that young or unmarried girls wore jewellery and even, possibly, cosmetics. Alternatively, perhaps such articles as makeup and jewellery were meant to make a girl’s death all the more poignant in alluding to a stage of life she would never attain: the burial chamber of a baby girl at Rome in the Hadrianic era, for instance, contained a doll, makeup cases, and a gold ring.86 Adornment may have been a marker of womanhood as well as a marker of mature femininity: girls might possibly have been inducted into the ranks of sexually attractive, if unmarried, women by the use of cosmetics and items of adornment, although there is no actual evidence for this.
149 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl Ornamentation and finery in Roman antiquity may not, therefore, have been exclusively linked with female sexual maturity or marriage.87 Young girls in Roman antiquity may have used cosmetics and, if they were of the upper classes, almost certainly utilized gems and other adornments. Nor is it likely they habitually wore the toga praetexta. If such was indeed the case, the appearance of the unmarried girl might have resembled that of the married or mature woman more closely than has previously been imagined. Conclusion This chapter set out, first, to draw together some details of the dress of young Roman freeborn girls, and we have seen that there are certain items of clothing mentioned in the written record as belonging to such girls: the toga praetexta, the supparus, the strophium. Girls are also said to have worn an amulet, the lunula, and to have bound their hair with fillets, vittae. Together, these items are often given by modern scholars as ’the’ costume of the young Roman girl. But the items that we find named in the ancient literary sources are not ubiquitous in the artistic record. There are very few girls represented as togate, for instance. It might be surmised that the toga praetexta and the other items of clothing under discussion represent ’ceremonial’ (rather than quotidian) garments; but I would argue that this is not the case, given the infrequent representation of the toga on young girls in Roman art in contexts in which one might reasonably expect it: for instance, on funerary monuments. Lunulae (if not vittae, which may have been painted on) are absent from most girls’ portraits. Nor is there any one hairstyle peculiar to the young Roman girl: some display simple styles, others more elaborate ones. In addition, ornamentation and finery in Roman antiquity may not have been exclusively the province of the mature or married woman: there are several statements in the literary sources regarding young girls utilizing cosmetics and jewellery. Some statues of young girls do exist which are ornamented, but again details are difficult to discern from artistic evidence. Why is there this discrepancy between the literary and the artistic record? Very likely because much of what we read in ancient literature about female clothing seems to be prescriptive, rather than descriptive. The appearance of girls in the literary sources has more to do with social ideals than with normal appearance.88 The well-born young girl seems to be described in terms of exemplary (not actual) appearance, an appearance that reflects her social status and makes that status immediately visible to those around her. As I have argued elsewhere,89 authors in general tend to describe an ideal (and ultimately unattainable) sartorial hierarchy. Women of all ages clearly
150 Kelly Olson did not have to wear particular types of clothes either habitually or ceremonially in order to be associated with such vestimentary signs.90 Certain items of clothing, it is clear, were imbued with a strong emblematic force, whether or not they were habitually or even ceremonially worn. This is not to assume that artistic evidence is truer or more perfect than the literary; simply that this may be one reason for an otherwise puzzling disjuncture between the two.91 This encourages me to suggest that there seems to have been no ’costume’ belonging to a Roman girl, nor any hairstyles or ornaments specific to, or restricted to, a woman of a certain age or status. Not every literary source mentions the young girl’s toga; but on the other hand, not every artistic source portrays the young girl in a tunic: clearly there was, within limits, a variety of practices and situations. I would, therefore, argue that in the area of clothing, and possibly also in regard to jewellery and cosmetics, young freeborn girls of the upper-middling and upper classes were not as visually distinct from their older counterparts as certain authors (both ancient and modern) would have us believe.
Notes 1 See for instance Bradley 1998b; Dixon 1988 and 2001b; Huskinson 1996; Kleiner and Matheson 1996: 141–8; Rawson 2003. 2 Neils and Oakley 2003: 2. 3 For the assumption, see Ariès 1962. For the views of Roman historians, see Bradley 1999: esp. 191–5; Manson 1983; Rawson 2003. 4 See Rutter 2003, identifying distinctions of clothing and hairstyles among children of different ages. 5 George 2001: 183–4; Palmer 1989 [1998]: 42–3; Sebesta 1994a: 46–8. See also Gabelmann 1985. For scepticism that the toga praetexta was worn by girls, see McGinn 1998: 160n163. 6 Sebesta 1994a, Bonfante 1994: 5; Stone 1994: 13. 7 Wilson 1938a: 133. 8 Huskinson 1996: 115. On the lack of gender distinction in Roman portraits of young children, see Fittschen 1992: 301–5. 9 But for the poetry of Sulpicia as a valuable source for questions of dress, see Keith, chap. 9, in this volume. 10 On the problems of writing women’s history using male-authored sources, see Dixon 2001b: 12; French 1990: 16; Flemming 1999: 40. 11 However, for Tertullian’s work On the Pallium, see Brennan, chap. 13, in this volume.
151 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl 12 13 14 15 16
17 18
19 20
21 22
The term derives from Barton 1993: 5–6. Dixon 2001b: 13. Dixon 2001b: xiii and 70. Paul Zanker’s work has been particularly seminal in this regard: esp. Zanker 1988; see also Bonanno 1988. In fact, Roman art is so formal and ceremonial that some scholars have argued that the clothing depicted does not represent ’normal’ dress at all: see Vout 1996: 206; Kampen 1981a: 101; Dixon 2001b: 125–6. On women’s and girls’ tunics, see Wilson 1938a: 133, 152. On the toga praetexta for boys, see Livy 34.7.2 (liberi nostri); Cic. Sest. 144, Arch. 5; Val. Max. 3.1.1; Suet. Rhet. 1.2; Isid. Etym. 19.24.16; Macrob. Sat. 1.6.17, 25; Palmer 1989 [1998]: 6–16; Sebesta 2005; Dolansky, chap. 2, in this volume. The toga was in fact originally worn by both sexes, not just children. Non. 867–868 L = 540–541 M: ’Not only men, but even women used to wear the toga. Afranius in his Fratriae [182]: “Indeed, she was standing there eating lunch with us dressed in a toga.” Varro in Book I of his De Vita Populi Romani: “... once the toga was the common garment for both night and day, for both men and women”’ (toga non solum viri sed etiam feminae utebantur, Afranius Fratriis [182]: ‘et quidem prandere stantem nobiscum, incinctam toga.’ Varro de vita populi Romani lib. 1: ‘... praeterea quod in lecto togas ante habebant. ante enim olim toga fuit conmune vestimentum et diurnum et nocturnum et muliebre et virile’). See also Serv. ad Aen. 1.282: ’... both sexes and all social strata used to wear the toga’ (... et sexus omnis et condicio toga utebatur). To confuse matters further, the toga was at some point in Rome’s history a mark of status or honor for a woman: Pliny (HN 34.28) tells of the equestrian statue of the Republican heroine Cloelia, clad in a toga (ca. 510–509 bc). On the toga for women, see further McGinn 1998: 156–71, 208–11, 331–5; Olson 2002: 393–402. Palmer 1989 [1998]: 13; Gabelmann 1985: 535–41. See Goette 1990: 4 and fig. 3 for the weaving of the praetexta border. We might also call the toga praetexta a garment which is circumtextum (Varro Ling. 5.132). On the apotropaic qualities of purple, see Sebesta 1994a: 47: ’The purple color was associated with blood ... as blood symbolically represents life, the wide range of red hues, which for the Romans included the hue purpura, has been used in cultures throughout the world to protect those who are seen as particularly helpless and defenceless against evil forces ...’ She cites Wünderlich 1925: 90 for this information. On praetextate garments generally, see Sebesta 2005: 116–18. On this see Sebesta 2005: esp. 114–16. Festus 282–284 L = 245 M: praetextum sermonem: quidam putant dici, quod praetextatis nefas sit obsceno verbo uti: ali quod nubentibus depositis praetextis
152 Kelly Olson
23
24 25 26
27
28 29
30 31 32 33 34
35 36
a multitudine puerorum obscena clamentur (it is said that ‘praetextate speech’ is so-called because it is impermissible to use obscene words before a praetextate [child]; others because obscenities are shouted by a crowd of boys to married [women?] who have laid aside the praetextate toga). Macrob. Sat. 1.6.7: sed praetextam illo saeculo puerilis non usurpabat aetas: erat enim ut cetera, quae enumeravi, honoris habitus. The term puerilis here could loosely be taken as referring to children of both sexes, although in other places (e.g., 1.6.17) Macrobius refers specifically to boys. According to legend, freeborn boys first began wearing the toga praetexta in the time of Romulus: see Macr. Sat. 1.6.16; cf. Palmer 1989 [1998]: 15 and n67. Cic. II Verr. 1.113: eripies igitur pupillae togam praetextam, detrahes ornamenta non solum fortunae sed etiam ingenuitatis? Prop. 4.11.33–34: mox, ubi iam facibus cessit praetexta maritis ...; on this passage, see further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. Arn. Adv. nat. 2.67: puellarum togulas Fortunam defertis ad Virginalem? See Roberts and Donaldson 1871; Wilson 1938a: 136; Rawson 2003: 145. For the temple of Fortuna Virgo or Virginalis in Rome, see Gabelmann 1985: 520 and n97; Richardson 1992: 158. While it might be argued that not all these sources are useful, worthy, or reliable, I would counter that to mention a piece of clothing in any context assumes a familiarity with the garment and at least with the cultural resonances of that garment on the part of the audience. For a detailed discussion, see Dolansky, chap. 2, in this volume. Varro ap. Non. 863 L = 538 M: suspendit Laribus † manias, mollis pilas reticula ac strophia. (This reading differs from Lindsay’s text and derives from the MS, Meursius Exercitationem criticarum partes II. Lugd. Batav. 1599.) Cf. Pers. Sat. 2.70. George 2001: 184 and n22. For further details, see Olson 2003: 202–3. Varro Ling. 5.131; but see Wilson 1938a: 165: ’there is no assurance that, etymologically, it has any connection with ... supra.’ Wilson 1938a: 165. Varro ap. Non. 867 + 881 L = 540 + 549 M: aurorat ostrinum hic induta supparum coronam ex auro et gemmis fulgentem gerit. This employs a reading from another manuscript: Lindsay’s edition reads indutus; but MS CA reads induta (fons codicum Paris. 7666, Lugd., Bamb., Turic). Reading induta makes more sense here, as the garment is in all other contexts spoken of as female. Non. 866 L = 540 M: Novius Paedio [70]: ‘supparum purum, Veliense interim’ – ‘ escam meram!’ On this passage, see Olson 2003: 203n16. Paul. ex Fest. 407 L = 311 M: supparus vestimentum puellare lineum, quod et subucula, id est camisia, dicitur. Afranius [123]: ’puella non sum, supparo si induta sum.’
153 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl 37 Lucan 2.363–364: ... umerisque haerentia primis / suppara nudatos cingunt angusta lacertos. (The garment is likely referred to in the plural here for reasons of scansion.) 38 On the strophium, see Olson 2003: 203–5; Leary 1996: 198–9; Goldman 1994b: 233–5; cf. Richlin 1997, a fascinating account of the medicinal uses of the female human body, but not an account of Roman clothing or underwear. 39 Ter. Eun. 313–317: haud similis virgost virginum nostrarum, quas matres student / demissis umeris esse, vincto pectore, ut gracilae sient. / si qua est habitior paulo, pugilem esse aiunt, deducunt cibum: / tam etsi bonast natura, reddunt curatura iunceam: / itaque ergo amantur. On possible fashions for slimness among women in antiquity, see Brown 1993: 229–30. 40 See Olson 2003: 204, with references. 41 Prop. 4.11.33–34: mox, ubi iam facibus cessit praetexta maritis, / vinxit et acceptas altera vitta comas ..., discussed by Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. 42 Val. Flac. 8.6: ultima virgineis tunc flens dedit oscula vittis. 43 Nonius 353 L = 236 M: minoris natu capite aperto erant, capillo pexo, vittis innexis crinibus. For more detailed discussion on vittae, see Fantham, chap. 7, in this volume. 44 On the bulla, see Gabelmann 1985: 520–1, 523; Goette 1986; Palmer 1989 [1998]. It may have held ’cures’ (remedia), earlier called ’provisions’ (praebia), but these are never explicitly described: see Macr. Sat. 1.6.9; Palmer 1989 [1998]: 20–21. Sons of freedmen and slaves were forbidden to wear it (Palmer 1989 [1998]: 15, 69). Tarquinius Priscus is said to have been the first to present his son with a bulla, as a token of bravery, since the boy had killed an enemy in battle when still of an age to wear the bordered robe (Pliny HN 33.10). Most bullae were made of gold (Festus 32 L = 36 M), but Calpurnius Siculus (Ecl. 6.41) speaks of glass bullae (vitreas … bullas). The locket, like the toga praetexta, signified the boy was not to be approached by men for sexual purposes: see Plut. Quaest. Rom 101 = Mor. 288a, stating that the bulla was worn by boys even when their other signs of rank were left off. 45 Plaut. Epid. 639–640: non meministi me auream ad te afferre natali die lunulam atque anellum aureolum in digitum? 46 Isid. Etym. 19.31.17: lunulae sunt ornamenta mulierum in lunae similtudinem, bullulae aureae dependentes. In this passage mulierum does not necessarily mean ’women’s,’ but merely ’female.’ Ulpian (as excerpted in the Digest 34.2.25.9) states: ’a legacy of female clothes includes baby clothes, female children’s clothes, and young girls’ clothes; for all those of the female sex are classed as women’ (muliebri veste legata et infantilem contineri et puellarum et virginum Pomponius libro vicesimo secundo ad Sabinum recte scribit: mulieres enim omnes dici, quaecumque sexus feminini sunt). 47 Plaut. Rud. 1171: et bulla aurea est, pater quam dedit mi natali die. This is the
154 Kelly Olson
48 49 50
51
52
53
54
only mention in Latin literature of a girl wearing the bulla, and it is likely a red herring (see Livy 26.36.5). There is nothing in the artistic evidence to suggest that girls wore the bulla. As Goette points out (1986: 144), one funerary relief which appears to show a girl wearing this amulet on closer examination actually depicts the girl in a necklace holding a round fruit to her chest (ibid., fig. 12). A possible Etruscan example of a girl in a bulla (ibid., fig. 7) seems to me a necklace with several pendants. See also Sebesta 1994a: 51n14; Palmer 1989 [1998]: 41n177. Goette 1990: 80–2, 158–9. Musei Capitolini, Rome, inv. 2176. On this statue-group, which probably also originally included a depiction of the father, see George 2001. On the south frieze, Stone sees not a toga but a palla draped as a toga (1994: 41 and n39; cf. George 2001: 189n25). For identifications of this figure, see Gabelmann 1985: 522–3; George 2001: 184–5; Gercke 1968: 130; Kleiner 1993: 33 (in which she too sees not a toga but a palla); Simon 1967: 19. On this figure and possible identifications, see Gabelmann 1985: 523–4; George 2001: 185; Gercke 1968: 132, no. G; Helbig 1966: 686, no. 1937; Kleiner 1993: 34; Olson 2004–05 [2007]; Simon 1967: 19, 21–2; Pollini 1987: 24n28. On this relief see Gabelmann 1985: 529–31 and pl. 9; Gercke 1968: 19; Hahl 1960: 16, no. 40; Kockel 1993: 198–9 and Taf. IIIc, 114a-b; Poulsen 1923: 61–62, no. 41; Weld-Blundell 1929: 87, no. 22 and pl. 34. Rome: Palazzo dei Conservatori, inv. 2746 (Fittschen and Zanker 1983: 103–4, no. 152 and Taf. 180). Wilson notes (1938a: 45–6) that by this time the praetexta stripe is on the sinus. For other examples, see Gabelmann 1985; for instance, Paulla from the monument of L. Poblicius in Cologne, dating from the first century bc: Gabelmann 1979 and 1985: 531–5; Hateria Superba on a relief in the Uffizi, Florence, inv. 942 (CIL VI 19159), dated ad 100–110: see Kleiner 1987: 183–4 (with references), and pl. XXXVI, no. 2 (cat. no. 58), noting that both Hateria Superba’s parents have Greek names and were undoubtedly of servile origin. One interesting example of a possibly togate female occurs on a funerary altar set up by Iulius Martianus to his wife in Lugdunum (Lyon) (now in the Musée de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, inv. 1221: see Espérandieu 1910: no. 1784). The woman seems to be clad in the stola, but she wears the toga (the sinus and umbo are clearly visible) and she is capite velato. See, for example, the funerary relief from Rome of Aelia Procula, second century ad (Paris, Musée du Louvre, MA 1633). She is shown in the guise of Diana, the virgin huntress, complete with dog. Assimilation to this divinity suggests the subject is unmarried; the inscription (CIL VI 10985 = ILS 8065), also dedicating the monument to Diana, does not give the girl’s age, but she has a youthful appearance: see Kleiner and Matheson 1996: 189–90, fig. 9 (photo). For a sarcophagus from the late third century ad with girls possibly in Greek dress (Vatican Museums, Museo Chiaramonti inv. 1304), see Wilson 1938a: fig. 84.
155 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl 55 Wilson 1938a: 135. On the peplos of Greek maidens, see Roccos 2000: 244–5. She notes that the peplos is worn by maiden goddesses such as Artemis, Athena, and Persephone (244), and that the Attic peplos with visible belt is the one worn by young girls. An unbelted peplos, worn by women and young girls at home, is termed the Laconian peplos (245). She further notes (259) that all the Greek girls in back-mantle and peplos are or appear to be eleven to fifteen years of age. 56 Wilson 1938a: 135. 57 George 2001: 185; cf. Gabelmann 1985: 524; on the chiton of Greek maidens, see Roccos 2000: 247–8. 58 See, for instance, Fittschen and Zanker 1983: 75–6, no. 99 and pl. 125 (Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori, inv. 956). 59 Wilson 1938a: 137; see also Goette 1989: 460–2. 60 George 2001: 184. 61 Ibid.: 187. 62 The girl on the north frieze of the Ara Pacis (fig. 6.3) wears not a lunula but a necklace with several pendants: see Goette 1990: plate 70.2. 63 See the examples in Walker and Bierbrier 1997: 40–2, 74. 64 Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.6; Stat. Silv. 4.4.93; and see further Fantham, chap. 7, in this volume. The infulae are clearly what Juvenal refers to in Sat. 2.84 when he speaks of redimicula: bands attached to a woman’s headdress and falling down on her shoulders on either side. 65 For example, the statue of Agrippina I from Tripolis (ad 23) on which the infulae are very clear: see Scholz 1992: 41–2, cat. St. 20 and fig. 25. Infulae are also depicted on busts of Vestal Virgins: for instance, on the late-Trajanic portrait bust of a Vestal in the Uffizi, Florence (see fig. 7.3), and the head of a Vestal from frieze B of the late-Flavian Cancellaria reliefs now in the Lateran Museum, Vatican, Rome (La Follette 1994: 59, fig. 3.6). 66 Wood 1999: 98. For the stripe on the bottom of the stola (the instita or limbus), see Wilson 1938a: 156–9 and Olson 2004–05 [2007]. For a different interpretation of the instita, see Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. 67 Richardson 1977: 485. 68 Kleiner and Matheson 1996: 141. 69 The gender of the sitter is probably female given how she is dressed; but it is odd that her hair is not pinned back. For the view that as soon as a young girl’s hair was long enough it was put up, see Croom 2002: 122. 70 George 2001: 181–2. 71 See Kleiner 1987: no. 23, pl. XV.1–2; Rawson 2003: 47–9 and fig. 1.11. For the inscription, see CIL VI 20905. 72 George 2001: 182. 73 On the age of Roman girls at marriage generally, see Treggiari 1991: 398–403, with references. She notes (401) that ’the most eligible women of the imperial
156 Kelly Olson
74
75 76
77 78
79
80 81
82 83 84
family and senatorial class sometimes married younger than the normal age [fifteen years old].’ Val. Max. 6.3.10; Sen. Controv. 2.7.6; Isid. Etym. 19.25.1–3. On veiling in the Roman period, see Wilson 1938a: 148–50; Sebesta 1994a: 48–9; Sebesta 1997: 534–8; Croom 2002: 89–91; Olson 2002: 391–2. See Olson 2002: 398. Festus 124 L = 142 M, defining the word mundus: mundus etiam mulieris potest. Festus quotes only a fragment of Accius, and thus it is exceedingly difficult to contextualize this statement. But on this point, see Brown 1993: 231; perhaps Chaerea is assuming his beloved is a courtesan. Cf. Plaut. Most. 263–264. Ov. Ars am. 1.624: virginibus curae grataque forma sua est. In the sixth century ad young girls were supposedly led into prostitution by the promise of fine shoes and clothing: see Just. Nov. 14. pr.1. Hollis 1977: 131 assumes that virgines refers to chaste women, not young girls. But note Dig. 34.2.25.9: muliebri veste legata et infantilem contineri et puellarum et virginum (discussed above, n46). Plut. Cam. 33; cf. Rom. 29. Ovid, however, states that the ancillae went out attired in the matron’s robe: veste maritali (Ars am. 2.258). Claud. Cons. Hon. 523–529: ac velut officiis trepidantibus ora puellae / spe propriore tori mater sollertior ornat / adveniente proco vestesque et cingula comit / saepe manu viridique angustat iaspide pectus / substringitque comam gemmis et colla monili / circuit et bacis onerat candentibus aures: / sic oculis placitum tuis insignior auctis / collibus et nota maior se Roma videndam / obtulit. On this passage, see Dewar 1996: 351–5, stating (p351) that ’the particular scene described here is best interpreted as one of preparations for a marriage, rather than just a courtship-visit, is clear from its similarities with numerous epithalamia and epic descriptions of mothers, or more usually pronubae (human or divine) dressing the bride (see Nupt. 165ff, 282ff, Stil. 2.322ff).’ But the Latin clearly states procus, one who woos, not a bridegroom. According to Wilson (1938a: 144) this passage is not applicable to classical dress because it was written during the fourth century, when the Romans were ’abandoning many of the old, simple, symbolic customs’ under Oriental influence. George 2001: 185. Gabelmann 1985: 522–7. There also exist terracotta statues from Lavinium (second half of the fourth century bc) which show young girls with shorn hair wearing ornate earrings and heavy necklaces (see Torelli 1984: 49, fig. 30; 138, fig. 33). These depictions, however, are almost certainly associated with religious ritual and I do not propose to examine them in any detail here.
157 The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl 85 From an examination of the skeletal remains, the young woman was about twenty at the time of her death. See Vetere et al. 1983; Bettini 1999: 213–16; Bedini 1995: 65–75. For a full discussion of items of female adornment on women’s funerary monuments, see Shumka, chap. 8, in this volume. 86 The body of the infant was embalmed in Egyptian fashion: see Virgili et al. 1990: 116–17, fig. 19. 87 In fourteenth-century Siena and Lucca there were laws that allowed a young girl to wear the gold and linen which would by sumptuary law be denied to her as a married woman: see Hughes 1983: 93–4. 88 Contra Sebesta 1994a: 46. One could argue that the reason there is a discrepancy between art and literature on the subject of young girls’ dress is because authors are not really interested in the dress of young girls (as they are not socially significant: see above). But it is difficult then to explain a similar discrepancy in the case of the Roman matrona, who is also described in terms of her ideal appearance (see Olson 2002: 389, 391–2). 89 Olson 2002: 393. 90 We might note here that artistic and literary sources are completely silent on the costume of the older unmarried woman of the upper classes; but it is unlikely she would have worn the toga praetexta all her life: if she was in the habit of wearing the childish toga, it likely would have been laid aside at puberty, due to the connotations of adult women in togas (see Olson 2002). She would remain in the tunic and wrap, the general costume of all women. 91 On the current scholarly debate surrounding the disjunction between ancient art and literature in the representation of ancient clothing, see Stone 1994: 21; Dixon 2001b: 125; Vout 1996: 206; Kampen 1981a: 101; George 2001: 188; Kockel 1993: 53; Llewellyn-Jones 2003: 10.
7 Covering the Head at Rome: Ritual and Gender elaine fantham
I had originally planned to focus my contribution to this volume simply on the mysterious vittae that mark respectable matrons and maidens, or, more realistically, wives and daughters. But in recent months the larger issue of women covering the head or leaving it uncovered has become increasingly urgent, polarized between the humiliating burka imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban and the secularist but equally humiliating French embargo on girls wearing the hijab in public schools. I happen to think both pressures violate personal rights. The first probably needs no arguing; as for the hijab, I remember a fine Coptic woman student at Princeton telling me she was proud to wear her headscarf as a symbol of her faith. And who knows whether the French embargo may not lead fundamentalist fathers to remove their daughters from public education and drive them instead to parochial schools where they will study only half-understood excerpts from the Koran? But similar rules used to hold in our own society. When I was a child, women were expected to wear hats in church, and men to remove them – surely no hardship. Apparently an increasing number of orthodox Jewish married women have revived a law not observed since the world of the shtetl, and now cover their own hair with either a hat or a wig.1 I do not understand the logic of this practice, but a well-known text of Saul of Tarsus, the Jew turned Christian, offers the earliest Christian version of the rule, similar though not parallel to the various Orthodox and Islamic conventions. Let me quote: Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head, for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be
159 Covering the Head at Rome not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, then let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman but the woman is of the man. (1 Corinthians 11:4–8)
I am indebted to Leif Vaage for referring me to a radically new analysis of this notorious text by Richard Oster which has put into reverse the traditional concern of scholars of early Christianity with womanly modesty.2 Arguing that Corinth, refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar, reflected Roman, not Greek practice in Paul’s day, Oster sees Paul’s instructions as focused primarily on the males and their pagan Roman act of covering the head for worship. To make his point he offers an exceptionally thorough illustration of Roman practice, ritual and secular, for both males and females, which I urge readers of this volume to seek out. I would add only one reservation: in noting that women, too, would veil themselves when performing religious rites, he does not allow for the rarity of women officiating in religious acts in the pagan city of Rome. Evidence for women priest(esse)s is more easily found in other Italian and provincial communities where priesthoods were less politicized than at Rome. We should also contrast the attitude of Christianity, in which the whole congregation was seen as participating in the act of worship, with pagan Rome, where only priests and their attendants participated in sacrifice, and the public were kept at a distance as profani. But even Oster’s careful analysis does not answer the larger question: if we accept Paul’s claim that a man is the image of God, why does this require him not to cover, but to expose, his head? It is not enough to stress that Paul wants to make Christians distinct from the pagans around them: for a start, Greek pagans sacrificed uncovered. Whatever we think of Paul’s theology or his logic, the text is a useful model against which to measure Greek and Roman beliefs. Was there any single intrinsic meaning to covering or uncovering the head at Rome? I realized that I needed to expand my small topic of women’s vittae (which I shall translate as ‘headbands’), and the related infulae (‘ribbons’ or ‘streamers’), not simply in terms of gender, or secular usage, but balancing everyday female headgear against the multipurpose woollen bands of ritual, and both types against the more general practice of covering the head with one’s (male) toga or (female) palla. The plurality of factors becomes obvious when we look at Plutarch’s Roman Questions. A high proportion of these are concerned with Roman ritual practices (especially wedding practices), but Plutarch’s approach is gender conscious to the neglect of other gender-free issues. Let me start with his Question 14 (Mor. 267a-c):
160 Elaine Fantham ‘Why do sons cover their heads when they escort their parents to the grave, while daughters go with bare heads and hair unbound?’ Is it because fathers should be given honour as gods by their male children, but be mourned for as dead by their daughters, and custom in assigning the proper action to each sex has contrived what is a fitting tribute from each? Or is it that what is proper to mourning is whatever is not customary, and it is more customary for women to go in public covered (veiled) but for men to go uncovered? For among the Greeks whenever there is some calamity, women shear their hair but men grow theirs long, since shearing is customary for men, but for women it is usual to grow their hair long. Or has it been the custom for sons to cover up for the reason we said? For at tombs, as Varro says, they turn themselves round, honouring the monuments of their fathers like shrines of the gods, and after cremating their parents, when they first find a bone they declare that the deceased has become a god. But in olden days women were not allowed to cover their heads at all: for the story is told that Spurius Carvilius was first to repudiate his wife for childlessness, next Sulpicius Gallus, when he saw she had pulled her cloak over her head, and the third was Publius Sempronius, because she went to watch funeral games.
I have tried to translate more closely than the Loeb, especially when Plutarch switches from talk of parents (gonei ~j) to name only fathers – though I suspect he is thinking only of male parents. We should note that in secular life, Roman males would uncover their heads in respect for a senior figure: a fragment of Sallust (Hist. 5.20) reports that the dictator Sulla uncovered his head to honour Pompey and only Pompey, while Pliny (HN 28.60) reports that ‘the Romans ordered men to uncover the head at the sight of magistrates,’ adding that ‘this was not as a mark of respect but for the sake of their health, as Varro reported.’3 The oddity about these testimonies is surely that they imply that Romans often covered their heads in daily life – presumably against wind or rain: the custom assumes that it was normal to wear a covering in bad weather, and remove it in respect for elders and betters, just as gentlemen used to doff or touch their hat in my youth.4 And, still considering only secular practices, Plutarch obviously misunderstood the behaviour of Sulpicius Gallus, consul in 166 bc. Valerius Maximus, our other source for Gallus’ divorce, makes it clear that he repudiated his wife when ‘he found out she had been walking around in public with her head uncovered’ (capite aperto foris versatam cognoverat) giving as his reason that ‘the law restricts you to winning approval for your beauty from my eyes alone.’5 Plutarch, of course, takes the attitude of ‘why can’t the Romans be more like the Greeks?’6 On the other hand, the Romans themselves called the
161 Covering the Head at Rome ancient form of bare-headed sacrifice made to Hercules at the Ara Maxima ‘Greek style,’ Graeco ritu.7 But Plutarch’s Question 14 seems to start with a valid general principle: that on special occasions like funerals people will invert their normal practice – so men, who normally go uncovered, will cover, and women will cast off their usual covering. At this point he has already answered two questions aimed chiefly at men’s behaviour. In his Question 10 (Mor. 266c–e) he notes the social custom I described above: ‘Why do Romans cover their heads when they worship the gods, but if they happen to be wearing the toga over their head when they meet someone worthy of honour, they uncover?’ His Question 11 (Mor. 266e) treats sacrificing with covered heads as the (Roman) norm: ‘Why, then, do Romans sacrifice to Saturn with their head uncovered?’ Assuming that covering the head is a proper way for a Roman to honour the gods he explains (Question 10) that uncovering for a respected man avoids divine jealousy, but then has to find a reason to exclude Saturn (Question 11) from the category of regular gods: thus he answers that either Saturn was not conceived of as an Olympian but a god of the underworld, or alternatively it was Aeneas who originated the custom of covering the head, though the cult of Saturn was ages older than Aeneas. Both explanations can be found in commentators on Vergil, but almost certainly go back to Vergil’s older contemporary Varro.8 Let me dispose of male head-covering first, drawing on the great volume of material in Livy and Vergil. Livy depicts augurs, pontifices, and fetial priests as covering the head to participate in ritual: for example, the augur at Numa’s inauguration (1.18) or the statue capite velato of the augur Attus Navius in the Comitium near the senate house in the centre of Rome (1.36). In describing the ritual allegedly introduced by Ancus Martius, Livy reports that the fetialis declares war ‘with his head covered with a band – that is, a covering of wool’ (capite velato filo – lanae velamen est, 1.32).9 Similarly, he speaks of priests ‘in supplication, their heads covered with ritual adornments’ (suis insignibus velatos ... supplices, 2.39.12), but later in Book 2 when a protester against the creation of the tribunate speaks of the new magistracy turning consuls into virtual victims the phrase velut infulis velatos (2.54.5) cites infulae not as a symbol of priesthood but of sacrificial offering. Plutarch’s concern with Aeneas as a model (probably derived from his Roman sources like Verrius Flaccus) refers to the instructions Aeneas receives from Helenus at Aeneid 3.403–407: quin ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes et positis aris iam vota in litore solves,
162 Elaine Fantham purpureo velare comas adopertus amictu, ne qua inter sanctos ignis in honore deorum hostilis facies occurrat et omina turbet. When your fleet has crossed the sea (to Italy) and you have set up altars and are paying your vows on the shore, veil your hair, covering yourself with a purple garment, in case any hostile appearance meets you amid the sacred fires in honour of the gods, and disturbs your omens …10
Instructions that he follows at 3.545–547: et capita ante aras Phrygio velamur amictu praeceptisque Heleni dederat quae maxima, rite Iunoni Argivae iussos adolemus honores. We veil our heads with Phrygian garment before the altars, and following the important instructions of Helenus burn the required tributes to Juno of Argos.
Helenus’ advice is also the source of Plutarch’s second explanation. The priest must not let himself be distracted during a ritual: the act has to be completed without interruption, just as Horatius Pulvillus continued to inaugurate the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus although men announced the death of his son in mid-ritual: if he had acknowledged the ill-omened news, it would also have made him unfit to complete the rite, so he continued as if unaware.11 We are all familiar with statues of Augustus officiating with his toga pulled over his head (for an example from Rome, see fig. 1.1), as does Agrippa on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis (see fig. 7.2), while the flamines precede him wearing their distinctive ritual apices (spiked conical hats).12 Even on minor monuments such as the altar of the Lares from the Vicus Sandaliarius in Rome (see fig. 7.1),13 on which Augustus is shown taking the auspices for his son Gaius before he departs to the east, not only Augustus as augur but Gaius and Livia have their heads covered with their garments. But this surely carries the implication that Livia was herself participating as a priestess, whether of Cybele or of some domestic cult. Now let us factor in the element of gender. Plutarch was right to contrast the covered head of the son officiating at his father’s funeral with the unbound hair of the mourning daughters, but this is not a contrast of all males and all females, but of the son alone functioning as priest; whereas not only the daughter but also the whole crowd of women mourners would unbind their hair by casting off their headbands, the woollen vittae which, as we know from Ovid,14 were symbolic of respectable girls and wives. For
163 Covering the Head at Rome years I was confused about the different forms and functions of vittae and infulae, but I believe I can now provide a compact account of these two forms of headband. I shall make my starting point the definitions of the function of infulae given by Festus: ‘Infulae are the hanks of wool with which priests, sacrificial victims, and temples are draped’ (infulae sunt filamenta lanea, quibus sacerdotes et hostiae templaque velantur, 100 L = 113 M). Servius provides some elucidation on their form (ad Aen. 10.538): ‘a band shaped like a diadem from which vittae hang on either side. It is generally broad and twisted (or braided?) from white and scarlet threads’ (fascia in modum diadematis a qua vittae ab utraque parte dependent, quae plerumque lata est, plerumque tortilis ex albo et cocco). Now it is taking a risk to assume that the same principles which determined when to cover the head with one’s toga or palla also operated to control women formally binding their heads with a vitta (derived from viere to bind, as is our English word band); but the vittae seem to have functioned as a kind of moral protection, comparable to the young boy’s bulla.15 The woman’s headband usually goes unmentioned probably because it is taken for granted, like a modern woman’s watch or wedding ring. Again I will use the Augustans, Vergil, Livy, and Ovid, for evidence about wearing the woollen headbands, whether vittae or infulae. I should note from the beginning that the ritual uses of infulae seem to match the Greek practice of draping tombs, altars, suppliants, and brides with stemmata (ribbons or streamers), and the corresponding verb stephein, as is confirmed by the abundant examples from Greek tragedy cited by Josiah Heckenbach in his 1911 study of ‘sacred nudity and sacred binding.’ Greek vases, especially from Magna Graecia, show both stemmata on altars and ribbons like stemmata hanging on domestic walls at the dressing of a bride.16 Like stemmata the infula too was perhaps less common as an item of costume than draped over altars and tombs, even temples, and used to adorn sacrificial victims. When it was worn by a priest or Vestal, as Servius explains in the description cited above, it was bound around the head and tied at the nape like a diadema, as is very clear on the bust of a Vestal from the late Trajanic period now in the Uffizi in Florence (fig. 7.3).17 Heckenbach and another careful researcher, Stephanie Pley, long since catalogued the instances and occasions of baring or binding the head, and the uses of raw unspun wool for the vittae, along with the evidence for other protective roles played by wool and fleeces in a range of rituals, such as the custom that the bride sat on a fleece at her marriage.18 What these scholars missed is that the term vittae,19 the generic name for the basic headbands of respectable women and girls, is far more common
164 Elaine Fantham than the term infulae, partly because the complex infula incorporated vittae,20 but also because the word vittae dominates in poetry. Since only the nominative singular of infula is admissible in dactylic verse, when Vergil or Ovid speak of vittae the word stands in for the more elaborate infulae. The evidence is clear from comparing the usage of epic and elegy, and even Horatian lyric with Livy’s prose narrative. Livy does not mention vittae, but on several occasions introduces the ritual infulae. His suppliants and envoys are velati infulis (bound or covered with ribbons): this is how we should construe the passage where Livy narrates the appeal the Roman priests made to Coriolanus to lead the Volscian army out of Roman territory: ‘The priests too went to him in supplication, their heads covered with ritual adornments’ (sacerdotes quoque suis insignibus velatos isse supplices, 2.39.12), and this is made explicit when foreigners seek terms of surrender. So, we are told, envoys from two city districts of Syracuse arrived ‘with ribbons and coverings or headcloths’ (legati ... cum infulis et velamentis, 25.25.6); Tean envoys came ‘with ribbons and headcloths’ (cum infulis et velamentis, 37.28.1); a Carthaginian ship was ‘covered with ribbons and olive branches’ (velata infulis ramisque oleae, 30.36.4); an Illyrian crowd ‘poured around wearing ribbons’ (multitudine cum infulis simul effusa, 45.26.3). Horace, despite the metrical variety of his lyrics, does not mention infulae and has vittae only once, at Odes 3.14.8, when he urges the ladies of the domus Augusta to go to meet the returning conqueror ‘with the vitta of suppliants’ (supplice vitta), that is, wearing infulae. Now contrast Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s treatment even of Greek myth. Since it is normal for ladies to wear vittae, there is usually no reason to mention this standard element of women’s dress. But despite the many special circumstances requiring ritual infulae, the word occurs only twice in Aeneid and once in Ovid’s whole corpus.21 Twice Ovid tells the same tale of the planned human sacrifice of Orestes and Pylades to Taurian Artemis in the Crimea: at Tristia 4.4.78, a barbara vitta (barbarian headband) encircles their hair; but in the fuller version of the tale in his Letters from Pontus (Pont. 3.2.73–75) the infula of line 74 becomes the vitta in line 75: spargit aqua captos lustrali Graeca sacerdos, ambiat ut fulvas infula longa comas, dumque parat sacrum, dum velat tempora vittis ... The Greek priestess sprinkles the prisoners with lustral water, for the long infula to encircle their hair; then while she prepares the rite, and veils their temples with vittae ...
165 Covering the Head at Rome We can illustrate Vergil’s practice from one sequence in Book 7 of the Aeneid concerned with women and their vittae. When Allecto makes her supernatural attack on the Latin Queen Amata, she substitutes a venomous serpent for the ribbons of the queen’s headband: ‘It becomes the streamers of her extended headband’ (fit longae taenia vittae, Aen. 7.351).22 (Here I believe that longae, while it serves to stress the serpent’s long and sinuous body, also marks the fact that she was wearing the more elaborate ritual version with looped side-pieces.) With Horsfall and others I equate the ribbons with the vitta. 23 Soon after this, Amata, now frenzied, summons the women to celebrate Bacchus: ‘Unbind the bands from your locks and take up the sacred instruments with me’ (solvite crinales vittas, capite orgia mecum, 7.403). Allecto meanwhile has moved on to impersonate the priestess Chalybe, and does this by adopting white hair bound with vittae and weaving into it a branch of olive: induit albos cum vitta crines, tum ramum innectit olivae (7.418–419). These vittae are in fact ritual infulae. I can support this claim from a survey of the instances of vittae and one of infula in Aeneas’ narrative in Aeneid Books 2–3. In every case vittae denote the more complex ritual bands. In Book 2 Sinon represents himself as intended human sacrifice, wearing the victim’s elaborate headbands (2.132–133); Laocoon’s priestly headbands are stained with gore and serpent venom (2.221); Hector’s ghost holds out to Aeneas the vittae and powerful Vesta – meaning the Penates (2.296). The priest Panthus appears holding these sacra and urges Aeneas into battle, but apparently joins them in fighting disguised as Greeks later; so when Vergil laments (2.429–430) ‘nor did your devoutness nor the infula of Apollo protect you, Panthus,’ does he mean the infula that Panthus was entitled to wear, or was actually wearing even while disguised as a Greek soldier?24 There are similar problems in Ovid’s epic. The use of infula in Letters from Pontus (Pont. 3.2.74, quoted above) is unique; in the Metamorphoses Ovid uses vittae and vittatus for those wearing infulae.25 Returning to Vergil, in Aeneid Book 3 the altars are adorned with vittae for the funeral of Polydorus (3.63), the priest-king Anius of Apolline Delos wears vittae and a laurel garland (3.80–81), and the Penates of Aeneas’ night vision have velatas comas (3.174) – that is, dressed with infulae. Helenus sacrifices oxen and when he has obtained divine approval, he unbinds his vittae (3.370).26 But we should note that in these books full of priests and sacrifice Vergil does not take every opportunity to mention such things; not for Panthus’ first appearance; not for Cassandra, who is ravished passis crinibus (i.e., with her hair unbound and her headband cast off); not for Anchises’ offering in Book 3 or for the final prayer: ‘following orders,
166 Elaine Fantham we worship the mighty gods of the place’ (iussi numina magna loci veneramur, 3.697). As we have seen, when Helenus has completed his sacrifice, he takes off his vittae (3.369–371). In a more ambiguous situation, Ovid’s Cretan tale of Iphis, when the girl and her mother, who has brought her up disguised as a boy, seem unable to escape exposure at the forthcoming wedding to her girlfriend, the mother removes their vittae before supplicating Isis: ‘She pulls off the band from both her own and her daughter’s locks and embraces the altar with flowing hair’ (crinalem capiti vittam nataeque sibique / detrahit, et passis aram complexa capillis, Met. 9.771). Now it is surprising to find the Cretan girl, disguised as a boy, still wearing the (Roman) mark of her concealed gender, but we must also wonder why the women are removing their protective headbands before praying. Perhaps this is once again one of those gestural opposites; to pray, the woman removes her normal covering. The women’s gesture is obviously quite different from the gesture of abandon when Amata’s women throw down their vittae, or of shame, when Ovid’s Alban Vestal Ilia casts away her headband in despair at her unworthiness to serve Vesta after her rape. It is closer by far to the gesture of women who unbind their hair in petition or mourning, or sweep the floors of the gods’ temples with their loosened hair in national supplication.27 The main problem is that both women’s daily wearing of the vittae and the special ritual donning of infulae by priests are largely invisible in Roman portraiture.28 Take Livia, most virtuous and correct of matrons. Can you see a vitta on her official portraits? And if men covered their heads to officiate at sacrifices, what did women do? On the Ara Pacis the Vestals on the inner small frieze very properly have covered heads, while on the large external frieze both Augustus and Agrippa, about to sacrifice, have pulled their togas over their heads (Agrippa is the first main figure visible at the left end of the portion of the frieze shown in fig. 7.2); and so, of course, has Aeneas on the end panel, sacrificing to the Penates. Most of the laymen in the procession are wearing laurel wreaths, as is at least one woman (see fig. 7.2). But why, for example does Antonia Minor (i.e., the woman in the centre of the section of the frieze shown in fig. 7.2 looking back to the right) have her head bare, while Antonia Major (three figures behind her in the same processional group) and Livia too (just behind Agrippa in fig. 7.2) have covered their heads?29 Should we just assume the sculptor wanted variety? Look for vittae and they are very hard to find in any Roman female statue or portrait head. Had they become simply a convention remembered and respected but no longer observed? Accepting the view that Roman women regularly wore vittae, Susan Wood has offered an explanation:
167 Covering the Head at Rome Another ... advantage in favor of the nodus coiffure might also have been the possibility of weaving into the braid along the crown the vitta that marked the status of a married woman, although since all extant replicas have lost their paint it is difficult to be sure whether these braided bands of hair included ribbons of fabric or not.30
To this I would make two objections: no doubt vittae could be painted onto statuary, but why would the highly sophisticated sculptors not also indicate them in three dimensions? I would even suggest, returning from art to life, that if vittae were regularly worn, women would not have evolved the central braid on the crown as opposed to the rarer side braids worn by Octavia, for example, which could follow the curve of their vittae. The few examples of sculptured vittae import at least three problems. When Susan Wood discusses the likeness of Livia as Ceres, which shows braids of wool beneath Livia’s diadem and entwined with the locks of hair falling on the neck, the Juno-Ludovisi, which she identifies as Antonia Minor, and the statue of Agrippina Major from Tindari (now in Palermo fig. 7.5), she repeats that scholars dispute whether their beaded fillets should be called infulae, as she prefers, vittae or tutuli.31 (We may rule out this last, since both our ancient sources show that tutuli are postiches, or topknots, made from piled up braids and fillets.)32 Vestals are a separate problem. Did they wear plain vittae, or the enhanced version I have called infulae? La Follette claimed that the elaborate headbands swathing the head on the bust of a Vestal of Trajanic date now in the Uffizi (fig. 7.3) are vittae; but surely these are ritual infulae?33 For these portraits of elite women from the imperial dynasty the clearest carved reproduction of vittae, which I have been calling by the generic name ‘headband,’ occurs on the head of a posthumous statue of the otherwise bareheaded Drusilla from Caere (see fig. 7.4), Diva Drusilla, the sister whom Caligula deified.34 Whereas her mother, Agrippina Major, and sister Agrippina (Minor) sport diadems tied over the hair and hanging down the neck, the Caere Drusilla wears what seems to be a braided or beaded woollen band tied under the hair with hanging ends. (The statue of Agrippina Major from Palermo features the same possibly beaded headband in front of her diadem, see fig. 7.5.) And other posthumous statues of Diva Drusilla have either drill holes to attach a fillet, or traces of added plaster.35 Given her unique status, this could indeed be intended to represent sacred infulae. But if we leave behind the elite, we find better evidence for the wearing of vittae by women of a humbler class. Two funerary reliefs of freedmen families from Rome, dating to the late-first century bc, show women wearing vittae.36 Michele George notes that for these former slaves the vittae were a
168 Elaine Fantham precious symbol of newly attained respectability, and a protection against possible abuse.37 What we lack, as Dr George has pointed out to me in discussion, is evidence for the practice of women of the middle rank. It seems more than likely that they looked to Livia as an example, and took her practice as an excuse to avoid the inconvenient headbands that would cramp or spoil their hairstyles. As for vittae, Olson is surely right to suggest that the references were prescriptive:38 the epic and tragic women of myth wore vittae because this was what they ought to have worn; but whatever Augustus may have desired, contemporary women knew the ancient tradition and honoured it in the breach rather than by observance. We may equally doubt that matronae wore the stola when they could choose a Coan dress instead.39 I suspect that Augustus had lost that battle, and the proper use of traditional headgear was preserved only in representing the heroic past.
Notes 1 My source (apart from personal observation in the community) is Michael Kress, ‘The State of Orthodox Judaism Today: Stringency,’ available from www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 2 For ‘Roman devotional head-coverings,’ see Oster 1988: 493–502. 3 For further examples and bibliography, see Oster 1988: 495–7. 4 There is a small difference here: gentlemen would not only take off or touch their hats to elders but also to ladies; we have no reason to believe that Romans did so. 5 Val. Max. 6.3.10: uxorem dimisit quod eam capite aperto foris versatam cognoverat ... ‘lex enim,’ inquit, ‘tibi meos tantum praefinit oculos quibus formam tuam approbes.’ Probably Plutarch or his source misread capite aperto as capite operto (‘with her head covered’). For a statue of a Roman matron with her head covered, see fig. 1.2 in this volume. 6 Recent work on Plutarch’s Roman Questions has been more concerned with discussing his attitude to the Romans and to his Roman sources, than with their antiquarian content; see Bologne 1987 and 1992; Preston 2001. It is good news that John Scheid is working on a book-length study of this work. 7 On this see Scheid 1995. 8 Evander tells Aeneas in Aeneid 8 that Saturn came to Latium and ruled over a golden age Rome in its distant beginnings (Aen. 8.319–327); the claim is repeated and developed by Ovid in Fasti 1. The Farnese fragment of Festus (432 L = 322 M) reports the practice of supplicating apertis capitibus (bare-headed) at
169 Covering the Head at Rome
9 10
11 12
13
14
15
16 17
18
the altar of Saturn at the foot of the Capitoline in connection with the tradition that Aeneas was first to cover the head when sacrificing. Many other passages specify the use of wool (as opposed to linen and other fibres): see Pley 1911. Serv. ad Aen. 3.407 associates Aeneas’ behaviour with the story of Diomedes’ return of the Palladium: ‘when Diomedes was ordered by an oracle to restore the Palladium to the Trojans he found Aeneas sacrificing; so as we said above (on 2.166), Aeneas did not interrupt the order of the sacrifice and Nautes accepted the Palladium, for which reason the family of the Nautii kept the sacred rites of Minerva. One should know that men sacrificing to all the gods veil their heads ... // they practised veiling their heads lest anything should obtrude on their wandering gaze as they sacrificed, except for Saturn, so that it would not seem an imitation of the godhead //, and for Hercules in his temple, because he himself has his head covered, or because these altars were consecrated by Janus or Evander before the coming of Aeneas.’ Cf Serv. ad Aen. 3.545, mentioning either Diomedes or Ulysses as returning the Palladium. See Livy 2.8.7, with Ogilvie 1965: ad loc. For the flamines, see Galinsky 1996: 143, fig. 58; Rossini 2006: 56–7, 61. Apices were woollen caps worn only by flamines, and conspicuous for their vertical spike; Festus (17 L = 18 M) derives it from a verb apere, meaning to contain with a bond (comprehendere vinculo). For further discussion of the altar, see Galinsky 1996: 304–7, with photos of all four sides of the altar (figs. 142a–b, 143a–b); Zanker 1988; 121, 125, fig. 101. Used by Ovid as symbol of the respectable women whom he claimed should not read his verse: Ars am. 1.31, with Hollis 1977: ad loc.; Rem. am. 386: nil mihi cum vitta. Thais in arte mea est; Trist. 2.247: este procul, vittae tenues, insigne pudoris; 2.252: quas stola contingi vittaque sumpta vetat; F. 4.134, which moves from mothers and daughters-in-law to the less respectable women quis vitta longaque vestis abest. See further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. On the vittae and other details of secular and female clothing, I have relied on the usual handbooks and (especially) Sebesta 1994a. I have also consulted Kleiner and Matheson 1996; Rose 1997; and Wood 1999. On vittae, see also Olson, chap. 6, and on the bulla, Dolansky, chap. 2, in this volume. See Pley 1911 and, for example, Trendall 1989: 165–6 and cat. nos. 94, 97, 300, 310, 311. This bust (Uffizi inv. 1914/150) is discussed in detail in Jucker 1968, from which the definitions are cited; see also La Follette 1994: 57–9. Note also the head of a Vestal from Frieze B of the Cancelleria reliefs: La Follette 1994: 59 and fig. 3.6. Heckenbach 1911; Pley 1911; see also Wunderlich 1925.
170 Elaine Fantham 19 For vittae as symbol of secular respectability the evidence is largely Ovidian: for references, see note 14, above. 20 Compare Servius’ description (ad Aen. 10.538), cited above: a qua vittae ab utraque parte dependent. 21 On Vergil’s evidence for dress in general, see Bender 1994. 22 For taenia, cf. Verg. Aen. 5.296; Ennius Trag. fr. 67 Jocelyn: volans de caelo cum corona et taeniis, where Victory is depicted wearing infulae garlanded with a corona, a Greek form that Ennius has borrowed from Magna Graecia. 23 See Horsfall 2000: on Aen. 7.351 and 418, citing Ov. Ars am. 1.31 with Hollis’ note (1977: ad loc.), Tr. 2.252, etc. 24 Aen. 2.132–133 (Sinon as human sacrifice): mihi sacra parari / et salsae fruges et circum tempora vittae; cf. 2.156: vittaeque deum quas hostia gessi; 2.221 (Laocoon as priest): perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno; 2.296 (Hector offers Aeneas Penates) vittas Vestamque potentem; 2.429–430: nec te tua plurima, Panthu, / labentem pietas nec Apollinis infula texit. 25 Vittae and vittatus are used in the case of priests (Met. 5.110; 13.643; 15.675; cf. Ars am. 2.40), suppliants (Met. 9.771), sacrificial victims (7.429; 15.131), a sacred oak (8.744), and the dedicated virgins Daphne (1.477, if genuine) and Callisto (2.413). 26 Aen. 3.63–64: stant manibus arae / caeruleis maestae vittis atraque cupresso; 3.80–81: rex Anius, rex idem hominum Phoebique sacerdos / vittis et sacra redimitus tempora lauro; 3.369–371: Helenus ... / exorat Pacem divum vittasque resolvit / sacrati capitis. Compare also the Penates in Aeneas’ vision at 3.173– 174: coram agnoscere vultus / velatasque comas ... videbar, where the infulae do not need to be named. 27 For the Vestal’s shame, Ov. F. 3.30; Am. 3.6.65. For women unbinding their hair in supplication, see Appel 1909: 203, citing Aen. 1.480; 3.62; 11.480–481; Tib. 1.3.31; Livy 26.9.7; Ov. Met. 9.771 (just discussed); Lucan 2.31 and others; for sweeping the floor, Livy 3.7.7; 26.9.7; Stat. Theb. 4.203; 9.638. 28 See Olson 2002: 392. 29 For a useful summary, with excellent illustrations, of the two outer friezes with processions, see Rossini 2006: 48–79. 30 Wood 1999: 98 and n86, citing Sensi 1980–81. But I have not found Sensi’s article helpful, because he does not limit vittae to their conventional form worn as bands around the head, but uses the term to refer to every kind of braided hair ornament. 31 See further Wood 1999: 116 (Livia/Ceres), 171 (Juno-Ludovisi/Antonia Minor), 224 (Agrippina I). 32 Varro Ling. 7.44, describing tutuli as ‘tresses rolled up on the top of the head’ (crines convolutos ad verticem capitis); Festus 484 L = 355 M: ‘an adornment ... built up high’ (ornamentum ... exstructum in altitudinem).
171 Covering the Head at Rome 33 La Follette 1994: 57–9 and fig. 3.5; see, more fully, Jucker 1968: 93–100, figs. 28– 30. On Vestals in general, see Wildfang 2006, with previous bibliography. 34 Musei Vaticani: Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 9952. Since the statue from Caere represents Drusilla after her death and deification, her head-wear may be an infula, not a vitta. For further views of this statue, see Wood 1999: figs. 111 (full figure), 112–113 (portrait-head from front and profile). The statue of Agrippina I from the Museo Nazionale, Palermo, inv. 698 (= Fig. 7.5) features the same (?) beaded headband in front of her diadem: see also Wood 1999: fig. 93 (frontal), 94 (profile). 35 Unfortunately the function of this woman’s headband is entangled with her complex status. Wood (1995 and 1999: 135; 240–1) follows previous scholarship in identifying the statue from Caere and four other similar statues as the deified Drusilla. She calls the beaded headband an infula, and attributes it to the sanctified status of the mortal-turned-goddess (1999: 135). She notes that the woman’s hair seems to have been recut to allow for the addition of this headband. However, on the statue from Palermo (fig. 7.5), Agrippina I is shown wearing the same headband beneath her diadem, and she was never deified. Furthermore, it has been argued that the statue from Caere usually identified as Drusilla (fig. 7.4) in fact depicts Messalina, recut after her disgrace and death in ad 48 to represent Agrippina II: see Liverani 1990–91: 165–167. Wood (1999: 126–7) notes the spit curls along the hairline of the Caere statue, as well as the use of the drill, which became increasingly common during the principate of Caligula. 36 Funerary relief of the Furii (Musei Vaticani): Kockel 1993: cat. no. G 10: central figure; relief in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini: Kockel 1993: cat. no. F 1: first woman on left. 37 George 2005: 44 and n19, 49–50. 38 Olson, chap. 6, in this volume. 39 The same point is made by MacMullen 1980, contrasting the general assumption that women went out veiled in the eastern provinces with the exposed beauty of empresses and benefactresses in portraits and sculpture.
8 Designing Women: The Representation of Women’s Toiletries on Funerary Monuments in Roman Italy leslie shumka In the rich scholarship on gender in classical antiquity that flourished in the 1990s, there appeared a book on self-presentation that examined how educated Roman males, in the second century of empire, fashioned masculine identities for themselves through the art of rhetoric.1 Individuals in all societies construct identities for themselves in any number of ways, but what appears to be characteristic of the Roman world is that the male identity had to be actively earned and energetically sustained through constant vigilance; it was never a birthright. To demonstrate this point, the book traces the careers of two extraordinary provincials of the second century ad, the rhetoricians Favorinus of Arelate and M. Antonius Polemo of Laodicea, who were not only fierce rivals but men who might be said to represent opposite ends of a spectrum of masculinity. Favorinus was born without testicles – or so Philostratus reports (VS 489). Whether real or imagined by his contemporaries, Favorinus’ physical condition prompted highly personal attacks by Polemo, whose invective cast aspersions on Favorinus’ sexual behaviour and impelled him to construct a socially acceptable male identity. This Favorinus accomplished through careful cultivation of a distinctive rhetorical style, by scintillating demonstrations of his paideia, and by exploiting his highpitched ‘womanly’ voice to great effect.2 The case of Favorinus and Polemo reveals Roman society’s abiding concern with definitions of gender, but also raises an interesting question. If men could use the ars rhetorica to invent a masculine identity, how did women design a feminine one? Commemorative inscriptions, for the most part idealized and formulaic, point to marriage, reproduction, and moral rectitude as constituents of the female self.3 Excellence of character undoubtedly involved some cultivation, but in ancient Rome the act of becoming a wife or mother had more to do with cultural expectations and pressures and
173 Designing Women less to do with self-construction. Society excluded women from the many facets of public life considered beneficial in shaping the male identity, yet they could and did create a feminine identity in ways seldom immortalized in epitaphs. Like men they engaged in a kind of ars, only this art involved the crafting and meticulous care of the physical self. Depending upon time, finances, or desire, a woman might turn her attention to adornment, apparel, complexion management, hair care and styling, or any combination of these endeavours. If performed conscientiously, this art produced an elegant appearance that publicly and privately asserted her gender identity. Poets and prose writers documented women’s sartorial behaviour, but offered a predominantly negative impression of its aims; they regarded the female toilette which failed to meet a culturally prescribed standard of simplicity and economy as pernicious, duplicitous, or both.4 Surviving evidence from Roman mortuary ritual offers a rather different view of women’s self-presentation, and suggests that the literary rhetoric constitutes only part of a much broader picture of female self-fashioning. Among the many images that formed part of the iconography for tombs and other memorials of the dead are depictions of the mundus muliebris or women’s appurtenances. Found throughout the Roman world, the reliefs sometimes depict toiletries discussed and classified by Roman jurists: mirrors, containers for oils, basins for water, and unguent vessels.5 From time to time they include objects associated with women in material culture: items such as parasols, slippers, cosmetic cases and jars, and hairstyling aids. More often, mirrors and combs, the basic instruments of the female toilette, enjoy pride of place. If the overriding purpose of funerary monuments was to preserve memory, as Ulpian suggests it was (Dig. 11.7.2.6), and to ensure that future generations might be witness to the virtues or accomplishments of the deceased, what were images of the mundus muliebris meant to commemorate? An examination of their relationship to cultus (dress and grooming) and ornatus (adornment) reveals that self-presentation was an integral part of the literal and metaphorical construction of a feminine identity, and that the capacity to design and maintain a look, whether stylish or conservative, was one of the few ways in a patriarchal society which women had available to them of expressing themselves as women. Cultus, Ornatus, and Gender Roman society placed enormous value on excellence of appearance, and the inculcation of this concept began in early childhood. Part of Soranus’ advice to parents and childminders included detailed instructions on the proper method for massaging and swaddling newborns (Gyn. 2.30 and 2.15, respec-
174 Leslie Shumka tively). Massage enabled the midwife to induce, if not actively mould, the malleable body of the newborn into a state that met a culturally defined aesthetic, while swaddling fostered specific gender traits. When binding the chests of male infants, midwives had to ensure that the bands applied a firm, even pressure; when binding the chests of females, they were to wrap the bands more firmly still but to leave those around the loins slack, a practice that produced, it was thought, the desired female form (Gyn. 2.15.3). Physiological differences between the sexes were stressed by other means once swaddling bands were removed and children began to develop. The short tunics and closely cropped hair worn by toddlers and small children blurred gender distinctions somewhat, but toys called attention to the special attributes of male and female and said something about sex and gender roles. Dolls possessed the physical features of adult females – moulded breasts, delineated pudenda, narrow waists, wide hips – as well as coiffures reflecting the fashion of their particular era. Jewellery and clothing were available for dressing dolls, yet action figures, such as gladiators and soldiers, were made with non-removable uniforms, shields, and sometimes swords.6 Soranus’ prescriptions demonstrate genuine concern for the healthy physiological development of children and reflect cultural ideals of the male and female form, standards that were reinforced during playtime. Play with dolls may have engendered different patterns of behaviour in girls from those in boys, but among them certainly was cultivation of the toilette habits of adult females whose routines (hairstyling, adorning, and dressing) were re-enacted daily and at greater length on festive occasions such as weddings, the rite de passage of Roman girls.7 Instruction in personal hygiene and attire formed part of a boy’s general training too. Elementary school texts, designed in the first instance to hone the grammar skills of young boys, give us a sense of their daily routine, part of which included washing and dressing before breakfast.8 Personal care, however, was something that they (like adult males) were expected to attend to as a matter of course. To the Roman way of thinking, care and adornment of the physical self were firmly linked with femininity. Thus, it is not surprising that when the young Crepereia Tryphaena died her grave goods included, in addition to an elegant ivory doll, a small bone and ivory box, which held two child-size combs, and a little silver mirror.9 Self-presentation, as a pursuit, was deemed a feminine concern by a great variety of male authors, but none more so than by T. Flavius Clemens, an ardent and highly educated convert to Christianity who lived in Alexandria during the late second century ad. Deportment and sartorial advice for the newly converted constituted a small but significant part of his Paedagogus, a disquisition on the Christian lifestyle and salvation, in which Clement
175 Designing Women tutored readers in the delicate art of self-presentation. He compared the development of the spiritual self with banal but necessary activities of everyday life: the clothing, ornamenting, and care of the body. For Christians, generally, he advocated a simplicity of attire and ornament that was good for the soul because it verged on the ascetic, but acknowledged that a presentable appearance was highly desirable because it was tangible evidence of a self-disciplined individual (Paed. 3.53.5).10 Christians need not forego fine clothing and gold ornaments entirely (Paed. 3.53.1), so long as they remembered that tasteful garments were those that reflected one’s age, place in society, character, and vocation (Paed. 2.38.3; 3.56.1). Moderation coupled with a keen sense of how to create the appearance of gentility seemed to be the keys to personal style. Clement dispensed advice readily to Christians of both sexes, but his remarks to women far surpassed those directed at men. His critical eye took in the appearance of fashionable women whom he scrutinized from head to toe. Clement expressed revulsion at the pursuit of soft and supple skin that led these women to apply outré lotions or substances such as crocodile excrement to their faces. He disapproved of efforts to lighten dark complexions by means of psimythion (a white lead powder), to enliven pale skin tones with paideros (a purple-hued dye), and to darken light-coloured brows with asbolos (soot or lampblack). He denounced the use of wigs, hairpieces, hair dyes, eye shadow, and depilatories,11 and objected to the methods that women allegedly devised to camouflage their bodily imperfections. Women of small stature might stitch cork into the soles of their footwear to give the illusion of greater height. Overly tall women could wear flat or thin-soled slippers and walk slightly hunched over to minimize their true height. Slim or boyish hips could be made more voluptuous by sewing pads into an undergarment where appropriate. A tunic worn over the corset-like prop used by male actors when portraying female characters helped to conceal a thick waist or bulging stomach. Clement’s disdain for outrageous skin-care regimens stemmed from his belief that they encouraged lascivious behaviour, destroyed a woman’s natural bloom, and made her skin more susceptible to irritations.12 Most critically, by endeavouring to alter her appearance, a woman offended the very God who created her (Paed. 3.6.3–4). Clement’s assessment of the female toilette did not focus entirely on cosmetic use or sartorial absurdities; he also felt obliged to caution his readers about the consumerism of beauty culture. Women had a propensity for expending considerable sums of money on elegant containers for their beauty products, on a plethora of utensils for hairstyling and grooming, and on skilled servants to assist with countless beauty tasks. Slaves were charged with the supervision of individual toilette articles (Paed. 3.26.3), with one
176 Leslie Shumka responsible for mirrors, one for hairnets, and another for combs. Gold and silver toilette equipment, which could be viewed at the baths by all who attended, provided a graphic demonstration of the affluent woman’s consumerism and lack of self-discipline (Paed. 3.5.31).13 To impress thoroughly upon his audience an idea of the vast array of women’s toiletries, Clement enumerated (Paed. 2.124.1–2) the banal but necessary articles of female life that appeared on the dressing tables or in the private apartments of women: snoods, hairbands, a breast-band, a shawl, a chiton, hairnets, earrings, pendants, anklets, and rings, along with more exotic items such as rouge, eyeliner or kohl, carnelians, and leather phalli. Clement’s knowledge of the female toilette was formidable, leading one modern historian to remark that he had a ‘connoisseur’s eye’ for the makeup and hairstyles of fashionable women.14 His observations were the outcome, certainly, of living in a large urban centre where stylishly clothed and accoutered females could be regularly encountered, but this apparent familiarity with women’s dress and adornment is also a function of his education. As the Paedagogus makes evident repeatedly, he was well versed in Greek literature. His list of toiletries and appurtenances has been borrowed, so he says, from Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai (although items akin to these were surely among the possessions of Roman women, especially those with the financial means),15 and he openly admits (Paed. 3.8.1) that his description of women’s strategies for disguising flaws in their figure derives from the work of Alexis, a poet of the late fourth to early third century bc, who satirized the reputed artifices of women for comic effect. Clement’s use of the latter source is inherently interesting, for he fails to make explicit that Alexis’ women are courtesans.16 He does not acknowledge that they are in the business of selling themselves, nor that the refurbishing of their appearances is an extension of their profession, prompted perhaps by the tastes of their clientele. Clement simply takes the characterization of the prostitute, and the aims of her toilette, and attributes it to all women indiscriminately. The practice of linking the woman of good character with restraint in selfpresentation and the unprincipled woman with sartorial excess is common in the Paedagogus, but is clearly part of the moralizing discourse on women that occurs widely in the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity. The belief that cultus and ornatus were particular concerns of women can be considered from another perspective, and that is by examining social attitudes towards men who were exceptionally devoted to their appearances.17 According to Roman gender ideology, men should concern themselves with matters of dress and grooming in a limited way and wholly avoid adornment. Impeccable presentation was not out of the question. Regard for com-
177 Designing Women plexion and general appearance was crucial for public figures, as Roman orators well knew (Cic. Off. 1.130–133), but masculine grace was meant to derive from a body made vigorous by frequent exercise (Ov. Ars am. 1.513; Quint. Inst. 8.pr.19, 3.6). Men who aspired to an elegant look needed to adopt a casual pose (Ov. Ars am. 1.509). Apparel and footwear had to be clean and properly fitted; hair and beard had to be trimmed by a professional hand; nails and nose hair were to be neatly clipped; and breath and body odour were not to offend through lack of attention (Ov. Ars am. 1.514–522 and 1.723–729; Rem. am. 679). Everything else was within the realm of coquettes and men of doubtful sex. Although this advice comes from secular authors, the patristic writer Tertullian (ca. ad 160–230) would have nodded assent. In his De Cultu Feminarum, a guide to female deportment, Tertullian also outlined briefly (2.8.2) the grooming practices he considered inappropriate for the Christian male: shaping and trimming the beard too precisely, styling and tinting the hair (especially disguising the first signs of grey), and using women’s makeup to hide down on the body and pumice to depilate. Tertullian’s main concern was with propriety; like Clement, he believed that the Christian male’s self-presentation should be testimony to his religious conviction and to the modesty that God demanded of the faithful.18 Nonetheless, the opinions that he offers are consistent with those of non-Christian authors: men who flirted with social disaster by pressing the limits of masculine good taste, whether pathic or simply foppish, were fair game for satirists and moralists alike.19 Gender ideology conceptualized dress and adornment as feminine pursuits and described the implements of self-construction in a similar fashion. The clearest indication of Roman thinking on this subject is reflected in the term mundus muliebris, the origin of which is unknown.20 Use of this phrase dates at least to the second century bc, according to fragments from the work of the Republican poets Accius (Trag. 654) and Lucilius (fr. 519). The most explicit example of the gendering of toilette equipment comes from Varro’s etymological discussion of the Latin words for mirror, comb, and curling iron. He refers (Ling. 5.129.1) to these toiletries as feminine accessories on the theory that they helped to beautify women, a belief held also by the Severan jurist Paul. For testamentary purposes he established (Sent. 3.6.83) a precise definition of the toilette articles that enabled a woman to be well groomed and made-up (mundior et lautior). Mirrors, containers for oils, basins for water, and unguent vessels are listed under the blanket term mundus muliebris.21 Paul’s definition is the first recorded in legal sources, but cursory references in the Digest (34.2.25; 34.2.32.7) demonstrate that jurists of the late republican and early imperial periods also
178 Leslie Shumka dealt with the classification of such items.22 They were not concerned with the categorization of combs, parasols, slippers, hair needles and pins, or curling irons; indeed, these items rarely drew their attention. But this is probably a reflection of the relatively low worth of these articles rather than a sign that the jurists, who were concerned chiefly with legacies of value, did not regard them as feminine accessories. Their collective opinion was that the toilette articles they specified were substantive enough to warrant definition under the law, and that during the central period of Roman history they were considered women’s accouterments even though some of these items were almost certainly used by men. Nowhere in the Digest do the jurists provide definitions of men’s toiletries.23 The Mundus Muliebris in Mortuary Culture in Roman Italy The appurtenances used by women in designing the feminine self are well represented in Roman material culture. Burial assemblages from female graves and tombs have yielded the physical remains of mirrors, combs, hairpins, and other paraphernalia associated with the woman’s toilette, and images of these objects formed part of the decorative programs on a small number of funerary monuments. Thirty-five reliefs showing toiletry items are known from surviving monuments or from the notations or crude sketches that accompany the texts of their commemorative inscriptions in the CIL. The majority are from central Italy and come from the communities and road stations hard by or within easy access of the Via Valeria, the main artery connecting Rome and Alba Fucens, or from the settlements along the eastern seaboard of Italy in the area between the Via Valeria and the Via Salaria. Approximately one third are found north and west of Rome in towns such as in Volsinii, Blera, Pisae, and Luna. Chronologically, these reliefs pose something of a problem. Very few have been formally published and dates for these, established in part on stylistic grounds, range from the late first century bc to the second century ad.24 Epigraphic conventions, which might also be used to refine the chronology, are of little help. For instance, the expression Dis Manibus or Dis Manibus Sacrum, which occurs in nearly half of the inscriptions, is a commonplace of epitaphs of the second through fourth centuries. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare.25 Thus, dating for the reliefs is rather imprecise. It is possible, nevertheless, to achieve some idea of what the reliefs constitute by comparing the information provided by the editors of CIL with the images on two surviving memorials, one for the Ferrarii family from Pisae in Etruria and another from Ortona in Samnium that commemorates Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter. Both are unusually elaborate, yet offer some sense of the variety and arrangements of toiletries found on other grave markers.
179 Designing Women P. Ferrarius Hermes, a mason or stonecutter, was sufficiently prosperous to erect a commemorative stele for himself, his two wives, Caecinia Digna and Numeria Maximilla, his son, P. Ferrarius Proculus, and his descendants at Pisae (modern Pisa) (see fig. 8.1). The family’s epitaph occupies the upper half of the stele, while the lower portion is divided visually into two sections with a mason’s equipment at right and a woman’s appurtenances or mundus muliebris on the left. The mason’s tools include a hand axe, plumb bob, square, and ruler, with the latter set vertically to demarcate these implements from the toilette articles arranged in rows on the opposite side. The toiletries comprise (beginning at left) a hairpin or perhaps a stylus, a mirror with a scalloped edge, and a comb. Beneath these items are a small oilflask, a pair of slippers, and possibly a calamistrum, an instrument for styling the hair. The objects rendered on this stele may be compared with the notations of the CIL editor(s) who, when revising inscriptions accompanied by depictions of toilette articles, simply gave the Latin word for the implement and tried to represent its approximate location on the monument. The epitaph for the Ferrarii appears as follows in CIL XI 1471: P · FERRARIVS HERMES CAECINIAE · DIGNAE CONIVGI · KARISSIMAE NVMERIAE · MAXIMILLAE CONIVGI · BENE MERENTI ET · P · FERRARIO · PRO CVLO · FILIO · ET POSTE RISQVE · SVIS stilus vas stilus
speculum duae soleae
stilus
mensura
pecten res incerta perpendiculum?
runcina
norma
180 Leslie Shumka The editors located the ruler (mensura) incorrectly and were unable to discern the item positioned beneath the comb (pecten). They also distinguished the object in the upper corner of the left field as a stilus, or writing implement. The editorial notation may differ slightly in terms of the placement and identification of the images, but not enough, in this instance, to make interpretation of this iconography problematic.26 The mundus muliebris on the funerary altar for Poppaedia P.F. Secunda and her daughter, Aetia (?), set up at Ortona, consists of a familiar yet somewhat different set of articles (see fig. 8.2). This monument has a shallow, pediment-shaped top that is flanked by pulvini, and the funerary inscription was carved on the entablature immediately below the pediment and on the shaft of the altar. Directly beneath the epitaph is a pair of slippers, flanking an open, rectangular toiletry box that has four containers nestled inside. An image of a circular mirror in its square case dominates the right lateral face (fig. 8.3), and to one side of this object is a small ewer with a handle, and a flask. On the left lateral face (fig. 8.4) a closed parasol, placed diagonally, separates a representation of a comb in the upper-right corner, and two additional flasks with large bellies and narrow necks at lower left. For this monument, the CIL editors presented the epitaph (IX 3826) and imagery as follows: POPPAEDIA · P · F · SECUNDA FILIAE · OSSA · SITA EITAE · M · F · MATRI OSSA · SITA mundus muliebris
Instead of noting the precise location of the representations, after their usual fashion, the editors provided a brief written description that corresponds closely with the material remains and which evidently draws upon a description by an individual who may have examined the monument first hand.27 Certain toiletries depicted in the mundus muliebris reliefs may be identified securely by comparing their images with archaeological discoveries of the same items from various Roman sites.28 Combs and mirrors are by far the most prevalent. Mirrors were round or oval-shaped pieces set into long, narrow handles with supporting brackets. Decoration ranged from relatively simple, unadorned models to those with ornate rims and backs. The one on
181 Designing Women the stele of the Ferrarii, with its filigree-like rim, is exceptional among published reliefs in its execution. The CIL editors did not differentiate between specula with handles and those without. Small round mirrors that lacked handles were housed in shallow cases, or stored in cosmetic boxes; on Poppaedia Secunda’s monument the lid of the mirror case is open and the mirror plainly visible inside (see fig. 8.3).29 The hairdressing scenes and bath processionals of Roman women, like those depicted on the Proiecta casket and on the toilette receptacle that forms part of the Sevso treasure, suggest that much larger circular mirrors were a feature of the mundus muliebris; these appear in the hands of females who attend more elegantly dressed women.30 Combs are generally double-edged with large teeth along one side and smaller teeth along the other, a representation that corresponds to wood and ivory examples found in burial collections.31 After mirrors and combs, slippers (sandalia, soleae) are the most common feature of toiletry reliefs. If the examples on the monuments for Poppaedia Secunda and the Ferrarii are any indication, the slippers usually consisted of a simple sole and thong construction. Worn chiefly at home, these sandals were sometimes taken to the baths to protect feet from overly warm floors.32 Calamistra (curling irons), discernicula (for parting the hair), and reticulata (hairnets), the styling aids mentioned by literary sources, are more difficult to distinguish. On the sarcophagus of Septimia Lyde from Alba Fucens (CIL IX 4026), the object identified as a perula (small sac) may, given the context, be a hairnet.33 There are no extant descriptions of calamistra, nor have they been identified among the published remains of Roman toiletries. Varro’s etymologies for calamistrum, discerniculum, speculum, and pecten (Ling. 5.129) did not include descriptions of these articles presumably because they were so ordinary. Calamistra were known and used in the early second century bc (Plaut. Curc. 577), and the earliest occurrence in written sources of the discerniculum can be traced to one of Lucilius’ lost comedies, dated to the mid- to later-second century bc (fr. 1095).34 The long slender objects tapering at one end that appear infrequently in these reliefs have been identified as curling irons, but how they differ from discernicula is unclear.35 To work effectively discernicula must have been much more slender (and perhaps more pointed) than calamistra, and it may be that discernicula, because of their general shape, have been confused with large hairpins (acus crinalis). A variety of items mentioned by textual sources and depicted on women’s memorials must have been staples in Roman households and not necessarily limited to toilette purposes. Small spoons were needed to remove ointments and powders from containers and spatulas were useful for applying salves.36 Boxes or pyxides are rare in mundus muliebris imagery, but literary texts
182 Leslie Shumka leave no doubt that these cylindrical containers held makeup, therapeutic products, and unguents.37 Ovid pokes fun (Rem. am. 354) at the array of mysterious containers cluttering a woman’s dressing table, and satirists derived great comic mileage from the notion that eyebrows and other facial features were ‘kept’ in a box (Petron. Sat. 110; Mart. 9.37). Needles for sewing and arranging the hair are part of the mundus muliebris imagery, but are not easily distinguished because the scale of images within a single relief may vary. On an aedicula from Dalmatia,38 a frieze running the width of the monument’s pediment contains a variety of female accouterments: a wool-basket, spindle, perfume container (balsamarium), loom shuttle, wickerwork chair, open mirror case, cylindrical casket, an unidentified object, stool, parasol, another balsamarium, sewing needle, and spatula. The objects are cleanly and precisely executed, but the woman’s chair (cathedra), mirror case, and perfume bottles have identical dimensions. In this instance, the sculptor clearly meant to depict a sewing needle, for the needle’s eye is carefully delineated. Many implements are not so distinct and with the complications of scale the needles might be interpreted as the much larger acus crinalis, used to hold chignons and other hair arrangements firmly in place. This much is suggested by the image on the monument for P. Ferrarius Hermes and his family, and by a modest memorial erected in Rome by Polydeuces for the ornatrix, Cyparis, where a comb and hairpin are said to flank the dedicatory inscription.39 From Juvenal it emerges (2.93–95) that the acus was also an applicator, used to apply colour washes to the eyes and brows. He says this in connection with the toilette ritual of the cinaedus he so despises, but there is every reason to think that women used the acus for the same purpose.40 In the CIL editorial notes, as in literary sources, small receptacles are identified as alabastra, ampullae, balsamaria, gutti, lekythoi, and unguentaria. When represented on monuments these containers typically assume a pearshaped form: wide at the bottom, narrowing at the shoulder and neck.41 It is difficult to know whether these are perfume or unguent bottles, like those used in Roman households and slipped into toilette cases for use at the baths.42 One funerary monument from Gastiain (prov. Navarra) in Spain (CIL II 2970) has a highly unusual representation of an object identified as a tabula unguentaria, a small unguent case. Compacts were principally female accessories and, to judge from a well-preserved example from the Via Cassia in Rome, they came in various shapes and materials. An ointment compact in the form of a seashell, carved from amber and secured at the hinge with gold threads, was found among the burial goods of a young girl. Analysis of organic residue from the compact indicates that it held a purplish dye, possibly a form of rouge.43 Cistae were used to store beauty utensils and supplies or jewellery, and
183 Designing Women these are included in visual assemblages of the mundus muliebris.44 The design and function of these boxes can be deduced from actual examples, one found together with an ornate sarcophagus of second century date at Callatis in Moesia Inferior, the other in Campania. They were rectangular, footed, moderately sized (18.5 x 13.5 x 11.4 cm), constructed of wood, and occasionally inlaid with bone or ivory to create attractive containers. Compartmentalized interiors kept supplies, implements, or jewellery well organized. Keyholes are found on the outside of these boxes (but are not usually among the details illustrated), indicating that the contents could be secured at the owner’s discretion. The chest on Poppaedia Secunda’s memorial corresponds to the shape and design of these boxes, its lid propped open to reveal an assortment of small cylindrical containers; perhaps kohl tubes, balsamaria or receptacles for medicinal ointments. The chest from Callatis held two pyxides that probably held cosmetic substances according to analysis of the organic residue (a red powder).45 Cistae occasionally take the form of threelegged cylindrical caskets. In construction and style they are related to the footed metal cistae of Etruscan design and may be compared with the general shape of the ornate Ficoroni cista, a Praenestine-style bronze cosmetic box made at Rome, in the fourth century bc, by Novios Plautios. An inscription on the lid says that Dindia Macolnia gave the chest to her daughter (whether as a wedding present or a funeral offering is uncertain). Inside were found the articles of the woman’s toilette: mirror, comb, scent jars, rouge pot, and jewellery. A container on the funerary monument for the freedwoman Herennia P. l. Doris from Preturo near Amiternum,46 ascribed to the late first century bc or early first century ad, corresponds to the design of the Ficoroni cista and was probably modelled on actual containers used during the republican and early imperial periods.47 Honouring Self-Presentation The toiletry items (mundus muliebris) used by women on a daily basis were essential tools in the design of the female appearance and in the shaping of the feminine identity. These were the tools of the woman who crafted her appearance according to her own personal tastes or to the dictates of gender ideology. But what role did representations of these toiletries play in the construction of a woman’s metaphorical self? Sculptors appropriated these accessories, as it were, rendering their likenesses in stone to create visual statements about the honorands that could be interpreted on different levels. On one level, the toiletries symbolized cultural notions of female selfpresentation. They refer principally to grooming, especially styling of the hair. Allusions to makeup are few; indeed, from the point of view of cos-
184 Leslie Shumka metic use this iconography is rather sanitized. Ideal females were demure and pleasing to the eye and artists emphasized this notion by portraying the mirrors and combs that women used to ensure that the hair was tidily arranged and the face clean. Visual references to facial makeup are few because cosmetic use was excluded from the beauty practices sanctioned by gender ideology. The commemoration of a practice that ran counter to culturally defined standards of female behaviour and beauty would have been inappropriate. What was the paradigm of beauty that women tried to achieve according to the mundus muliebris imagery? A clever allusion to this ideal occurs on the so-called Proiecta casket. The silversmith who crafted this elegant repoussé chest juxtaposed an image of Venus with a representation of a mortal woman, quite possibly the Proiecta whose name is inscribed on the lid along with that of her husband, Secundus Turcius.48 Nude except for the material draped across her lap, Venus sits seductively on a scalloped shell that serves as her throne. She gazes into a large circular mirror as she styles her hair with the aid of a hairpin or wand. Two centaurotritons flank the goddess, steadying her throne as she performs her toilette; one holds in his right hand the mirror that dimly reflects an image of the goddess. From their positions atop the backs of the sea creatures, two Erotes observe Venus’ endeavours. The one at left holds a rectangular, footed chest in his hands that is comparable to cosmetic boxes depicted on funerary monuments, while the one at right appears to hold a basket of fruit. Directly below the marine Venus, a lavishly attired and adorned woman seated on an ornate chair engages in her own toilette. A columned and arched structure separates her from the two plainly dressed attendants bearing her accoutrements. The servant at left holds a large rectangular chest and the one at right proffers a large round mirror in which the face of her mistress is barely visible. ‘Proiecta’ holds a pyxis in her left hand and, like Venus, arranges her hair with a long implement that might be a discerniculum or an acus crinalis.49 The repetition of specific details – the presence of mirrors, attendants who assist with the toilette, and an affinity with Venus through shared poses – combined here to reinforce the model of female self-presentation.50 Aspirations to such a standard of physical attractiveness are understandable given how closely mortal beauty, divine beauty, and Roman religious practice were entwined. Dedicated to Venus, the month of April began with the ceremonial grooming of the goddess’s cult statue. Women from all walks of life attended the goddess in her temple, removed the garlands and golden necklaces adorning her, bathed, dried, and decorated her anew (Ov. F. 4.133–160). According to Augustine (De civ. D. 6.10), who quotes Seneca, similar cleansing and ornatus rites were conducted for Juno and Minerva by
185 Designing Women ritual hairdressers who mimed the smoothing and styling of their tresses as other handmaids stood by with mirrors. The sacred toilette of Isis, witnessed by the ass Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (11.9), was part of a dazzling processional that ushered in the festal day of the Great Mother. Female acolytes clothed in pure white garments carried mirrors and were followed by other servants carrying ivory combs and performing a pantomime of a hairdressing ritual. These ornatus rites emulated the grooming tasks women performed daily for themselves, for mistresses, or for clients if they were beauty professionals. On another level, the mundus muliebris may represent the tools of the ornatrix, the beauty professional who plied her trade in town: Nostia Daphne and Cleopatra in the Vicus Longus (CIL VI 37469), or Pollia Urbana in the Campus Martius (CIL VI 37811; cf. Plaut. Truc. 405–410). The ornatrix might also be one of a corps of servants who performed tasks of a personal nature (clothes-folding, supervision of a wardrobe or toiletries, massage) in the households of Roman grandees like the Volusii.51 Only once does mention of a woman’s occupation coincide with an illustration of the mundus muliebris, and this occurs at Rome in an epitaph of the slavewoman Cyparis (CIL VI 9727). Found in many parts of Italy and the western provinces, funerary reliefs for tradespeople depict the deceased engaged in their professions or, more simply, with the tools of their vocation comprising the decoration: a butcher from Amiternum with an assortment of carving knives; a baker from the region of Bolsena whose funerary monument displays among other things a small quern for grinding grain; a faber pectinarius who lived in the vicinity of Chieti and whose tombstone depicts the long-toothed combs used for carding wool along with a few toilette accessories belonging to his wife.52 On conjugal and familial monuments, like that of the Ferrarii from Pisae (fig. 8.1), toiletries sat abreast of images representing male professions such as mason, comb-maker, and muleteer. Each assemblage memorialized and publicized the expertise and useful employment of the honorands: Ferrarius was a maker of buildings; his wives, Caecina Digna and Numeria Maximilla, may have been ornatrices and thus makers of women.53 Occupational reliefs defined gender roles and, quite literally, carved out identities for these women who, like so many others in Roman society, would have remained nameless because they lacked the personal, political, and economic prestige of privileged Romans. Toilette accessories in mortuary reliefs also functioned as signifiers of the social milieux assigned to men and women by gender ideology. Broadly speaking, the public sphere was the world of men who were employed outside the home and who enjoyed full participation in civic life: they voted, stood for government office at state and municipal levels, and filled the chief
186 Leslie Shumka religious offices. A woman’s sphere was more simply defined. Fertility played a vital role in the formation of her social identity. Since social values were framed in the language of the conservative male elite, for whom auctoritas and dignitas were paramount, and for whom marriage and children served personal and familial ambitions, a wife’s or daughter’s success in bearing children was highly valued. Meticulous care of the body that conferred such respect and prestige upon a woman was a natural corollary of her social role.54 The sandalia on monuments may also allude to the delimiting of a woman’s world by the walls of the domus. Affluent women involved themselves in the life of the community as patrons of public works and holders of minor religious offices,55 and women of the lower orders spent a good deal of their day outside their houses and cramped apartments, shopping for food, carrying water, or working to support their families. But in a perfect world, the world of the monied and privileged elite, a wife remained at home bearing children, spinning wool, and supervising her household staff. While at home, she wore thin-soled sandals or slippers rather than calcei, the sturdy boot-like footwear that was worn out of doors.56 Plutarch claims in his Roman Questions (30 = Mor. 271e) that the slippers and spindle dedicated in the Temple of Sanctus on behalf of Gaia Caecilia, wife of a Tarquin, were symbols of love of home. Representations of sandalia, together with images of toilette articles, were part of an elaborate representational system, rooted in social practice, which reinforced conventional gender roles and identities. By this standard, the ideal woman was attractive, well dressed, and expended time and energy making herself so; she was also a woman whose financial situation afforded the leisure to engage in cultus and ornatus and to employ slaves or servants to assist her. Conclusion The use of mundus muliebris iconography on commemorative monuments asserted the Roman woman’s devotion to her appearance and testified to her skill in designing the physical self. Moralists may have regarded this woman as dissolute and deceitful, but the toiletry reliefs leave no doubt that she was also accorded a high degree of respect. Indeed, the emphasis placed on selfpresentation in mortuary contexts, where Romans wished to leave some record for posterity of their earthly achievements, points strongly to dress and adornment as activities suited to honourable women and endorsed by them as well as their (often male) commemorators. Furthermore, representations of the mundus muliebris were not limited to a particular place and time, but formed part of the rich artistic repertoire of sculptors in Italy as well as other areas of the Roman Empire from the early imperial period
187 Designing Women through the late third century at least. The longevity of this imagery suggests that the link between gender success and a woman’s appearance was firmly entrenched in Roman society. By mastering the delicate art of personal display women affirmed their status and achievements in the citizen community and expressed their own sense of individuality. Ornatus and cultus were not, therefore, trivial concerns. They were, as the mundus muliebris reliefs suggest, an important vehicle of self-expression.
Notes
1 2 3
4
5 6
7
8 9 10 11
For help with this paper, at various stages, I would like to thank Patricia Clark, Jane Shumka, and especially Keith Bradley and Michele George. Warm thanks go also to Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith for the invitation to participate in the conference, and for their patient and encouraging editorial guidance. Gleason 1995. Gleason 1995: 7. The so-called laudatio for ‘Turia,’ composed in the late first century bc, speaks eloquently yet characteristically of a woman’s selflessness and loyalty, and of the personal traits that made her a model of womanhood: modesty, obedience, industry, piety (ILS 8392; see further Wistrand 1976; Horsfall 1983). For a small sample of epitaphs which stress these same qualities, see CIL I2 1221, III 3572, VI 1779, VIII 23808, XIII 1983 (devotion and obedience to husband); Carm. epigr. 63.4, 1988.14, 492.16 (deftness at spinning and weaving); CIL I2 1211, VI 16090, XIV 1826, 10230 (modesty, chastity, and skill in domestic matters). See Wyke 1994 for an excellent summary of what she terms the ‘rhetoric of adornment,’ with further references. For a few examples of male fear of the adorned woman, see Prop. 2.18.23–30; Hor. Epod. 12.10–11; Sen. Helv. 16.4; Mart. 6.12; 8.33.17–22; 12.23. Cf. Paul. Sent. 3.6.83; Dig. 34.2.25.10; 34.2.32.7. Female dolls: Elderkin 1930: figs. 23, 24a-b; André 1991: figs. 30, 58. Soldier and gladiator figures: Töpperwein 1976: pl. 73, no. 495; Dardaine 1983: pl. 7a-d; André 1991: fig. 28. The bride’s toilette: Carcopino 1941: 95–6; Balsdon 1962: 181–2, with references; cf. Treggiari 1991: 163, noting that men were expected to turn up neatly groomed. Dionisotti 1982: 97–8. Bordenache Battaglia 1983: 117–18; Virgili et al. 1990: nos. 220.9–14. See also 2.104.1, 107–111, 116–117; 3.54, 56.1, 57.4 (attire); 2.118, 121–129; 3.58–59.1 (ornament); 3.60.2–63 (hair). Paed. 2.104.1, 107.3, 108.5, 115.1–2; 3.5.1, 5.4, 8.1–3, 26.3, 57.2.
188 Leslie Shumka 12 To impress upon his readers the immodest natures of these women, he labels them prostitutes, wantons, or adulteresses: Paed. 2.104, 123, 125; 3.5, 10, 11, 13, 63. 13 For discussion of luxury toilette items on mosaics from Roman Africa, see Métraux, chap. 14, in this volume, with figs. 14.34. 14 Lane Fox 1986: 302. 15 Clement attributes this passage to Aristophanes, as does the second-century writer Pollux (Onomasticon 7.95), but it does not appear in modern editions of the Thesmophoriazousai because its authorship cannot be established beyond all doubt. For text, translation, and commentary of this fragment see Edmonds 1957–61: 1.662–665. 16 Text of the Alexis fragment: Edmonds 1957–61: 2.416–418; Kassel and Austin 1991: 75–7; Arnott 1996: 273–83. 17 Gleason’s study (1995) of male self-presentation during the Second Sophistic amply demonstrates social attitudes towards ‘questionable’ males; see also the comments of Richlin 1995: 203–4. 18 For Tertullian’s views on dress, see Brennan, chap. 13, in this volume. For Tertullian, see Barnes 1971. 19 Males who demonstrated too much devotion to their looks could expect to be reproached by their peers: Cic. Har. resp. 44 on Clodius; Pliny Ep. 2.11.23; Suet. Aug. 68; SHA. Pert. 8.5–6; Dio 74.5.4–5; Clem. Paed. 3.15.4 on the depilated male; Gell. NA 6.12.5 on Scipio Aemilianus taking P. Sulpicius Gallus to task for his choice of attire and body care; Suet. Otho 12.1 on Otho’s use of facial masks; Herod. 4.7.3 on Caracalla’s penchant for wearing a blonde wig; Dio 80.14.4 on the powdered and rouged Elagabalus; Pers. 1.32; Stat. Silv. 2.1.132–134; Juv. 2.93–97; 3.81; 6.O 19–22; Petron. Sat. 23; Mart. 2.43, 46; 3.63; Clem. Paed. 3.15.1–2 on men who wear make-up and flashy attire. 20 The word mundus may be associated with Munthuch, a mythological figure who sometimes appears in Etruscan art as the hairdresser that sees to the needs of Malavisch (Helen): see Thomson de Grummond 1982: 181. 21 Gardner 1995: 380 notes that the term muliebris is used in legal sources ‘only in connection with certain material objects, i.e., those adornments, jewellery and clothing conventionally regarded as exclusively or primarily for women’s use.’ See in general Dig. 34.2 for the references to mundus muliebris, ornamenta, and other feminine paraphernalia. 22 Other writers also conceived of the mundus muliebris in this fashion: Phaedrus 4.5.21; Col. 12.3.1, Sen. Q. Nat. 1.17.10; 7.31.2–3; Tert. De cultu fem. 1.4. 23 On the ‘implicit gender differentiation’ in the classification of toiletries, see Gardner 1995: 381. 24 Although toiletry reliefs from the eastern and western empire are many and better recorded, they are excluded from the present study as the artistic and cul-
189 Designing Women
25 26
27
28 29
30
31
32
33
34
tural heritage of these areas requires greater discussion than the scope of this article affords. For a sampling, see Waelkens 1986; Espérandieu 1907. For two examples, see Gordon 1983: 40–1. On the problems of epigraphic dating generally, see MacMullen 1982; Meyer 1990; Morris 1992: 156–73. The text thus reads: P(ublius) Ferrarius | Hermes | Caeciniae Dignae | coniugi karissimae | Numeriae Maximillae | coniugi bene | merenti | et P(ublio) Ferrario Pro|culo filio et poste|risque suis. I have omitted any discussion of the generic portraits of women found on the lateral faces of this stele as they do not influence the interpretation of the mundus muliebris and appear to be generic portraits of servants like those discussed by Kleiner 1987. The description attributed to a man named Melchior runs as follows: In fronte tiene una urna in mezzo a due sandali; al lato destro uno specchio e due vasetti; al lato sinistro un ombrellino, un pettine e due vasetti. For individual collections of toilette accessories, see Flinders-Petrie 1927; Carandini 1977; Riha 1986;Virgili 1989; Virgili et al. 1990; Cool 1990; Settis 1992. Examples of circular mirrors are also commonly found in Etruscan culture. Specifically, full-length portraits of affluent Etruscan women, like the Seianti, portray the women reclining upon sarcophagus lids, with the mirrors resting on the up-turned palm of one hand. For Etruscan examples, particularly square or rectangular boxes containing mirrors, see Thomson de Grummond 1982: figs. 29– 33. For Hanunia Seianti’s sarcophagus, see Bonfante 1986: fig. IV.43; Brendel 1995: fig. 322; Serra Ridgway 1996: 327. For Larthia Seianti’s sarcophagus, see Sprenger 1983: pl. 270–271; Bonfante 1986: fig. IV.44. Hairdressing scenes: Kampen 1981a: nos. 32–33; Amedick 1991: 108, Taf. 107.1 and 107.2–4. Bath processionals: Shelton 1981: pls. 8–9; Mango and Bennett 1994: fig. 14.4. Compare the shape and style of mirrors depicted in the occupational relief for a mirror-maker in Zimmer 1982: no. 181; see also Lloyd-Morgan 1978. Combs: Jenkins 1986: fig. 32; Virgili et al. 1990: 147, 220.12–13, 221.19. Goldman 1994a: 116; see also her definitions of sandalia and soleae (Sebesta and Bonfante 1994: 246); Waelkens 1986: 12, arguing that the sandals engraved on funerary stelai from Dorylaion and Nakoleia in Phrygia represent the footwear found in one’s palaestra kit. Depictions of hairnets: Mottahadeh 1984: 204–5, with references to the Campanian evidence; Virgili et al. 1990: figs. 18, 35–37. Mottahadeh also comments (1984: 206) that a ‘sprang’ wool hairnet, dated to the first century ad, was found at Vindonissa, a military installation in Germania Superior; see also Walker 1989 for two reliefs associated with the second-century sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter at Kalyvia (Sparta) that feature hairnets. On fourth-century bc Etruscan representations of women engaged in their toilette, women or their hairdressers sometimes hold long, narrow objects, which
190 Leslie Shumka
35 36 37
38 39 40
41 42
43
44
45
may be the Etruscan equivalent of the discerniculum, if not the perfume stick used for anointing the hair. For illustrations, see Dar.-Sag. 63–64 and figs. 101– 102, 105; Beazley 1947: pl. 19.2; Thomson de Grummond 1982: fig. 111; Bonfante 1986: fig. I.14. The object located immediately below the comb on the stele for the Ferrarii has been identified as a calamistrum: see the description in Virgili et al. 1990: no. 39. CIL II 2970; IX 2970, 4026. Pyxides as cosmetic boxes: Cic. Cael. 25.61 (the box belonging to Clodia); Ov. Ars am. 3.210; Rem. am. 353; Petron. Sat. 110; Sen. Suas. 2.21. Bone, ivory, wood, and bronze pyxides with little more than incised decorative elements: Virgili 1989: fig. 77–78; Virgili et al. 1990: nos. 164–166, 194–195, 221.5–6, 221.18. All the examples just cited from Virgili et al. 1990 date to the first two centuries ad. For pyxides of opaque glass and wood, ascribed to the early first and third centuries ad, see Kleiner and Matheson 1996: nos. 118–119. Virgili et al. 1990: no. 38. CIL VI 9727; Dar.-Sag. fig. 5428. Courtney 1980: 137–8 provides numerous references to the manner in which women applied colour to eyes and brows; cf. Festus 8 L = 9 M, s.v. acus, indicating that needles were used by seamstress (sarcinatrix) and hairdresser (ornatrix) alike. The construction and style of Roman hairpins is well represented in Cool 1990 and Virgili et al. 1990: nos. 196–217. For example, CIL IX 3583, 3593, 3680, 3725, 3826 (here = Figs. 8.2–4), 3952, 4026, 5025; XI 1471 (here = Fig. 8.1), 6694, 7002. For literary references to perfume containers, note Petron. Sat. 60.3; Pliny HN 9.113; Mart. 11.8 (alabastrum); Petron. Sat. 78.3; Pliny HN 20.152 (ampulla); Varro Ling. 5.124; Mart. 14.62: Juv. 7.130 (guttus). An excellent idea of the range of shapes and sizes may be obtained from Virgili et al. 1990: nos. 49–124. Virgili 1989: fig. 81; Virgili et al. 1990: no. 222.2, fig. 21. For a similar compact from Tarentum, see Virgili 1989: fig. 80. For shell-shaped containers with purplish-blue residues discovered in Hellenistic tombs for women, particularly in the region of Tarentum, see Barbet et al. 1997: 51–2. On the child’s burial: Scamuzzi 1964: 278; Toynbee 1971: 41. Two of the five monuments have been published. One is on the cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and the other is on the ara of Herennia Doris. For the latter, see Moretti 1968: 271; Diebner 1987: 29–30, fig. 2. For other representations, note CIL IX 3583, 3824, 4001. Chest from Callatis: Virgili et al. 1990: figs. 43, 44; Settis 1992: fig. 235–236. Campanian chest: Virgili 1989: fig. 84. For second- or third-century examples of glass makeup jars found together with a wooden box, with four interior compartments, at Akhmim in Egypt, see Cooney 1976: 100–1, no. 1060. Representations of toilette boxes in Roman painting: Kraiker 1953–54: fig. 106; Virgili et al.
191 Designing Women
46 47
48 49 50 51 52 53
54 55 56
1990: no. 46. For an iron box, found in the first-century tomb of an affluent Gallic woman, which contained among other things several rock crystal instruments, two bronze spoons, a basalt palette, two bone handles of brushes, along with a small bronze box of tints, see Barbet et al. 1997: 39–40. Moretti 1968: 271; Diebner 1987: 29–30, fig. 2 = Suppl. Ital., n.s., 9, 1992, Amiternum, no. 105, with photo = AE 1992, 437. Ficoroni cista: Bianchi Bandinelli 1970: 17, figs. 17–20; Felletti Maj 1977: 57; cf. Thomson de Grummond 1982: fig. 111 for a Praenestine cista of third-century bc date, containing a toilette scene in which a nude woman holds a mirror in one hand and a perfume wand in the other; fig. 115 for an attendant of Ramtha Visnai, in the frieze depicted on her sarcophagus, who carries in her right-hand a small box with an arched handle that is comparable in shape to the Ficoroni and Praenestine cistae. See Shelton 1981: 72 for the inscription which reads: Secunde et Proiecta vivatis in Chri[sto]. For images on the Proiecta casket, see Shelton 1981: 2628, pl. 2. Compare, too, the comments of Métraux, chap. 14, in this volume, on Venus imagery. Cf. D’Ambra 1996: 221. Personal servants of the Volusii: Treggiari 1975a. For an enumeration of personal servants, cf. Plaut. Trin. 252–254. Zimmer 1982: 103, no. 13; 119, no. 30; 203, no. 148. Cf. Joshel 1992 on the importance of occupation-title in epitaphs for slaves and former slaves. This metaphor is not unknown in Roman culture. Philolaches, the protagonist of Plautus’ Mostellaria (120) regards parents as the builders of their children: parentes fabri liberorum sunt. For numerous examples of male occupational tools on funerary monuments, see Zimmer 1982. Wyke 1994: 142. On women in public, see MacMullen 1980; Forbis 1990; Boatwright 1991; Delia 1991. Aulus Gellius (NA 13.22) relates how a leading citizen of Rome tartly reprimanded a group of young senatorial males for wearing sandals in the street instead of the traditional and more dignified ankle-high boots that signified their rank.
9 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus alison keith
The poetry by and about Sulpicia ([Tib.] 3.8–18) represents her as both a desiring elegiac poet and a desirable elegiac puella – in other words, as both subject and object of elegiac discourse. A particularly dense nexus of imagery through which these two roles are set in complicated counterpoint focuses on her dress. The aesthetic import of dress in Sulpician elegy is first sounded in the opening couplet of [Tib.] 3.13, conventionally read as the programmatic opening poem of her short elegiac sequence. Here she claims that concealment of her love would shame her more than its exposure: tandem venit amor qualem texisse pudore quam nudasse alicui sit mihi fama magis. At last love has come; and such a love it is that the rumour of having concealed it would shame me more than having bared all.
The verb tego, which has a primary sense of ‘conceal’ (OLD s.v. tego 1), frequently means ‘clothe’ (OLD s.v. tego 3) and clearly contains this resonance here in its pointed juxtaposition with nudasse, from nudo, ‘make naked, divest’ (OLD s.v. nudo 1). The poem thereby announces ‘dress’ – or rather ‘undress’ – as a polyvalent figure for Sulpicia’s elegiac poetics. In accordance with the amatory program of contemporary Latin elegy Sulpicia privileges erotic, socially abandoned undress over respectable, socially conformist dress such as would suit the face she ‘puts on’ for society, as she says in the poem’s final couplet (vultus componere famae | taedet, ‘I am tired of composing a mask for rumour,’ 3.13.9–10). By expressing through the metaphor of disrobing her intention to put her amatory verses into circulation, Sulpicia combines two frequently contrasted
193 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus elegiac dress codes. On the one hand, nudity is the characteristic attribute of Amor, tutelary deity of Latin erotic elegy and patron of the elegiac poetlover. Propertius, for example, rebukes his mistress for her interest in expensive clothing and make-up with the observation that the naked god does not admire artificially enhanced beauty (nudus Amor formae non amat artificem, 1.2.8). Similarly Ovid argues that, though he may lack the wealth and high lineage to impress his mistress, other attributes – including his blameless character, open sincerity, and blushing modesty – should commend him to her (Am. 1.3.7–14): si me non veterum commendant magna parentum nomina, si nostri sanguinis auctor eques, nec meus innumeris renovatur campus aratris, temperat et sumptus parcus uterque parens: at Phoebus comitesque novem vitisque repertor hac faciunt et me qui tibi donat Amor et nulli cessura fides, sine crimine mores, nudaque simplicitas purpureusque pudor. If the great names of my old ancestors do not recommend me, if the author of our lineage is an equestrian, nor is my estate renewed with countless ploughs, and each parent frugally husbands expense, still Apollo, the nine Muses, his companions, and Dionysus, discoverer of the vine, take my part along with Love who gives me to you, loyalty that will yield to none, a character without blemish, open sincerity, and blushing modesty.
Ovid here elaborates the moral of Propertius 1.2.12 to articulate a connection between the elegiac poet’s humble status and the elegiac lover’s naked emotion, and he may thereby imply that the elegiac poet-lover follows Amor’s example in eschewing fancy dress. In contrast to the nakedness of elegy’s patron deity Amor and the open sincerity of the elegiac poet-lover, on the other hand, stands the elegiac mistress’s conventional love of luxurious clothing and expensive adornment. Propertius describes his girlfriend decked out in all her finery (1.2.1–6): quid iuvat ornato procedere, vita, capillo et tenuis Coa veste movere sinus, aut quid Orontea crinis perfundere murra, teque peregrinis vendere muneribus, naturaeque decus mercato perdere cultu, nec sinere in propriis membra nitere bonis?
194 Alison Keith Why, my life, do you delight to walk out with your hair styled and rustle the slender folds of your Coan gown, or to drench your hair with Syrian myrrh and sell yourself for foreign gifts, marring your natural beauty by buying adornment and not allowing your limbs to glow with their innate charms?
Myrrh and Coan ‘silk’ were expensive eastern luxury imports at Rome, the former an Arabian commodity available through Syrian trade, the latter produced on the island of Cos by spinning the filaments of a caterpillar similar to the Chinese silkworm.1 Since Coan silk was also almost transparent (cf. Hor. Sat. 1.2.101–103), it advertised the wearer’s sexual availability (a characteristic that, paradoxically, aligns the elegist’s girlfriend with Amor). Though Propertius here deprecates his beloved’s indulgence in sartorial luxury (cf. the poem’s concluding line, taedia dum miserae sint tibi luxuriae, ‘provided that your wretched luxuries prove tedious to you,’ 1.2.32), he elsewhere asserts that the refinement of her dress inspires his refined elegiac verse (2.1.3–8): non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo, ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit. sive illam Cois fulgentem incedere †cogis† hac totum e Coa veste volumen erit; seu vidi ad frontem sparsos errare capillos, gaudet laudatis ire superba comis; Calliope does not sing these songs to me, nor Apollo. My girlfriend furnishes our inspiration. If you compel her to enter shining in Coan silks, my whole volume will step out in Coan raiment; or if I’ve seen her wandering with her hair spread over her forehead, she rejoices and walks out arrogantly when I’ve praised her hairdo.
Luxurious dress and rich adornment are the conventional hallmarks of the elegiac mistress, who is more frequently rebuked for her love of luxury and greed for gifts than celebrated for the simplicity of her personal style.2 The pointed contrast between naked love-god and richly (if transparently) dressed mistress is not always strictly observed, however, for it is every love-poet’s aim to strip his mistress of her finery in order to enjoy her naked charms, as Propertius avers (2.1.13–14): seu nuda erepto mecum luctatur amictu, tum vero longas condimus Iliadas; Or if she struggles naked with me after I’ve torn off her clothing, then indeed I compose long Iliads.
195 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus Recalling just such an occasion, he describes an amatory tussle with his naked mistress despite her delaying tactics with a concealing tunic (nam modo nudatis mecum est luctata papillis, / interdum tunica duxit operta moram, Prop. 2.15.5–6). On that occasion mythological exempla authorize the lovers’ naked play (2.15.13–16): ipse Paris nuda fertur periisse Lacaena, cum Menelaeo surgeret e thalamo: nudus et Endymion Phoebi cepisse sororem dicitur et nudae concubuisse deae. Paris himself is said to have been lost at the sight of the naked Helen when she left Menelaus’ bedchamber; and naked Endymion is said to have captivated Apollo’s sister and to have lain with the naked goddess.
Ovid collapses the distinction between the elegiac mistress’s fancy dress and her desirable naked form altogether in his description of Corinna’s entry into his collection (Am. 1.5.9–14): ecce, Corinna venit tunica velata recincta, candida dividua colla tegente coma, qualiter in thalamos formosa Semiramis isse dicitur et multis Lais amata viris. deripui tunicam; nec multum rara nocebat, pugnabat tunica sed tamen illa tegi. Look, Corinna comes veiled, with her tunic loosened and her hair in two plaits covering her shining neck, just as beautiful Semiramis is said to have gone into her bedchamber and Lais, loved by many men. I tore off her tunic; nor did it conceal much, since it was fine, but nonetheless she fought to be covered with it.
Indeed Ovid makes explicit what is implicit in Propertius’ reference to Coan silks, in his observation that Corinna’s tunic offered little concealment of her charms because of the fineness of its texture. In this context Horace’s comment on Coan silk is also apposite: Cois tibi paene videre est | ut nudam (in her Coan robes you can see her practically naked, Sat. 1.2.101–102). It is precisely the elegiac mistress’s conventional movement from (partial) concealment to open revelation of her physical beauty that Sulpicia promises her reader in the opening couplet of her short collection, and there is a particularly close connection with Ovid’s description of the full revelation of Corinna’s charms (Am. 1.5.15–24). In couching her promise in the metaphor of undress, moreover, Sulpicia elaborates both sides of the elegists’ sar-
196 Alison Keith torial poetics. For she is both an elegiac puella casting aside her robes and an elegiac poet stripping all pretense from her amatory narrative. Moreover she draws a further link between her poetry and her clothing in the following couplet, in which she expresses her debt to Venus and the Italian Muses for dropping her beloved into her pocket (3.13.3–4): exorata meis illum Cytherea Camenis attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum. Entreated by my Muses’ prayers, Cythera’s mistress has brought and placed him in my lap.
The sinus is originally the ‘cavity or fold produced by the looping of a garment’ (OLD s.v. sinus 1), hence by metonymy the ‘part of the body covered by the fold,’ that is, ‘the breast’ itself (OLD s.v. sinus 1b). Assisting Sulpicia in love, Venus and the Italian Muses directly deliver her beloved Cerinthus (unnamed in 3.13), by slipping him into her pocket, that is, into her embrace. Similarly in [Tib] 3.9, another first-person poem in the Sulpicia sequence, which Holt Parker has recently argued to be her own composition,3 she urges Cerinthus (named at 3.9.11) to run back quickly into her embrace (et celer in nostros ipse recurre sinus, [Tib.] 3.9.24). Imagined by Sulpicia within her embrace, her beloved Cerinthus here recalls the posture of Lesbia’s famous sparrow, another ‘love toy’ celebrated in the Roman erotic verse of an earlier generation (Catull. 2.1–2): passer, deliciae meae puellae, quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere. Sparrow, my girl’s delight, which she’s accustomed to play with and hold in her lap.
Whether or not Sulpicia’s echo can be interpreted as supporting the suggestion of a sexual subtext in the passer poems, it unquestionably shows her sensitivity to the codes and conventions of the Latin sermo amatorius in general, and her debt to Catullan love poetry in particular,4 since she follows Catullus in articulating a linked erotics and poetics of dress. In 3.13, however, Sulpicia complicates the androcentric gender plot of Catullus 2, where the poet’s desiring gaze focuses on his beloved’s figure through the folds of her dress, for Sulpicia is both the desiring poet-lover and the desirable possessor of the fold into which Venus and the Camenae introduce her beloved. Lest this all seem too carnal for the poet to whom Kirby
197 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus Flower Smith referred as ‘this slip of a girl,’5 and whom we know to have been descended from two of the oldest aristocratic families at Rome, we should note the sexual innuendo of the last clause of the poem (cum digno digna fuisse ferar, ‘worthy myself, I shall be said to have been with a worthy man’). Varro comments on the fading currency of the phrase cum esse as a polite metonymy for sex in his day (aeque eadem modestia potius cum muliere fuisse quam concubuisse dicebant, ‘equally they used to say with the same modesty that they had been with a woman rather than that they had lain with a woman,’ Ling. 6.80). But Ovid, Sulpicia’s contemporary and like her a beneficiary of Messala’s literary fellowship, employs the phrase in precisely this sense in the witty concluding couplet of Amores 2.8 (lines 27–28): quoque loco tecum fuerim quotiensque, Cypassi, narrabo dominae quotque quibusque modis. I’ll tell your mistress where I did it with you and how often, Cypassis, how many times and in what positions!6
From this introductory portrait of Sulpicia as both desiring poet-lover and desirable beloved, adumbrated through sartorial innuendo, we pass to her lofty expression of social elevation in [Tib.] 3.16: gratum est, securus multum quod iam tibi de me permittis, subito ne male inepta cadam. sit tibi cura togae potior pressumque quasillo scortum quam Servi filia Sulpicia. solliciti sunt pro nobis quibus illa dolori est ne cedam ignoto, maxima causa, toro. I’m glad that, secure in your position, you allow yourself so much regarding me lest I may suddenly stumble in some unhappy folly. Let concern for the toga and a prostitute burdened with a wool-basket be more to you than Sulpicia, Servius’ daughter. They are anxious on my behalf, for whom the greatest cause of grief is that I may yield to an ignoble lover.
Here Sulpicia contrasts her own elevated social position with the degradation of the Roman prostitute who wears the toga (3.16.3–4).7 Her social elevation is marked as much by the implied respectability of her dress in contrast with the toga, disreputable when worn by prostitutes, as it is by her proud claim to Servian lineage in the phrase Servi filia Sulpicia. This
198 Alison Keith emphasis on her social elevation is consistent with the self-fashioning of the elegiac poets Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, who insist on their equestrian standing even as they distance themselves from the political careers expected of members of that order.8 But Sulpicia insists on class distinctions here in a sartorially constructed opposition of toga-wearing prostitute and daughter of the Roman elites. The sophistication of Sulpicia’s manipulation of social and elegiac dress codes seems to have attracted the attention of the poet who celebrates her as an elegiac puella in the three third-person poems of the so-called Garland of Sulpicia.9 The first of these poems, [Tib.] 3.8, introduces an elegantly clad Sulpicia on the occasion of the Kalends of March (3.8.1–2): Sulpicia est tibi culta tuis, Mars magne, Kalendis, spectatum e caelo, si sapis, ipse veni. Sulpicia is dressed for you, great Mars, on your Kalends; if you have any taste, you’ll come from heaven to look at her.
The poet celebrates Sulpicia’s beauty in a variety of elegiac postures: styling her hair up or down (seu solvit crines, fusis decet esse capillis; / seu compsit, comptis est veneranda comis, ‘if she loosens her hair, flowing tresses become her; if she dresses it, she is charming with her hair up,’ 3.8.9–10); wearing purple or white robes (urit, seu Tyria voluit procedere palla: / urit, seu nivea candida veste venit, ‘she inflames you if she wanted to come out in a Tyrian mantle; she inflames you if she comes shining in white clothing,’ 3.8.11–12); anointed with Arabian perfumes (possideatque metit quicquid bene olentibus arvis / cultor odoratae dives Arabs segetis, ‘[she is worthy] ... to possess whatever scented crop the wealthy Arabian farmer harvests from his sweet-smelling fields,’ 3.8.17–18); or bedecked with Eastern gems (et quascumque niger rubro de litore gemmas / proximus Eois colligit Indus aquis, ‘and whatever gems the black Indian, next to eastern waters, gathers from the red seashore,’ 3.8.19–20). As we have seen, however, such luxurious clothing, along with the rich colours and soft materials (sola puellarum digna est cui mollia caris / vellera det sucis bis madefacta Tyros, ‘alone among girls is she worthy of receiving from Tyre soft wool dipped twice in expensive dyes,’ 3.8.15–16), perfumes, and jewellery she wears, is elsewhere associated not with respectable aristocratic Roman women but with the toilette of the elegiac courtesan. Thus Propertius censures his mistress’s efforts to turn herself out in expensive style (1.2.1–6, quoted above), and Tibullus similarly deprecates the elaborate and expensive outfit of the puer delicatus Marathus,
199 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus adducing in comparison his girlfriend Pholoe’s unstudied simplicity (Tib. 1.8.9–16): quid tibi nunc molles prodes coluisse capillos saepeque mutatas disposuisse comas? quid fuco splendente genas ornare? quid ungues artificis docta subsecuisse manu? frustra iam vestes, frustra mutantur amictus ansaque compressos colligat arta pedes. illa placet, quamvis inculto venerit ore nec nitidum tarda compserit arte caput. What good does it do you now to have tended your soft curls, often changed your hairstyle, and redden your cheeks with lustrous orchella? What good to submit your nails to the care of a professional manicurist? In vain do you change now your tunic, now your cloak, and have a narrow strap enclose your cramped feet. That girl is pleasing, although she’s come without makeup on her face nor has she dressed her glossy hair in a time-consuming fashion.
Both Propertius and Tibullus contrast the artifice of the beloved’s dress and makeup with the simplicity (and lack of expense) espoused under the name of ‘Love’ by the elegiac poet-lovers.10 Sharon James has recently shown that the elegiac poet’s censure in such passages reflects the social code of the financially straightened but morally virtuous Roman aristocrat, whose blameless character and open sincerity should commend him to women despite his lack of ready cash (cf. Ov. Am. 1.3.7–14, quoted above).11 Moreover on the level of poetics, as is well known, the elegist’s criticism of his beloved’s expensive style conforms to his espousal of an aesthetics of Callimachean slenderness.12 As these comparanda illustrate, then, the Garland poet’s description of Sulpicia’s dress and adornment in 3.8 assimilates her costume to that of the expensive elegiac courtesan censured, though desired, in contemporary elegiac poetry and thereby distances Sulpicia from her own self-representation in poems 3.13 and 3.16, where she articulates a preference for that ‘naked sincerity’ which would align her with her fellow elegiac poets. Even in the Garland poet’s highly stylized portrait of Sulpicia as an elegiac puella, however, we find attributes which mark her as a respectable Roman woman. For the purple cloak which the speaker imagines her wearing (seu Tyria voluit procedere palla, 3.8.11) is the garb of the Roman matrona at her most elegantly dressed (OLD s.v. palla 1) and it is, therefore, well-suited to the poem’s festal context of the Matronalia, celebrated on 1
200 Alison Keith March. Indeed, in [Tib.] 3.12 the Garland poet invokes ‘Birthday Juno’ as another wealthy, though modest, Roman matrona and a chaste goddess, and he comments specifically on the purple robe which she wears ([Tib.] 3.12.1, 13): natalis Iuno ... adnue purpureaque veni perlucida palla. Birthday Juno ... nod your approval and come shining in your purple robe.
In this poem the auctor de Sulpicia again sets Sulpicia before the public eye, but not necessarily in the more modest finery that befits birthday celebrations conducted under the chaste gaze of the matron Juno ([Tib.] 3.12.3–6):13 lota tibi est hodie, tibi se laetissima compsit, staret ut ante tuos conspicienda focos. illa quidem ornandi causas tibi, diva, relegat; est tamen occulte cui placuisse velit. For you [Juno] today she bathed and for you she gladly dressed herself, to stand on display before your altar. At least she says the cause of her finery is for you, goddess; but secretly there’s another whom she may wish to please.
The Garland poet describes Sulpicia’s careful grooming in preparation for the observance of her birthday rites in diction appropriate to the toilette of the elegiac courtesan, whose richly dressed appearance is the product of time-consuming labour and costly expense.14 Moreover he attributes Sulpicia’s finery on this occasion not only to her due observance of ritual but also to her unacknowledged desire to attract male attention, a goal which again assimilates her to an elegiac courtesan. The poetics of dress in the Sulpician corpus can thus be seen to participate in contemporary elegiac codes and conventions of social status and aesthetic commitment. In her opening poem ([Tib.] 3.13), Sulpicia announces a literary commitment to erotic ‘undress’ that accords with the ‘naked simplicity’ of the Latin elegists’ tutelary god Amor, but in laying claim to elevated social standing in [Tib.] 3.16 she does not hesitate to invoke the social meaning of dress to do down a rival for her lover’s affections. Following Sulpicia’s example, both the aesthetic and the social meanings of dress animate the Garland poet’s representation of her. For in these poems he represents her not only as a well-born Roman woman clad in the respectable garb of the upper-class Roman matron, but also, more frequently, as a beautiful elegiac
201 Sartorial Elegance and Poetic Finesse in the Sulpician Corpus puella in the exquisite garments of the most expensive contemporary courtesan, whose grace and refinement reflect that of the poetry in which she is depicted.
Notes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
In this chapter for the texts of Sulpicia, Tibullus, and the Tibullan corpus, I have used the text of Lenz 1964; for Propertius, the edition of Barber 1960; for Ovid, those of Kenney 1994 and McKeown 1989 and 1998. Arist. Hist. an. 551 b 14; Pliny HN 11.76. See, for example, Prop. 2.16.11–26; Ov. Am. 1.10; on the motif, see James 2003. Parker 1994. As noted by Santirocco 1979. Smith 1913: 80. For similarly carnal expressions of desire, cf. [Tib.] 3.17–18; on the phrase cum esse, see Adams 1982: 177. On the toga worn by women, see Non. 540 M: toga non solum viri sed etiam feminae utebantur: Afranius Fratriis: et quidem prandere stantem nobiscum, incinctam toga (not only men but even women used to wear the toga: Afranius in The Sisters-in-Law: ‘and indeed she lunches with us standing, clad in a toga’). On the toga worn by adulterous women, cf. Cic. Phil. 2.18.44; Varro Vit. Pop. Rom. 1.44 Riposati; Hor. Sat. 1.2.63 (with Acro ad loc); 1.2.82; Juv. 2.68–70; Mart. 2.39; 10.52; Serv. ad Aen. 1.282. See further Sensi 1980–81: 65–6; Sebesta 1994a: 50; Dyck 2001: 126–7; see, briefly, Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume, esp. 41–2n16 (with further references). See, for example, Prop. 1.22; Tib. 1.3.55–56; Ov. Am. 3.15. See Hinds 1987 for discussion of the project of the auctor de Sulpicia as a rewriting of the affair celebrated in her poetry. This censure is a commonplace of Hellenistic and Roman literature, though usually on moral grounds: see Maltby 2002: 305 ad loc. James 2003. Cf. Wyke 1994: 144–6. Juno is addressed as dea casta at [Tib.] 3.12.14. For the proverbial slowness of the female toilette, cf. Ter. Heaut. 240; Prop. 1.15.6; Cic. Mil. 28. For lota (lauta) of female grooming, cf. Plaut. Cas. 768, Mil. 251, Poen. 1169a; Ter. Phorm. 339; for como of the hair of the elegiac puellae, cf. Prop. 1.15.5; Tib. 1.8.16 (quoted above); Ov. Am. 1.1.20; for orno in the context of the courtesan’s display of her charms, cf. Plaut. Mil. 251, 872.
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PART III
The Cultural Poetics of Dress
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10 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor: The Peplos in Ciris 9–41 riemer faber
While the literary metaphor of the woven garment in Greek literature is well-documented, the preponderance of this figure in Latin poetry has neither been fully illustrated nor explained.1 Briefly stated, the literary construct may be represented as a cloak: the woven robe (u3fasma) consists of a warp (the vertical stiff thread called sth/mwn or h1trion) and a woof, that is, the horizontal, supple thread (called kro/kh or r9oda/nh) that passes between the threads of the warp. The interlacing of warp and woof is called sumplokh/. Three examples from lyric poetry will suffice to illustrate the metaphor: the poet ‘weaves words’ (r9hm/ ata ple/kwn, Pind. Nem. 4.94), or he ‘weaves a varied song’ (ple/kwn / poiki/lon u3mnon, Pind. Ol. 6. 86–87).2 Bacchylides (5.9–10) presents a figura etymologica in u9fa/naj / u3mnon, ‘weaving a hymn.’3 Like a woven robe, the composed poem is presented as a gift to the one who commissioned it. While it has been suggested that this literary metaphor was invented by Greek lyric poets, other recent studies show that vestiges of it occur as early as Homer and that it may be traced also to Indo-European texts.4 In Homer’s Iliad Helen weaves a double-folded mantle (di/plac) which displays the struggles of the Trojans (Il. 3.125–127): th\n d 0 eu[r 0 e0n mega/rw|: h9 de\ me/gan i9sto\n u3faine, di/plaka porfure/hn, pole/aj d 0 e0ne/passen a0eq/ louj Trw/ wn q 0 i9ppoda/mwn kai\ Axaiw~ 0 n xalkoxitw/ nwn:
[Iris] came upon Helen in the chamber; she was weaving a great web, a red folding robe, and working into it the numerous struggles of Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaians. (Tr. R. Lattimore)
206 Riemer Faber One ancient interpretation of this passage rests upon the identification of the literary metaphor of weaving: the scholia bT on this passage (Erbse 1.381) call the mantle an archetype for the bard’s poiesis: a0cio/xrewn a0rxe/ tu/pon a0ne/plasen o9 poihth\j th=j i0di/aj poih/sewj (the poet shaped a worthy model of his own poetry). The purpose of this chapter is to examine the literary metaphor of the woven robe in a vexed passage in the pseudo-Vergilian Ciris. Cautiously dated between the first and fourth century ad, this neoteric poem presents the folk-tale of Scylla, daughter of Nisus, who betrays her city, is punished, and changed into a fabulous bird.5 Our interest lies in the exordium to a certain Messala.6 The poet introduces the literary metaphor with the words, ‘I shall not, however, cease to weave to the end the task undertaken’ (non tamen absistam coeptum detexere munus, Ciris 9–10). If wisdom (Sapientia) had endowed the author with greater skill, he would, he writes (Ciris 18–22): not honour you with a gift so much below your worth, no indeed (although at times it is pleasing to trifle and to compose slender verse in elegiac meter), but weaving a story – if it is appropriate to speak in this way – into an ample robe, such as is carried in procession in Erechthean Athens ... non ego te talem venerarer munere tali, non equidem (quamvis interdum ludere nobis et gracilem molli liceat pede claudere versum), sed magno intexens, si fas est dicere, peplo, qualis Erectheis olim portatur Athenis ...
Employing the language of recusatio, panegyric, and literary style, the poet anticipates composing a poem he compares to a peplos dedicated in the Panathenaic festival. Excusing the religious and literary strain with the words si fas est dicere (‘if it is appropriate to speak in this way,’ 21), the poet goes on to adumbrate the subject of his poem. He will celebrate Messala by incorporating him among the heavenly constellations in a planned didactic poem on the nature of things (Ciris 29–41): ergo Palladiae texuntur in ordine pugnae, magna Giganteis ornantur pepla tropaeis, horrida sanguineo pinguntur proelia cocco, additur aurata deiectus cuspide Typhon,
207 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor qui prius Ossaeis consternens aethera saxis Emathio celsum duplicabat vertice Olympum. tale deae velum sollemni tempore portant, tali te vellem, iuvenum doctissime, ritu purpureos inter soles et candida lunae sidera, caeruleis orbem pulsantia bigis, naturae rerum magnis intexere chartis, aeterno ut Sophiae coniunctum carmine nomen nostra tuum senibus loqueretur pagina saeclis. Thus in due order are inwoven the battles of Pallas Athena: the great robes are adorned with the trophies of Giants and grim combats are depicted in blood-red scarlet. There is added he who was hurled down by the golden spear – Typhon, who when mounting to heaven on the rocks of Ossa, strove to double the height of Olympus by piling on Mt. Pelion. Such is the garment for the goddess borne in solemn procession, and in such a manner, most learned youth, would I enweave you, amid rose-coloured suns and the white light of the moon that makes heaven throb with her celestial chariot, into a great poem on Nature, so that our page might speak to later ages your name, linked in eternal song with Wisdom.
In the standard commentary on Ciris, Lyne deems the poet’s choice of image here awkward: the representation of martial achievements on the peplos suggests laudatory epic rather than a philosophical poem on physics.7 Moreover, he believes that it would have been more appropriate for the poet to imagine interweaving (intexere, Ciris 39) the exploits of Messala upon the garment, rather than the learned dedicatee himself (‘you ... most learned youth,’ te ... iuvenum doctissime, 36). Thus the juxtaposition of Athena in the Gigantomachy (30–34) with the catasterism and apparent deification of Messala (35–38) seems ill-suited. It has been suggested, therefore, that this ecphrasis was borrowed wholesale from a lost neoteric source, the Io of Calvus. In depicting a peplos offered to Juno, Calvus may have digressed upon the more famous Panathenaic robe for Athena.8 While this Quellenforschung is plausible and has met with the approval of at least one scholar,9 a simpler explanation may be found in the tradition of the literary metaphor of weaving common to Hellenistic and earlier ecphrastic poetry. In what follows it is suggested that the conjunction of the image that is traditionally portrayed upon the Panathenaic peplos with a panegyric representation of the addressee in the zodiac is not unprecedented. Further-
208 Riemer Faber more, the catasterism of Messala is not unsuited to a projected poem that may include treatment of heavenly constellations. We shall consider first the evidence especially in Augustan Latin and Hellenistic Greek ecphrastic poetry for the comparison of a written work to a woven object. Then we shall examine the association of the vault of heaven represented as embroidered cloak with literary composition. The image of the laudandus among the stars is linked in Ciris 29–41 to the motif of identifying the bearer of the cloak with the constellations thereupon depicted. Let us begin by noting the instances of the literary metaphor of weaving in Latin poetic ecphrases. In Catullus 64, the tale of the abandonment of Ariadne by Theseus, depicted on the coverlet of the wedding couch of Peleus and Thetis (lines 50–266), balances the song of the weaving Fates (lines 303– 383).10 The coverlet is introduced as a vestis ... variata (a varied coverlet), a phrase which foreshadows the variations upon the themes, styles, and conventions of epic, lyric, and tragedy, and so suggests that the poem ‘may itself be a “fabric,” a metaphorical weaving, in short: a text.’11 In the proem of Georgics 3, Vergil anticipates writing an account in epic of Augustus’ achievements just as images of the Britons are woven into the curtain of the scaena versilis (G. 3.22–25).12 In the opening lines of the description of the shield of Aeneas, modelled upon the figured coverlet in Catullus 64, the weaving metaphor is also active: the shield is an ‘indescribable fabric’ (non enarrabile textum, Aen. 8.624–625).13 The depiction of Ganymede as intextus puer (interwoven boy) on the chlamys of Cloanthus (Aen. 5.250–257) has also been read as a literary metaphor.14 In Ovid’s account of the weaving contest between Minerva and Arachne in Metamorphoses Book 6, Minerva depicts (pingit, Met. 6.71) an ancient tale (vetus ... argumentum, 6.69) of warning,15 while Arachne weaves into her tableau mythical exempla of divine deception. In Ciris the poet asserts (lines 9–10) that he would devote to Messala a poem on an elevated philosophical subject, but he does not wish to prohibit himself from weaving to the end (detexere) the work he has begun. In his commentary on Callimachus’ Hecale (which also contains a cloak ecphrasis), Hollis observes that Ciris reveals more influences of Hellenistic poetry than has been generally acknowledged.16 Brief consideration of the recurrence of the literary metaphor of weaving in Hellenistic poetic ecphrases is warranted. The ecphrastic pattern-poem by Simmias entitled ‘Egg’ is presented as ‘a new warp’ (to/ d' a!trion ne/on, Egg 3); the metaphor is recalled at the end of the poem with the phrase ‘the interwoven movement of the song’ (polu/ploka ... me/tra molpa~j, Egg 21).17 Perhaps the author of Ciris was influenced also by the portrayal of the tapestries on display in commemoration of Berenice’s victory in Theocritus Idyll 15.18 Elaborately
209 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor woven objects seem to have held particular fascination for Callimachus, who treated the peplos for Athena at the Panathenaic festival, as well as the cloak for Argive Hera in Book 3 of the Aetia.19 The comparison of poetry to a woven garment occurs in Callimachus fr. 532, in which Coan fabric (u3fasma) is likened to Coan style of writing.20 A severely fragmented section of ‘Berenice’s Victory’ is read by Thomas as concerning the dedication of a peplos to Berenice, and as implying a comparison between elaborate weaving and highly artistic poetic production.21 Then there is the epinician ‘Victory of Sosibius,’ which also involves the dedication of robes.22 The literary metaphor of the cloak in Ciris 29–41 is not without precedent in Hellenistic poetry. We turn now to the more complicated question of the possible links between the representation of the vault of heaven as figured cloak and literary composition, as effected by the incorporation of Messala among the stars in the poet’s planned literary work, in Ciris 36–41. Unfortunately, little early Greek didactic cosmological poetry has survived, and one can only wonder how relevant the lost Astronomia ascribed to Hesiod might have been.23 There are some hints of the literary qualities associated with such representation in Alexandrian astronomical verse; one thinks of Aratus’ Phaenomena charged with Stoicism, or Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus, or even Callimachus’ parody in ‘The Lock of Berenice,’ which is at the same time a courtly compliment to the Ptolemies through its politicized cosmology. An ecphrastic representation of the night sky as figured cloth appears in Euripides’ Ion (lines 1132–1156).24 The earliest explicit association of weaving with literary composition in ecphrasis is in cosmological poetry, in which the sky or zodiac is depicted as a woven robe, spangled with stars and planets. In a passage quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his comparison of Achilles’ shield in Iliad 18 (478–608) to Ge’s robe in Pherecydes, Zeus weaves a large and beautiful robe for Chthonie and on it he fashions Ge, Ogenos, and the dwelling of Ogenos: ... to/te Za\j poiei= fa~roj me/ga te kai\ kalo/n, kai\ e0n au0tw~[i] poik[i/llei Gh= n] kai\ Wgh[no\ 0 n kai\ ta\ ’W]ghnou= [dw&mata ... ... and then Zas makes a robe, large and beautiful, and on it he fashions Ge, Ogenos, and the dwelling of Ogenos ...25
Schibli explains that the weaving of the robe (fa~roj) represents the demiurgic function of Zas in creating the world.26 The verb poiki/llein (to varie-
210 Riemer Faber gate) and related forms are often used of the star-studded vault of heaven when it is portrayed as a cloth or garment with the planets figured upon it.27 In an exhaustive study of the metaphorical background of Latin vesper (Greek e3speroj), Katz has shown that in the culture of ancient Indo-European peoples the vault of heaven is represented often as a variegated (poiki/loj) peplos (pe/ploj).28 Especially forms of poiki/loj link demiurgy to literary composition in early Greek and Indo-European texts.29 The description in the Pherecydes fragment recalls the only overtly cosmological passage in the Iliad, namely the central scene in the ecphrasis of the shield of Achilles (Il. 18.483–489): e0n me\n gai=an e1teuc 0, e0n d 0 ou0rano/n, e0n de\ qa&lassan, h0el / io/n t 0 a)ka&manta selh/nhn te plh/qousan, e0n de\ ta_ tei/rea pa&nta, ta& t 0 ou0rano\j e0stefa&nwtai, Plhi+ad& aj q 0 9Ua&daj te to/ te sqe/noj Wri/ 0 wnoj Arkton 1 q 0, h4n kai \ Amacan 1 e0pi/klhsin kale/ousin, h3 t 0 au0tou= stre/fetai kai/ t 0 Wri/ 0 wna dokeu/ei, oi1h d 0 a!mmoro/j e0sti loetrw~n Wkeanoi= 0 o.
On it he made the earth, and sky, and sea, the weariless sun and the moon waxing full, and all the constellations that crown the heavens, Pleiades and Hyades, the mighty Orion and the Bear, which men also call by the name of Wain; she wheels round in the same place and watches for Orion, and is the only one not to bathe in Ocean.
These two passages may point back to a common source in which the zodiac is depicted as embroidered garment. The only occurrence of the verb poiki/llw in Homer occurs in this ecphrasis: e0n de\ xoro\n poi/kille perikluto\j Amfiguh/ 0 eij (‘the renowned lame god fashioned a dancing floor,’ Il. 18.590).30 More importantly, perhaps, Eustathius (1154. 41–58) and Heraclitus interpret the shield of Achilles as an allegory for the celestial firmament.31 Moreover, a scholion on Aratus describes the shield as a ko/smou mi/mhma, an ‘imitation of the heavenly firmament.’ Similarly, the second-century bc Pergamene scholar, Crates of Mallos, also interpreted the shield of Agamemnon (Il. 11.32–42) as a symbol of the celestial firmament. Eustathius points out the political appropriateness of this cosmic image, for to him it illustrates the approximation of Agamemnon to Zeus.32 There is no need here to rehearse the evidence for the cosmic allegoresis upon the Homeric shields; the point has been made that in early Greek, poetic, cosmological contexts the zodiac is portrayed as a dappled cloak of the sort that appears also in Ciris.
211 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor Let us look more closely at lines 36–41: tali te vellem, iuvenum doctissime, ritu purpureos inter soles et candida lunae sidera, caeruleis orbem pulsantia bigis, naturae rerum magnis intexere chartis, aeterno ut Sophiae coniunctum carmine nomen nostra tuum senibus loqueretur pagina saeclis. In such a manner, most learned youth, would I enweave you, amid rose-coloured suns and the white stars of the moon that makes heaven throb with her celestial chariot, into a great poem on Nature, so that our page might speak to later ages your name, linked in eternal song with Wisdom.
Lyne explains the passage as follows: ‘The thought is elliptical; fully expanded it becomes: in such a manner (as the Athenians honour Athena by weaving her exploits on the great peplos) should I like (to honour you and) to “weave” you into ... the pages of my poetry.’33 Lines 37–38 adumbrate the subject matter of the projected poem, namely astronomy, in the manner of Lucretius.34 What causes the rub here is the statement (36) that Messalla himself would be woven into the constellation, as if he is identified with the subject of the proposed poem. The panegyric motif of the catasterism of the addressee is not uncommon in post Augustan epic. In the proem of his Civil War (1.33–66), Lucan enjoins Nero in due time to take up his position among the planets in the centre of heaven and not at the extreme north or south. Dewar has argued convincingly that this flattering injunction is to be read at face value, and not as subversive.35 In Manilius, Augustus is addressed as lord of the universe and future denizen of the sky (1.7; see 4.932).36 Claudian describes Theodosius the Great ascending into heaven in the form of a star, while the constellations make room for him (III Cons. Hon. 106–110).37 The integration of the addressee into the structure of the cosmos occurs in Latin poetry as early as the proem to the Georgics (1.24–42), and again in the epilogue, where Vergil speaks of Caesar winning his way to a place on Olympus (G. 4.560–563): haec super arvorum cultu pecorumque canebam et super arboribus, Caesar dum magnus ad altum fulminat Euphraten bello victorque volentis per populos dat iura viamque adfectat Olympo.
212 Riemer Faber Thus of agriculture and the care of flocks I sang, and forestry, while great Caesar fired his lightnings and conquered by deep Euphrates and gave justice to docile peoples, winning his way to the immortals.
These lines share with the proem of Ciris intimations of Gigantomachy, of future apotheosis, and of final realization of a Lucretian, philosophical ideal.38 In lines 36–41 of Ciris the poet envisions that in a planned philosophical poem, which he compares to the star-spangled cloak of the zodiac, Messala’s name will be linked eternally to Science, as the most learned youth is woven thereby into the constellations. Edgeworth has suggested that the three colour phrases, ‘gleaming sun’ (purpureos ... soles, Ciris 37), ‘light-coloured body of the moon’ (candida lunae / sidera, 37–38), and ‘bright-blue chariot [of the sun]’ (caeruleis ... bigis, 38), indicate the sky at dawn and dusk, at night-time, and during the day. Thus the interweaving of Messala would have occurred ‘both in space (in the midst of the projected descriptions of the natural phenomena of the heavens) and also in time, in the course of the days in which the poem was to be composed and recited.’39 The incorporation of Messala into the zodiac in the ecphrasis is neither as forced as it may appear upon first reading nor is it without precedent in cosmological contexts. In his commentary on the fragment of Pherecydes that depicts the cloak Zeus fashions for Chthonie, Schibli observes that the subsequent presentation of the embroidered earth-robe signifies an official act of investiture by which Chthonie becomes Ge. Hardie argues for a similar function for the shields of Achilles and Aeneas, who on taking up their weapons become closely identified with what is depicted there.40 McGushin goes so far as to interpret the storyline of the Aeneid as a journey by the hero to the heavens, beginning with Jupiter’s statement that Aeneas will be taken up among the stars (sublimemque feres ad sidera caeli / magnanimum Aenean, ‘ you [Venus] shall bear stout-hearted Aeneas up to the stars of heaven,’ Aen. 1.259–260).41 Apollo’s prophecy is that the gods of Troy will exalt Aeneas’ race to the stars (venturos tollemus in astra nepotes / imperiumque urbi dabimus, ‘we shall lift up his descendants to the stars and grant dominion to their city,’ Aen. 3.158–159), while Faunus predicts that the mingling of Trojan Aeneas with Italian natives will elevate them all in astra (‘to the stars above,’ Aen. 7.98–99). Thus the passage of Aeneas’ shouldering of the shield (Aen. 8.729–731), rendered symbolic by abstract and portentous language, has been interpreted in cosmic terms, in which Aeneas takes on the function of the world-axis.42 The identification of the ruler with the spangled cloak was evidenced in real life too. Demetrius Poliorcetes is reported to have worn cloaks decorated with stars and the
213 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor signs of the zodiac (Duris FGrH 76 F 14; Plut. Demetr. 41.4), presumably as a public display of his purported universal sovereignty. This practice has been traced to Akkadian descriptions of the star-spangled robes worn by Babylonian deities.43 The association of the bearer of a cosmic cloak with the scenes portrayed thereupon occurs explicitly in the ecphrasis of Jason’s cloak in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (1.721–767), which the scholiast interprets allegorically as representing the universe: th\n kosmikh\n ta&cin, ‘the universal order.’44 The first tableau of the di/plac porfure/h (double-folded purple cloak, Argon. 1.759–762) presents the Cyclopes forging the thunderbolt for Zeus and continues the cosmological song of Orpheus that featured earlier (Argon. 1.496–511); it in turn includes verbal allusions to the zodiac scene on Achilles’ shield in Il. 18.483–489.45 Following the ecphrasis, the comparison of Jason wearing the cloak to a star forms a Hellenistic literary adaptation of the assimilation of the wearer with the cosmological garment.46 Hunter goes one step further by suggesting that the cloak also presents scenes that are analogues of elements throughout the epic poem, thus forming a link between bearer, subject depicted, and poetic composition that is also the underlying idea in Ciris 29–41.47 The myth of the Gigantomachy (Ciris 29–34) was particularly appropriate to use in praise of Messala. In demonstrating the intertextuality between the description of the cloak and that of the shield of Aeneas, Clare has drawn attention to the following features that occur also in the ecphrasis in Ciris 29–41:48 the gigantomachic images on the shield of Aeneas, representing the Olympian forces of Rome defeating chthonic powers of the Gauls and the followers of Antony, are adapted from similar gigantomachic imagery on Jason’s di/plac porfure/h (Argon. 1.759–762). The cloak and the shield are taken up by their bearers in the manner of a Homeric arming-scene, but with added political symbolism. The scenes embroidered upon the Panathenaic peplos illustrated the supremacy of Athena through their depiction of the Gigantomachy.49 In literature and art this group of myths was applied especially in the area of political ideology and panegyric, beginning perhaps with Alexander the Great, and becoming more popular in Hellenistic poetry.50 Ziegler has posited the existence of a Hellenistic epic based upon the Pergamene Altar of Zeus which uses Gigantomachic allegory to magnify the exploits of the ruler through cosmic fantasy.51 There are also several examples of Gigantomachy in the context of recusatio in Augustan poetry.52 The poet of Ciris, when he mingles panegyric features in the Gigantomachy with the literary metaphor of weaving, intends the reader to understand an identification of the addressee with the immortal subjects of the planned cosmological poem.53
214 Riemer Faber Notes 1 Treatment of the metaphor in Greek literature appears in Blhmner 1879: esp. 135–70; Philipp 1968; Snyder 1981; Scheid and Svenbro 1996: 111–30; Nhnlist 1998: esp. chap. 3 (‘Handwerk’). 2 Similarly Pind. Nem. 4.44: e0cu/faine, glukei=a, kai\ to/d' au0ti/ka, fo/rmigc (‘now swiftly, sweet lyre, weave this song’); fr. 179 Snell: u9fai/nw d' Amuqaoni/ 0 daisin (I weave a varied headband for the descendants of Amythaon). poiki/lon a!ndhma 3 So too Bacchylides 19.8–9: u3faine/ nun e0n tai=j poluhra&toij ti kaino\n o0lbiai/j Aqa& 0 naij (‘so weave now something new for much loved, blessed Athens’). 4 Invention of lyric poets: Scheid and Svenbro 1996: 121; cf. Jackson 2002: 8–9; Watkins 1995: 97–9; West 1971: 54, arguing that it is Homeric or that it may be traced also to Indo-European texts. 5 Lyne 1971: 253: ‘perhaps written in the second century A.D.’; cf. Clarke 1973: 120, arguing for a specific date of ad 138–9. 6 Lyne (1971: 253) identifies the addressee as ‘some descendant of the great family alive in the second century.’ 7 Ibid.: 109. 8 Ibid.: 109–10. 9 Thomas 1983b: 183–4. 10 Thus Boucher 1956: 196. 11 So Scheid and Svenbro 1996: 106. Laird (1993: 24–5) interprets variata (and figuris, 50, 264; amplifice, 264) as intimating rhetorical terminology. 12 Thus Thomas 1988: 36–7. 13 Textum in the sense of written text is not attested before Quintilian (Inst. 9.4.13; cf. 8.5.28), whereas texo is employed metaphorically in Plaut. Trin. 797; Cic. Fam. 9.21.1 (quotidianis verbis texere, ‘to weave words of everyday speech’) and Lucr. 1.418; 6.62. The three great ‘texts’ of the universe are described as tria talia texta (Lucr. 5.94). For a discussion of textum in ecphrastic contexts, see Bartsch 1998: 327–8. For munus used to mean ‘literary work,’ see Cic. Off. 3.4. 14 For example, by Putnam 1998: 72–3. 15 Cf. OLD s.v. pingo: ‘to represent or portray in words, to describe graphically.’ 16 Hollis 1990: 23n1; the ecphrasis: fr. 42, 43. 17 In the most recent study of this poem, Prier (1994: 85) explains the image as conveying ‘both the process and result of a complex weaving of matter.’ 18 See Hunter 1996: 116–20, noting the literary, self-reflexive dimension of Idyll 15. 19 Athena’s peplos: fr. inc. sed. 520; cf. Pfeiffer’s note ad loc. Hera’s cloak: fr. 66. See also Thomas 1983a: 107, further noting that frs. 547, 640, and 672 concern weaving. 20 Callim. fr. 532: tw~| [sc. u9fa/smati Kwi/w]| i1kelon to\ gra/mma to\ Kw/ i+on (Coan writing is akin to Coan weaving).
215 The Woven Garment as Literary Metaphor 21 Callim. fr. 383.11–18 Pfeiffer = Parsons 1977: A 25–32; Thomas 1983a: 105–8. 22 Noted by Thomas 1983a: 108 on Callim. Ep. et eleg. min. fr. 384.44–45. 23 See Hardie 1986: 7–8. For a detailed survey of the literary representation of the universe as a cloak, see Eisler 1910. 24 Goff (1988: 47–8) interprets the ecphrasis of the tent roof as representing Athenian civic identity. On Night (Nu/c) depicted as wearing a figured robe, see Janda 2000: 203–4. 25 Text from Schibli 1990: 50. 26 Schibli 1990: 51. 27 Wace 1948: 54, noting that poiki/loj (dappled) does not mean embroidered, but variegated, decorated, or particoloured. 28 Katz 2000: 75–81. On the representation of the vault of heaven as woven garment in Vedic poetry, see Rau 1970: 662. 29 See Jackson 2002: 13–20. The associations between weaving, ecphrasis, and literary composition are developed by Nonnus in the story of Aphrodite’s weaving at Dion. 24.242–327; see esp. 24.231 (a)ne/pleke Leu=koj a)oidh/n, ‘Leucos wove a poem’) and 24.303–304 ( Arei= 10 pe/plon u3faine: neoklw&stw| d’ e0ni\ pe/plw| / a)spi/da , ‘weave a cloak for Ares; but do not embroider a shield onto the new mh\ poi/kille cloth’). 30 Imitated by Nonnus in the description of the shield of Dionysus at Dion. 25.385, 392, 395, 431. For the suggestion that Nonnus’ shield of Dionysus is presented from the perspective of an epic poem on the shield of Alexander the Great, see Hardie 1985: 28. 31 Hardie 1986: 340–3. 32 See Hardie 1986: 342. Silius Italicus applies to Hannibal the cosmic images of the Shield of Achilles at Pun. 7.120–122, as noted at Hardie 1985: 23–4. 33 Lyne 1978: 117. 34 naturae rerum magnis intexere chartis (to weave you into a great poem on the nature of things, Ciris 39) alludes to naturam quaerere rerum /... exponere chartis (‘seek the nature of things / ... and record them in poetry,’ Lucr. 4.969– 970). 35 Dewar 1994; see also Marti 1945 on the Stoic cosmology in this proem. 36 See further Hardie 1986: 380. 37 On this, see Dewar 1994. 38 Thus Hardie 1986: 51. 39 Edgeworth 1979: 285. 40 Schibli 1990: 52; Hardie 1986: 374–5. 41 McGushin 1964: 240–2. 42 For a treatment of the shield of Aeneas as cosmic icon, see Hardie 1986: 369– 75. 43 For the influence of Indian and pseudo-Indian astronomical and astrological influences upon Greek and Latin texts, see Pingree 1976: 181.
216 Riemer Faber 44 See Wendell 1958: 67; cf. scholia ad Argon. 1.764 (Brunck): th\n diako/smhsi/n te kai\ ta_j e0n tw~| ko/smw| tw~n a)nqrw&pwn pra&ceij (‘the regulation of the universe and the deeds of mankind in it’). 45 See further Hardie 1986: 63n72. For the function of the cloak in the context of the poem as a whole, see Rose 1985. 46 The comparison of Jason wearing the cloak to a star is not without precedent: cf. Il. 6.289; Od. 15.108; Alcman Partheneion 61–63. On the symbolic association of star imagery in the Argonautica with Olympian forces, see Lawall 1966: 133n21. 47 Hunter 1993: 58. 48 Clare 2002: 354–5. 49 For a treatment of the Panathenaic cloak, see Barber 1992. 50 See further Hardie 1986: 86. 51 Ziegler 1966: 48. 52 These include Prop. 2.1.19–20 and Hor. Carm. 2.12. 53 Cf. Lucr. 4.138–168; Hor. Carm. 4.69–80. On the elevated rhetorical status of Gigantomachic myths and their associations with natural philosophy, see Innes 1979: 166–8.
11 Spinning the Trabea: Consular Robes and Propaganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian michael dewar The year ad 379 was a busy one. For the Emperor Gratian it was largely spent holding together an Empire rocked by the death in battle the previous year of his colleague Valens during the political earthquake brought upon the world by the Gothic incursions and the shocking defeat at Adrianople. Gratian, no doubt, will have passed many of his waking hours in the dress of a soldier. The same year was important for his former tutor, the poet-professor Ausonius, whose honour it was to enter on a consulship and to choose something nice to wear. It says something, perhaps, about Gratian’s solicitude for his old friend, and something, certainly, about the need for continuity in a period of terrible trouble and the need to uphold the dignity of tradition amidst those same difficulties, that Gratian should take the time not merely to compliment the new consul by sending him a glorious robe for the ceremonies of inauguration, but even to inquire about Ausonius’ preferences in the matter. In the customary speech of thanksgiving (Grat. Act. 51–54), delivered in Trier many months later, perhaps towards the end of summer, when the emperor finally had time to come and listen to it,1 Ausonius was predictably appreciative: sed ad blandiora festino. ab hac enim litterarum ad me datarum parte digressus eo quoque descendisti, ut quaereres qualis ad me trabea mitteretur. omne largitionum tuarum ministerium sollicitudine fatigasti. non ergo supra consulatum mihi est adhibita per te cura tam diligens, pro me cura tam felix? in Illyrico arma quatiuntur: tu mea causa per Gallias civilium decorum indumenta dispensas, loricatus de toga mea tractas, in procinctu et cum maxime dimicaturus palmatae vestis meae ornamenta disponis, feliciter et bono omine: namque iste habitus, ut in pace consulis est, sic in victoria triumphantis. parum est si qualis ad me trabea mittatur interroges; te coram promi iubes. nec satis habes ut largitionum ministri ex more fungantur: eligis
218 Michael Dewar ipse de multis et cum elegeris munera tua verborum honore prosequeris. ‘palmatam,’ inquis, ‘tibi misi, in qua divus Constantius parens noster intextus est.’ me beatum, cuius insignibus talis cura praestatur! haec plane, haec est picta, ut dicitur, vestis non magis auro suo quam tuis verbis. sed multo plura sunt in eius ornatu, quae per te instructus intellego. geminum quippe in uno habitu radiat nomen Augusti: Constantius in argumento vestis intexitur, Gratianus in muneris honore sentitur. But I hasten to pass on to matters yet more agreeable. For in the letter you sent me you digressed from this subject and condescended so far as to ask me what kind of consular robe should be sent to me. With this concern for me you have exhausted the entire staff of your officials in charge of largesse. Over and above the consulship, then, have I not been shown a thoughtfulness that cost you much labour and that brought me much happiness? Spears are being brandished in Illyricum, but you, for my sake, distribute the robes of civilian office in Gaul; while you wear your breastplate, you handle the matter of my toga; when you are in the field and at the very moment when you are about to engage in battle, you see to the arrangements for the decoration of my palm-embroidered robe. And with happy and auspicious omen do you do it. For just as that garb belongs to the consul in peacetime, just so in victory it belongs to the triumphator. You think it too small a gift if you were to ask me what kind of robe should be sent to me: you bid that it be brought before your very eyes. Nor are you satisfied that the officials of the largesse should do their duty in the ordinary way: you yourself select one from many and, when you have made your selection, you provide your gift with the honour of an escort of words. ‘I have sent you a palm-embroidered robe,’ you say, ‘worked with an image of my father, the divine Constantius.’ What happiness is mine, that such care is given to my honours! This is certainly a ‘broidered’ robe, as the phrase has it, this is a robe broidered no less with your words than with gold. But there is much more to its decoration, which, instructed by you, I can understand. For in this single garment there shines forth the radiance of not one Emperor, but two. Constantius is woven into the decoration of the robe, and Gratian’s presence can be felt in the honour that the gift bestows.
Various points of interest emerge, some of them familiar to students of the Republic and early Empire, others possibly less so. That the new consul should wear a toga will surprise no one, nor will the association made between that garment and peace: Cicero’s infamous cedant arma togae (fr. 12 Courtney), or the idea that lies behind it, will quickly come to mind. That emperors effectively appointed the consul also raises no eyebrows among the readers of Tacitus and Pliny, though the idea that the emperor might honour his appointee with the gift of a robe for the occasion is perhaps more
219 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian worthy of note, even allowing for the common custom of sending togas as Saturnalia gifts and for the natural blending of that custom with the inauguration ceremonies that would come so soon after the Saturnalia. That the toga in question should be, not the plain old-fashioned toga praetexta of the good old days, however, but one embroidered with some kind of depiction of a previous emperor tells us how far we have come from the days of Augustus. This is the age of explicit dynastic propaganda, even in the context of the most ostensibly republican of institutions, and, at the same time, it is the age of rich elaboration and luxury. But for those used to the tidy enumeration of technical terms from the Republic and early Empire perhaps the most striking thing about this passage is the reckless confusion of terminology evinced throughout. What he calls by the plain term toga when he contrasts it with the emperor’s breastplate, Ausonius also designates a trabea, a palmata vestis, and a [vestis or toga] picta. What kind of robe is this? Strictly speaking, the trabea was a short, coloured garment, to be contrasted with the long, plain white toga. The etymological link with trabs implies stripes, but, whether or not it might at times be dyed a solid colour, of greater importance is the fact that it was usually of the richest and most prestigious hues, purple or crimson. It had been worn by the kings on ceremonial occasions and was one of the emblems of their authority assumed in the republic by the consuls; custom had come to connect it in particular with the inauguration of a consulship.2 The toga picta was, as the phrase suggests, a more colourful version of the white toga that marked the ordinary Roman citizen, and it was as rare a sight in the days of the Republic as the occasion for which it was reserved, the celebration of a triumph. The triumphator wore a tunica palmata with the toga picta over it. Both were purple, picked out with gold embroidery which, on the tunic certainly and on the toga often, formed a pattern representing the palms of victory.3 That being so, it was natural enough to talk also of the toga palmata (for example, Mart. 7.2.7–8: i comes et magnos inlaesa merere triumphos / palmataeque ducem, sed cito, redde togae). Under the Empire, when victories and triumphs became the prerogative of the sovereign, and as the ideology of permanent imperial victory established itself, the toga picta came more and more to be associated with the person of the emperor. Working against this exclusivity, however, was the general weakening of the distinctions that could be readily or meaningfully made between the different garments as the tastes and proclivities of the age for opulence made them look ever more alike. The impulse to ornamentation went beyond mere purple and goldthread, and to the garments might be added both jewels, and bands (clavi) or patches (segmenta) representing individuals or even whole scenes. A particularly famous example of the late-antique custom, though it does not come
220 Michael Dewar from a consular robe, is provided by the three Magi on the hem of the cloak worn by the Empress Theodora on the mosaic at San Vitale in Ravenna.4 More directly relevant to the present discussion is the heavily decorated consular toga which the Caesar Gallus can be seen wearing on the Calendar of Filocalus of ad 354.5 By the fourth century, then, the terms trabea and toga picta or palmata had become if not wholly interchangeable, then almost so, and in particular if an author is talking, as Ausonius is, of a consular robe. One writer, however, who does seem to make some distinction worth noting is the poet and court-panegyrist Claudian. For him the trabea is so very much the garment worn by the consul, above all on the day when he enters office, that in his hands the term becomes more or less a regular synecdoche or, better, a concrete metonym for the abstract notion of the consulship itself. It thereby connotes in Claudian’s poetry not merely the dignity of that office, but also tradition, peace, maleness, and even Rome itself. So it is that Claudian can build on the notion we saw above as being associated with a famous tag from Cicero and celebrate the restoration of peace by greeting the Emperor Honorius’ third consulship (ad 396) with the words succedant armis trabeae (III Cons. Hon. 5). Similarly, like the neutral term consulatus which it replaces, the word can also designate a period of time; hence, a great noble fallen on hard times is called post trabeas exul (Ruf. 1.249) or the goddess Roma foresees the city gazing upon Stilicho and his son-in-law, the emperor, trabeis ... secundis, ‘in [his] second consulship’ (Stil. 2.407). The emperor who honours tradition, the senate, and the ancient capital by deigning to assume the consulship therefore unites civil office and royal power. On the first of January ad 404, when Honorius inaugurates his sixth consulship in Rome itself, the river-god Tiber is treated to a fine sight indeed (VI Cons. Hon. 641–642): ... iam Thybris in uno et Bruti cernit trabeas et sceptra Quirini. Now Tiber sees united in a single man both Brutus’ consular robe and Quirinus’ sceptre.
In the poem in question this is all particularly pointed, as Claudian is at pains to glorify the harmony that he contentiously claims exists between the court and the senate, despite the great tension that had arisen between Rome and Milan during the recent invasion of Italy by Alaric.6 Still, the underlying dichotomy is as clear as the polemical claim that it has been, for this day, erased: Honorius may temporarily unite the two, but royal sceptres belong to kingship, the trabea (at least for Claudian and his contempo-
221 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian raries) to the highest of the ancient offices of the Republic.7 The revered status of the consulship, and the economical way in which the term trabea brings it, with all its historical, cultural, and political associations, before the reader or audience of Claudian’s poetry, is never clearer than on the occasion when that office, and the traditions of freedom, citizenship, and male power that it embodies, are most outraged. One of the finest of Claudian’s poems, and an invective worthy of Juvenal, is In Eutropium, a two-book epic-style denunciation of the palace official Eutropius who was the chief minister of Honorius’ brother, the eastern emperor Arcadius, from soon after the death of their father Theodosius the Great in ad 395 to his own downfall some four years later. There were several reasons for the hostility that Claudian’s patron Stilicho felt towards Eutropius,8 but in Claudian’s hands that hostility is concentrated on the great honour done to Eutropius in the very same year he was to fall from grace, namely his elevation, as the nominee of the eastern court, to the consulship for ad 399.9 For, whatever Eutropius’ claims or merits may have been, Claudian presents his holding the office as an abomination. Consuls, after all, were the alpha males of the Republic. And Eutropius was a eunuch. The poem opens with a long list of traditional horrendous portents predicting catastrophe for the Roman world, portents at which, Claudian tells us, we need no longer feel the slightest astonishment: the birth of half-bestial babies and the howling of wolves at night within the city walls, animals with the power of speech and stones falling in showers from the heavens, blood-red clouds and twin suns visible in a single sky. All these are almost jejune, a mere rerun of the portents that terrified the world in the days of Hannibal (Livy 21.62) or at the death of Caesar (Verg. G. 1.466–492). His own age has produced an evil omen to outstrip them all, for the new year just begun has done so under the auspices of a eunuch-consul (Eutr. 1.8): omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra, ‘all portents yield their place when a eunuch is made consul.’ And to drive home the horror Claudian’s rhetoric can find nothing more powerful than the image of the trabea defiled (Eutr. 1.9–10): heu terrae caelique pudor! trabeata per urbes ostentatur anus titulumque effeminat anni. What shame for heaven and earth alike! Clad in a consul’s robe a crone is displayed throughout our cities, and she gives the year a woman’s name for its title!
The robe itself embodies the office in all its associations, but it is the defilement of its inherent masculinity that is most firmly emphasized here, by
222 Michael Dewar means of the pun anus-annus. Consuls should not merely be male, but young and vigorous enough to lead in battle.10 The poet may quite possibly have known of, for instance, the eunuch Posides whom the Emperor Claudius honoured at his British triumph with a prize for courage in battle (Suet. Claud. 28), but good propaganda leaves no room for the niceties of fact. The general epic structure of the invective is here made to foreshadow the farcical military campaign against Tribigild and his army of Ostrogoths and Gruthungi that is the centre-piece of the second book of the poem: Tribigild revolts against Constantinople precisely because he is persuaded by the disguised Bellona that, under such a consul as this, he would not have to fight contra ... viros, since now the eastern world has entrusted itself to eunuchis defensoribus (Eutr. 2.223–224). If the consulship was to be dishonoured, says Claudian, it would have been better to have had it disgraced by a convict in chains who would at least be a vir than by a male crone (Eutr. 1.26–29) more accustomed to wearing nothing at all, having been repeatedly displayed naked in the slave-market (nudatus, Eutr. 1.35). Clothes indeed serve as the poem’s dominating Leitmotiv for the manner in which this exaltation of the least worthy character imaginable turns the whole world upside down. So despicable is Eutropius’ physical condition that, in the usual run of things, not the richest gems and silks would make him enviable in the world’s eyes (Eutr. 1.224–228): numquam mater eris, numquam pater; hoc tibi ferrum, hoc natura negat. te grandibus India gemmis, te foliis Arabes ditent, te vellere Seres: nullus inops adeo, nullum sic urget egestas, ut velit Eutropii fortunam et membra pacisci. Never shall you be a mother, and a father never; this the knife, this nature denies you. Though India enrich you with huge gems and Arabia with perfumes, and China enrich you with her silks: still none is so destitute, none pressed so hard by poverty, that he would wish to exchange his fortune and the members of his body for those of Eutropius.
He is a man who is not a true man because he cannot become a father, but also a woman who can never be a true woman since motherhood too is denied him. The only consolations Claudian can envisage for him are the feminine delights of luxurious dress, and even these would not be enough to entice anyone willingly to change places with him. Rank, wealth, and gender alike are reduced metonymically to dress and ornamentation in Claudian’s poem.
223 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian This insistence on dress lends the greatest possible force to the climactic passage in which Claudian’s denunciation of Eutropius’ defilement of the consulship reaches its apogee and, at the same time, the sheer ludicrous absurdity of his ambition is brought down to earth by one of the most original, successful, and blistering similes in late Latin literature (Eutr. 1.300– 307): quam pulcher conspectus erat, cum tenderet artus exangues onerare toga cinctuque gravatus indutoque senex obscaenior iret in auro: humani qualis simulator simius oris, quem puer adridens pretioso stamine Serum velavit nudasque nates ac terga reliquit, ludibrium mensis; erecto pectore dives ambulat et claro sese deformat amictu. How fine a sight he was, when he strained to load his feeble limbs with the toga and, weighed down with the robe and the gold he wore, stepped forth, an old man made yet more hideous to the eye. Just like some ape that counterfeits the human face, but which, in mockery, a slave-boy has clad in precious Chinese silks, leaving bare its buttocks and its back, a dinner-party freakshow to amuse the master’s guests. It struts about, a toff with head held high; and the glorious raiment shows the ugliness of its form.
Worn by the wrong person, the grandest garment can serve merely to draw attention to the defects of the wearer, to render ridiculous rather than to elevate. Clothes intended to cover with glory can instead serve to draw attention to what is shameful. Claudian had begun his poem by talking with horror of the ‘feminization’ of the trabea, but the surest weapon against horror is mockery, and long before the first book of the poem is concluded, it is the eunuch and not the sacred garment that is made to look foolish by his usurpation of it. This is, in the narrative structure of the poem, the first major step in the recovery of the consulship’s dignity, a process that will culminate in Eutropius’ disgrace and exile, as annus qui trabeas hic dedit exilium (pr. Eutr. 2.10).11 The symbolic role played by the trabea is particularly clear and unambiguous in the biting invective of In Eutropium, but more important for Claudian’s poetry is the general equation of dress and office on which it is built. For panegyric works by a set of associations which, once internalized, allow for suggestive digression that may go beyond the letter of the
224 Michael Dewar text and subtly undermine or even contradict it. The remainder of this chapter will offer two possible examples of this process, both tentative, as Claudian applies it to consular robes. At the very least, we shall see something of the elaboration that such garments could undergo and the importance they assumed in the ceremonies. But it is hoped that the two examples in question may also suggest something about the power of a propagandistic rendering or contextualisation of something charged with general but powerful significance to convey with subtlety a larger political message. In a given case, that is, there may be more to the ecphrasis than wordplay or ornamentation or record, something more than the ‘jewelled style,’ even.12 Consider first the majestic ending to Claudian’s panegyric for the fourth consulship of the Emperor Honorius, celebrated in ad 398, when he was thirteen years of age and could as yet offer as material for Claudian’s pen nothing but his youthful promise (IV Cons. Hon. 652–656): tempus erit, cum tu trans Rheni cornua victor, Arcadius captae spoliis Babylonos onustus communem maiore toga signabitis annum; crinitusque tuo sudabit fasce Suebus, ultima fraternas horrebunt Bactra secures. The time will come when you will be victorious beyond the mouths of the Rhine, Arcadius will be weighed down with the spoils of captive Babylon, and you both with a greater toga will leave your mark upon the year to which, alike, you give your names: the long-haired Suebian will toil beneath the rod of your authority, and furthest Bactra shrink in fear from your brother’s [or the brothers’] fasces.
Honorius shared this consulship with his brother, the eastern emperor. In Claudian’s prophecy, Honorius is to conquer the north, Arcadius the east. This is on one level an elegant variation of the promise of the coming conquest of the east regularly made in encomium of all kinds to honour a ruling emperor, and a promise which, precisely because it had never yet proved true, was always available for encomiasts to renew.13 There will be, Claudian tells us, another shared consulship to mark these glorious accessions of territory on the two main frontiers of the Empire, but it will be celebrated maiore toga. What does this mean? In one sense it is clearly literal, for Honorius, when grown to manhood, will need a larger toga picta than the one he has just been described, with luxurious detail, as wearing for the present ceremony (IV Cons. 565–601). But maiore also suggests a ‘more glorious’ toga picta, one more spectacular, perhaps, because it will be celebrating a tri-
225 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian umph, a double triumph over Germans and Bactrians. It will be a garment that is both consular trabea and triumphator’s toga picta. If so, the audience surely feels, that future toga will be a magnificent sight indeed. For we have not long since finished hearing (or reading) what is surely Claudian’s most memorable, and certainly his longest, description of the emperor in a spectacular consular robe, one rich with gold and all the jewels of the east. In such a volume as this the description deserves quoting at length (IV Cons. Hon. 565–567, 584–601): nunc quoque quos habitus, quantae miracula pompae, vidimus, Ausonio cum iam succinctus amictu per Ligurum populos solito conspectior ires ... portatur iuvenum cervicibus aurea sedes ornatuque novo gravior deus. asperat Indus velamenta lapis pretiosaque fila smaragdis ducta virent; amethystus inest et fulgor Hiberus temperat arcanis hyacinthi caerula flammis. nec rudis in tali suffecit gratia textu; auget acus meritum picturatumque metallis vivit opus: multaque animantur iaspide cultus et variis spirat Nereia baca figuris. quae tantum potuit digitis mollire rigorem ambitiosa colus? vel cuius pectinis arte traxerunt solidae gemmarum stamina telae? invia quis calidi scrutatus stagna profundi Tethyos invasit gremium? quis divitis algae germina flagrantes inter quaesivit harenas? quis iunxit lapides ostro? quis miscuit ignes Sidonii Rubrique maris? tribuere colorem Phoenices, Seres subtegmina, pondus Hydaspes. And too, what robes, what a marvellous procession we now did see, when clad in the Ausonian raiment you went forth, a more glorious sight than ever, amongst the peoples of Liguria ... Borne upon the necks of youths go the golden chair and the god who sits upon it, heavier now in his new finery. Indian gemstones roughen the texture of his clothing, and the costly fine-spun threads are green with emeralds; amethysts are there, and bright Spanish gold with its hidden fires abates the sapphire’s dark-blue blaze. Nor in the weaving of such a garment was unadorned beauty thought enough: the needle’s skill adds to its value, and the work is alive with pic-
226 Michael Dewar tures traced in silver and gold: with many a jasper robes fashioned by art spring to life and Nereus’ ocean-pearls breathe out in portraits of all kinds. What distaff eager for glory had the power to make such hardness grow soft in the fingers, what comb the skill to make cloth solid with the weaving of threads of jewels? Who was it who scoured the trackless waters of the warm deep and plundered the bosom of Tethys? Who amidst the scorching sands sought out the gems that bud in the rich seaweed? Who joined the purple with the gemstones? Who blended the fires of the Red and the Sidonian seas? Phoenicia it was that sent in tribute her dyes, China her silk, Hydaspes the weight of all his jewels.
Although we think of him as the ‘western’ emperor, and hence, here, as the ‘western’ consul of the year, Honorius is already wearing a robe that symbolically functions as the tribute of the east (tribuere, 600). The gold thread is Spanish, but all the jewels – amethysts, pearls, jasper – were usually though of as being eastern in origin, whether their source was a country that was already part of the Empire (Phoenicia) or else is destined one day to become so (China, India). Indeed the emphasis here is on India, which frames the whole passage (Indus /... lapis, 585–586; Hydaspes, 601).14 The division of the Empire on the death of Theodosius was to prove permanent, but there was no particular reason for his sons and their contemporaries to assume that it would be so. Cameron has established convincingly that it was part of Stilicho’s long-term strategy to replicate in the eastern half of the Empire and over its ruler Arcadius the kind of ascendancy he already enjoyed in the west through his domination over the boy-emperor Honorius, his wife’s adoptive brother and soon to be his son-in-law.15 To insist officially on the existence of joyous harmony was good policy for a wide range of reasons, and a double consulship celebrated by the brotheremperors served to obfuscate the serious dissension between Stilicho and his rival Eutropius as each struggled to remove the influence of the other. In this apparent panegyric of fraternal concord, however, there may be more to it than that. As we saw, at the end of the poem it is clear enough that the Suebian will do homage to Honorius alone (IV Cons. Hon. 655–656): crinitusque tuo sudabit fasce Suebus, ultima fraternas horrebunt Bactra secures. The long-haired Suebian will toil beneath the rod of your authority, and furthest Bactra shrink in fear from your brother’s/ the brothers’ fasces.
But fraternas in the last line is an entirely more ambiguous word. We could
227 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian take it as the equivalent of fratris,16 balancing Arcadius’ eastern victory with Honorius’ northern one, and similarly balancing the previous pairing in lines 652–653. This would accord with the translation offered by Barr: ‘and beneath your rods the long-haired Swede will sweat, farthest Bactra tremble before your brother’s axes.’17 But we might also understand fraternas as being equivalent to fratrum. In the latter case, Honorius would have all the glory of the northern conquests, but he would also share the eastern triumph, as (for example) Platnauer’s translation suggests: ‘when the longhaired Suebian shall bear the arms of Rome and the distant Bactrian tremble beneath the rule of thyself and thy brother.’18 Claudian had already predicted the conquest of the whole world for the unanimi fratres on the occasion of their previous joint consulship, in ad 396 (III Cons. Hon. 201–211). But there was no ambiguity then, both brothers being explicitly exhorted to traverse both north and east, and the south for good measure (III Cons. Hon. 205–209): ite per extremum Tanain pigrosque Triones, ite per ardentem Libyam ... ... Bacchi transcurrite metas: vestri iuris erit, quidquid conplectitur axis. Go ye through the lands of furthest Tanais and of the frozen northern stars, go ye through blazing Libya ... pass beyond the bournes of Bacchus: whatever the heavens embrace, it will fall beneath your sway.
Nominally, then, the poems on the third and fourth consulships lay a very similar emphasis on the theme of the unanimitas of the royal brother-consuls. But in the years between the consulships thus celebrated a new tension had entered the air, Eutropius had become Stilicho’s sworn enemy, and all was not as it was made to seem on the surface. When the later poem ends with the image of Bactra awed by fraternae ... secures, whatever the precise interpretation we place on fraternas, something new has intervened to cast a cloud over the landscape. For we have come to that climactic prophecy with the memory fresh in our minds of Honorius in his magnificent trabea studded with the jewels of an east that already owes him allegiance. Not only that, we come to it with the memory, not of another prophecy, but of a comparison that has the force of one. India and the east, after all, had already once before been conquered by a divine youth, far back in the mythological past, and Claudian imagines the jewelled consular robe that now adorns him inspiring so much awe in those same realms that they instantly transfer their loyalty from Bacchus (Liber) to him (IV Cons. Hon. 602–610):
228 Michael Dewar hoc si Maeonias cinctu graderere per urbes, in te pampineos transferret Lydia thyrsos, in te Nysa choros; dubitarent orgia Bacchi, cui furerent; irent blandae sub vincula tigres. talis Erythraeis intextus nebrida gemmis Liber agit currus et Caspia flectit eburnis colla iugis; Satyri circum crinemque solutae Maenades adstringunt hederis victricibus Indos; ebrius hostili velatur palmite Ganges. If you passed in this garb through the cities of Maeonia, to you would Lydia hand over her vine-wreathed thyrsus, and to you Nysa her dances; the rites of Bacchus would be left in doubt for whom they should shriek in frenzy; under your yoke the tigers would meekly go. Such is Liber when, clad in his fawnskin woven with the gems of the east, he drives his chariot and with yoke of ivory guides the necks of the Caspian beasts; all around the Satyrs and the Maenads, their hair set free, bind the Indians with victorious ivy; drunken Ganges’ head is entwined with a wreath of his conqueror’s vine-leaves.
To make explicit what Claudian does not, Bacchus had no need of a brother to help him in his conquest of the east. And perhaps the question that Claudian therefore subtly suggests is this: Does Honorius? The surface is orthodox in its presentation of harmony, but the text allows those with some knowledge of Stilicho’s ambition to conceive of an important change in authority: the transference of loyalty to a western ruler – and, it hardly needs saying, to his revered guide and counsellor. Stilicho had ambition in abundance, but he also had to tread carefully. It is worth stressing that, if not quite ‘born in the purple,’ he was closely bound to the imperial family by marriage. His wife Serena was Theodosius’ niece by blood, but also, more significantly, his daughter by adoption, and it follows that their children were in law Theodosius’ grandchildren. Their very names – Eucherius, Thermantia, and Maria – commemorated the Theodosian dynasty: Eucherius had been the name of Theodosius’ uncle, Thermantia that of his mother, Maria that of his sister-in-law. None of Stilicho’s children was named for his own low-born or Vandal ancestors. Although not even the most hostile sources attribute to Stilicho the intention to take the throne for himself, they do speak of a plan to have his son Eucherius raised to imperial glory. The story may be no more than a slander, but it fits well enough with the perception that Stilicho sought to bind his children ever more closely with the destiny of their royal kin.19 It is all the more significant, then, that when Claudian breaks out in song to celebrate, in no
229 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian fewer than three books, the consulship with which Stilicho was honoured in ad 400, and when another glorious consular robe is produced and described in rich detail, the poet’s emphasis is not on the symbolism of jewels but rather on a quite different element of the decoration. The robe, apparently woven by Minerva herself, or at least matching her work in skill and richness, bears a representation – on segmenta, perhaps – of two closely connected scenes (Stil. 2.339–361): ... dixit gremioque rigentia profert dona, graves auro trabeas. insigne Minervae spirat opus. rutilis hic pingitur aula columnis et sacri Mariae partus. Lucina dolores solatur; residet fulgente puerpera lecto; sollicitae iuxta pallescunt gaudia matris. susceptum puerum redimitae tempora Nymphae auri fonte lavant: teneros de stamine risus vagitusque audire putes. iam creverat infans ore ferens patrem; sed avus maturior aevi Martia recturo tradit praecepta nepoti. parte alia spumis fucantem Serica frena sanguineis primae signatus flore iuventae Eucherius flectebat equum iaculisque vel arcu aurea purpureos tollentes cornua cervos aureus ipse ferit. Venus hic invecta columbis tertia regali iungit conubia nexu, pinnatique nurum circumstipantur Amores progenitam Augustis Augustorumque sororem. Eucherius trepido iam flammea sublevat ore virginis; adridet retro Thermantia fratri. iam domus haec utroque petit diademata sexu reginasque parit reginarumque maritos. So she (sc. the goddess Roma) spoke, and from her bosom brought forth her gifts, a consular robe stiff and heavy with gold. Minerva’s glorious work breathes with life. Here is depicted a palace with columns ruddy with gold and the sacred birthpangs of Maria. Lucina comforts her for the pain of her labours; the new mother lies back upon a shining couch; close by, her mother is pale with anxiety and joy. Nymphs with wreaths upon their brows take up the boy and wash him in a basin of gold: you would think you could hear his infant laugher and his wailing come from the thread. And now the child had grown, recalling his father in his features; but his grandfather, now riper in age, gives lessons in warfare to a grandson destined for
230 Michael Dewar sovereignty. Elsewhere Eucherius, the flower of first youth marking his cheeks, rides a horse that stained with flecks of blood the silken reins and with javelins or bow, himself shown in gold, strikes crimson stags that raise their golden horns. Here is Venus borne by doves, as, for the third time, she joins with royal bond a couple in marriage, and the winged Loves throng around the bride, one born of emperors and sister to emperors. Eucherius now lifts the veil from the trembling face of the maiden; Thermantia looks back and smiles upon her brother’s joy. This house now claims diadems with either sex, and brings forth queens and the husbands of queens.
Maria had married her cousin Honorius in ad 398, and here a pair of vignettes depict her in labour, bringing into the world the infant son who is imagined as being destined one day to rule the Roman world, and the boy’s maternal grandfather, Stilicho himself, now advanced in years, teaching the lad the arts of kingship.20 Elsewhere on the robe21 we see what seems to be another pair of vignettes. In one, Eucherius, in the bloom of puberty, rides on horseback, with all the health and vigour that mark him as ready for marriage, while in the other, in the presence of Venus, he is shown raising the veil over a bride who is ‘born of emperors and sister of emperors.’22 The imagined bride can only be the princess Galla Placidia, youngest of Theodosius’ children and half-sister to Honorius and Arcadius. All this is clear enough and generally accepted, but much else remains mysterious. Cameron is inclined to take the description as one recording a real robe and real decoration. Surviving representations of consular robes are, for him, excellent evidence of Claudian’s general accuracy, while he takes as good evidence of the poet’s trustworthiness on this particular occasion the fact that Claudian says nothing of jewels, those being, it seems, the prerogative of a reigning Augustus.23 Roberts and Keudel, on the other hand, believe that the literary debts to Virgil’s ‘Shield of Aeneas’ and to Homer render this assumption doubtful, but Roberts too accepts that the literary robe does reflect the dynastic ambitions of Stilicho.24 The matter is perhaps not capable of definitive proof either way.25 Certainly, in favour of belief, we might note that four different segmenta do not seem to be beyond the range of the medium. The balance, however, might seem to be tilted towards either pure literary invention or a very considerable degree of literary freedom when we remember that the scenes described are far more appropriate to something presented in the context of an epithalamium than something worn at his inauguration by a consul. And yet, even that argument may not convince. Sidonius, in his epithalamium for Polemius and Araneola, tells us how Araneola herself once wove a robe for her father when he became consul (Carm. 15.158–159):
231 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian attamen in trabea segmento luserat alto quod priscis inlustre toris. But high up on a patch on the consular robe she had playfully depicted whatever brought fame to the weddings of long ago.
Still, neither is this comparison capable of removing all confusion. Araneola’s robe may itself be a pure literary fiction; her name (‘Spider’) suggests that she is, for poetic purposes, a far better than average weaver and that her robes have something of the miraculous about them; the use of the word toris serves to remind us that her subject matter is more suitable to a coverlet for a wedding bed than for a consular inauguration, and that her own mind is running naughtily on marriage; and the segmenta seem to show an inordinate number of legendary brides and grooms, not just Ulysses and Penelope and Orpheus and Eurydice, but all fifty daughters of Danaus and their respective grooms, along with Jupiter, in half a dozen different disguises, ‘wedding’ half a dozen different maidens. The way in which late antique aesthetics blur the boundaries between physical depiction and literary ecphrasis was surely calculated to inspire and amuse rather than to record with photographic accuracy. What we can say, however, is that in Claudian’s poem the robe, real or imagined, seems designed to reassure contemporaries that, great though Stilicho’s ambition may be, it is for his children and not for himself. For the moment, Stilicho’s personal glory is made subordinate to dynasty, and consulship is effaced by matrimony. But only for a moment, for Claudian has another twist to give to his traditional repertoire. It was the goddess Roma herself who presented Stilicho with this robe, and she herself now does him the great honour of dressing him in it. Now it is its Romanness that is stressed, something appropriate to the setting, for it was indeed in the ancient capital that Stilicho celebrated this, the apogee of his career (Stil. 2.365–367): tunc habiles armis umeros iam vestibus ambit Romuleis; Latii sederunt pectore cultus loricaeque locum decuit toga. Next she put around shoulders suited to war the garments of Romulus; the garb of Latium rested over his breast and where once the breastplate was, the toga suited well.
Once more the garb of peace replaces the garb of war. But Claudian now
232 Michael Dewar goes further. As the young consul Honorius was compared with subtle implication to Bacchus triumphant over the east, so the grizzled old soldier Stilicho is compared to Mars returning from war in the north to celebrate a triumph in the city of his descendants (Stil. 2.367–376): ... talis ab Histro vel Scythico victor rediens Gradivus ab axe deposito mitis clipeo candentibus urbem ingreditur trabeatus equis; speciosa Quirinus frena regit currumque patris Bellona, cruentam ditibus exuviis tendens ad sidera quercum, praecedit, lictorque Metus cum fratre Pavore barbara ferratis innectunt colla catenis velati galeas lauro, propiusque iugales Formido ingentem vibrat succincta securim. Such is Mars the Strider when he returns in victory from the Danube or from the Scythian pole, and, gentle now that he has laid his shield aside, passes into the City drawn by white horses and clad in the consular robe; Quirinus guides the glorious reins and Bellona marches before her father’s chariot, holding up to heaven an oakbranch bloodied with the rich spoils of victory, and as lictors go Fear and his brother Terror, binding the barbarians’ necks with chains of iron, their helmets veiled in laurel-wreaths, and close by the yoke-horses Panic, her robe girt high, brandishes a mighty axe.
Cameron alluded to the reservation of jewels on garments as a privilege of the imperial ruler himself. That privilege cannot have been more jealously guarded than the privilege of celebrating a triumph. Stilicho may have wanted to assure the nervous grandees of the western senatorial aristocracy that his ambitions did not include obtaining the imperial throne for himself. But in Claudian’s poetry, at least for a day and if only in a simile, he is a god, Mars himself, proceeding in triumph in the trabea (Gradivus ... trabeatus, 368–370), through the very streets of Rome. Like Caesar before him, like Augustus and Claudius, like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. To some critics neither of the readings offered above will appear fully convincing, for both are open to the charge that they constitute a kind of overinterpretation influenced, perhaps, by the relative ease with which we can talk about Stilicho’s obvious political ambitions and by the relative difficulty with which we must approach the imaginative reconstruction through literary texts of long-vanished ceremonies we cannot witness with
233 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian our own eyes. There is also another consideration to be borne in mind, that of underinterpretation, or of the refusal to accept the symbolism intended. Modern scholarship tends to talk as if the ‘problem of panegyric’ is that effusive praise is inherently so absurd that no one sensible could take it seriously, a position from which it follows that if one is sensible (as critics think they themselves are and as they usually assume the authors they admire, or at least study, must also have been), then all praise must be insincere in the sense that it is, at best, intended to be read as ironic. It is at least possible, however, that the ‘problem of panegyric’ for the poets who wrote it was similar in that it involved disbelief, but radically different in that they will have known that they could not compel any given member of an audience to accept the rules of the game to which they themselves, for whatever reason, were adhering. Nor could they prevent lip service of the kind that was liable to lapse when other considerations intervened. We are all too prone to regard ancient audiences as monolithic, and to forget that not everyone will have seen the same thing. Perhaps there were those there on the day for whom the symbolism of the trabea, the toga picta, was too obscure to register fully, or for whom it was not history that dazzled the eye but nothing more than the material splendour of emeralds and gold. And there will have been those who were quite able to understand the symbolism even as, for their own purposes, they were willing to reject it, more or less openly, if the occasion so moved them. Almost five centuries after Stilicho celebrated his consulship, Notker the Stammerer, a monk of Saint Gall, told of the difficulties of that most Christian prince the Emperor Lewis (Louis) the Pious and his attempts to convert the ‘Northmen,’ that is, the pagan Danes:26 qui, a primoribus palacii quasi in adoptionem filiorum suscepti, de camera quidem caesaris candidatum, a patrinis vero suis habitum Francorum in vestibus preciosis et armis caeterisque ornatibus acceperunt. quod cum diutius actitaretur, et non propter Christum sed propter commoda terrena ab anno in annum multo plures iam non ut legati sed ut devotissimi vasalli ad obsequium imperatoris in sabbato sancto paschae festinarent occurrere, contigit, ut quodam tempore usque ad quinquaginta venissent. quos imperator interrogatos, si baptizari votum haberent, et confessos iussit aqua sacrata sine mora perfundi. cumque tot lineae vestes non essent in promptu, iussit incidi camisilia et in modum sepium consui vel in modum vitium pastinari. quarum cum una cuidam seniorum illorum repentino fuisset imposita, et ille eam curiosioribus oculis ex tempore contemplatus fuisset, iamque indignatione non modica mente concepta, dixit ad imperatorem: ‘iam vicies hic lotus sum et optimis candidissimisque vestibus indutus; et ecce talis saccus non milites sed subulcos adde-
234 Michael Dewar cet. et nisi nuditatem erubescerem, meis privatus nec a te datis contectus, amictum tuum cum Christo tuo tibi relinquerem.’ The nobles of the royal palace adopted these Northmen, almost as if they had been children: each received a white robe from the Emperor’s wardrobe, and from his sponsors a full set of Frankish garments, with arms, costly robes and other adornments. This was done repeatedly, and more and more came each year, not for the sake of Christ but for mundane advantages. They used to hurry over on Easter Eve to pay homage to the Emperor, more like faithful vassals than foreign envoys. On one occasion as many as fifty arrived. The Emperor asked them if they wished to be baptized. When they had confessed their sins, he ordered them to be sprinkled with holy water. As there were not enough linen garments to go round on that occasion, Lewis ordered some old shirts to be cut up and to be tacked together to make tunics or to be run up as overalls. When one of these without more ado was put on a certain elderly envoy, he regarded it suspiciously for some time. Then he lost control of himself completely and said to the Emperor: ‘Look here! I’ve gone through this ablutions business about twenty times already, and I’ve always been rigged out before in a splendid white suit; but this old sack makes me feel more like a pigfarmer than a soldier! If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve pinched my own clothes and not given me any new ones, with the result that I’d feel a right fool if I walked out of here naked, you could keep your Christ and your reach-me-downs too!’27
Being rude to the emperor on the subject of clothes, then, is a Danish tradition much older than Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the little boy who saw that the pompous royal personage was in fact prancing around in his birthday suit. A rigid respect for the literal truth is a fine thing in a fairy tale or a moral fable, no doubt, but it would be disastrous in a panegyric. Perhaps there were those admiring Honorius’ consular trabea who saw only that it was splendid with jewels, or who had no idea which personages were depicted on Stilicho’s robe, but then again, there were surely those who understood well enough what Claudian was telling them about Stilicho’s dynastic ambitions but who, far from being persuaded or cowed, were determined to ensure that the implied predictions should be proved false by events. We can only hope that they did not put Claudian off his stride in performance by exclaiming too loudly, and with an excess of false naivety, that the colours were very pretty and the gold thread very fine.
Notes 1 Matthews 1975: 98. As Green (1991: 537) points out, given that Gratian was in Milan on 3 August ad 389 and in Trier by 14 September, it is possible that the
235 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian
2
3 4 5
6
7 8
9
10
11
speech was delivered as early as the middle of August and probable that the event took place before December of that year, when Ausonius resigned his Gallic prefecture. But even this is not certain. Schuppe 1937: 1860; Fordyce 1977: 102, discussing Verg. Aen. 7.187–188 (a statue of Picus, ancestor of King Latinus): ipse Quirinali lituo parvaque sedebat / succinctus trabea; Dewar 1996: 64–5. Note esp. Isid. Etym. 19.24.8: trabea erat togae species ex purpura et cocco qua operti Romanorum reges initio procedebant. On the trabea in the Republic and early Empire, see further Gabelmann 1977; Wrede 1988. Ehlers 1939: 504–5. Among many reproductions see, for convenience, Henig 1983: 245, fig. 209. Roberts 1989: 111–15, with fig. 23 on p. 113, from the Calendar of Filocalus. See also Elsner 1998: 83, fig. 54 for another illustration from the Calendar, this time of Constantius II distributing consular largesse in a jewelled toga picta. Dewar 1996: 64–6. For the poem’s handling of the political strain that Alaric’s invasion had put upon relations between Stilicho and the court on the one hand and the landed senatorial aristocracy of Italy on the other, see Dewar 1996: xliv–lii. Dewar 1996: 65–6. Cameron 1970: 63–155 passim, esp. 124–55. As Cameron shows, Stilicho hoped to extend his ‘regency’ over Honorius to include his brother Arcadius, and Eutropius was therefore a serious obstacle to his ambitions. Moroever, Eutropius had had Stilicho declared hostis publicus in ad 397, and subsequently persuaded Gildo, governor of Africa, to defect from the west to Constantinople. This constituted a major threat to Stilicho’s position; Gildo’s revolt meant denying Italy the African corn supplies and this raised the possibility of disastrous famine, with riots and political opposition sure to follow. Eutropius’ consulship was not formally recognized by the western court. Claudian in the meantime wrote a panegyric for the philosopher-administrator who was the west’s appointee to the office, Mallius Theodorus: see Cameron 1970: 125–7. The point hardly needs much elaboration here, but for something of the tone and attitude that infuses Claudian’s rhetorical stance, consider, for example, Turnus’ lofty dismissal of what he thinks are an old woman’s fears when Allecto appears to him disguised as the aged priestess (Iunonis anus) Calybe: Verg. Aen. 7.440–444: sed te victa situ verique effeta senectus, / o mater, curis nequiquam exercet ... / ... / ... bella viri pacemque gerant quis bella gerenda. For the simile see Christiansen 1969: 93; Long 1996: 202. It seems far from likely that Charlotte Brontë, of all people, would know this passage, or that, if she did, she would introduce a deliberate allusion to it into a novel saturated with references to Milton and the Psalms. But it is worth noting, for curiosity’s sake, how Mr Rochester declares that he will ‘attire [his] Jane in satin and lace,
236 Michael Dewar
12 13
14
15 16
17 18 19 20
21
22
and she shall have roses in her hair,’ only for ‘poor, obscure, plain and little’ Jane Eyre to reply: ‘And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket – a jay in borrowed plumes’ (Jane Eyre [1847], chapters 23 and 24). Roberts 1989. As noted by Barr (1981: 93), the ending reworks an important model for Claudian, Statius’ encomium for Domitian on the occasion of his sixteenth consulship: Silv. 4.1.40–41: restat Bactra novis, restat Babylona tributis / frenari. Predictions of the conquest of the east are found as early as Augustus’ reign (Hor. Carm. 1.12.53–56; Prop. 3.4.1–6) and are common currency thereafter. To be sure, the eastern origin is not made explicit in every instance in the text. But the cultural assumption is a strong one, and is here strengthened not just by the framing Indus lapis – Hydaspes but also by the later comparison to the conquest of India by Bacchus (608–610). In addition to Claudian’s own Indus / ... lapis (585–586) note, for instance, Stat. Theb. 4.270: iaspide clarus Eoa, VI Cons. Hon. 563: Erythraeas ... smaragdos. Note also the repeated emphasis on the eastern provenance of most gemstones in Pliny’s account in Book 37 of his Natural History: e.g., 37.65–75 (twelve kinds of emeralds, the most highly prized being from Scythia, Bactria, and Egypt) and 37.121 (amethysts): principatum amethysti tenent Indicae, sed in Arabiae quoque parte, quae finitima Syriae Petra vocatur, et in Armenia minore et Aegypto et Galatia reperiuntur. For Stilicho’s ‘regency’ over Honorius, and his claim that it extended to Arcadius, see Cameron 1970: 37–40, 42–44, 49–51, 152. For the common high-poetic use of an attributive adjective in place of a genitive, see Dewar 1996: 71 (11 mons Euandrius n.) and the references collected there to Löfstedt and various useful commentaries. Barr 1981: 67. Platnauer 1922: 1.335. Cameron 1970: 46–9. Claudian imagines Theodosius instructing Honorius in a similar fashion at IV Cons. Hon. 212–418. The same term (praecepta) is used of both speeches, the one reproduced at length (IV Cons. Hon. 419) and the one that, on a textile, must be forever mute (Stil. 2.349). parte alia, Stil. 2.350. The transitional phrase belongs to epic ecphrasis, and recalls, for instance, the coverlet at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis: Catull. 64.251: at parte ex alia. For other examples, see Verg. Aen. 1.474; 8.682; Val. Fl. 1.140; Sil. Pun. 2.426. Compare also, for example, haud procul inde and hinc procul of different scenes on the shield of Aeneas (Verg. Aen. 8.642, 666). The two pairs of double scenes are marked by clear transitional formulae: hic (341) introduces the labour-scene and is paired with iam (347), a temporal term
237 Consular Robes and Propoganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian
23
24 25
26 27
used to introduce a scene that takes place later, and this first pair of terms is then balanced by parte alia (350) for the horseback scene and hic (354) for the marriage. Cameron 1970: 48, 303–4. Note also Cameron 1976: 195 on Corippus Iust. 4.10. This claim might, however, bear further investigation and even if it is true, or usually true, we could consider it suggestive that Claudian employs language that can be construed as ambiguous. He speaks, for instance, of the rigentes / ... togas of the non-imperial consuls Probinus and Olybrius (Prob. 205–206), a phrase that we might take as referring to the gold embroidery on the standard toga picta but which Platnauer (1922: 1.17) translates as ‘the jewel-studded togas.’ Stilicho’s own rigentia ... / dona, graves auro trabeas (Stil. 2.339–340) could be said to be similarly ambiguous. Does one epithet refer to jewels, the other to the weight of the gold, or do we take auro with both epithets, as, on this occasion, Platnauer does (1922: 2.27: ‘the gift, a consul’s cloak, stiff and heavy with gold’)? Roberts 1989: 114n95, citing Keudel 1970: 88n84. The decision any individual scholar comes to may depend on the view he takes with regard to ecphrasis in ancient poetry. This is too large a question for an essay such as this, but an excellent discussion, replete with generous bibliography, can be found at Fowler 1991 (Fowler 2000: 64–85). Jaffé 1867: 697–8. The spirited, if occasionally rather loose, translation offered here is that of Thorpe (1969: 168–169). For my knowledge of this passage and of Thorpe’s version I am indebted to Fletcher 1997: 224–5, with 540n21.
12 Appearing for the Defence: Apuleius on Display keith bradley
At some point between the spring of 158 and the spring of 159 Apuleius of Madauros stood trial. His case was heard in the Tripolitanian city of Sabratha before the tribunal of the proconsul of Africa, Claudius Maximus. Apuleius was accused by relatives of his wife’s first husband of having practised magic to entice the woman, a wealthy widow, into marrying him. This was a serious charge that carried a capital sentence. An accomplished orator, Apuleius spoke in his own defence and refuted the accusation in a speech which was subsequently made public and which can still be read today. The Apology, as it is known, is the only source of information about the trial and is clearly partial. But it is an important historical document and has much to say about the society and culture of Roman North Africa under the high Roman Empire.1 Practising magic was not the only charge with which Apuleius was faced. His accusers also made a number of subsidiary allegations which were evidently meant to blacken his character. They concerned his life in the city of Oea (modern Tripoli), the home of his wife Pudentilla and her first husband’s family, where Apuleius had arrived roughly three years earlier en route to Alexandria in Egypt (Apol. 72.1). It is one of those subsidiary charges with which I am concerned here, a charge that on the surface seems entirely inconsequential but when considered in detail exposes, I think, issues of historical and cultural significance. It involves Apuleius’ physical appearance: the way in which he appeared to those who saw him and the way in which, especially, he appeared in his own defence. The charge was double-natured. Apuleius had two personal attributes, closely conjoined, that were somehow problematical and reproachful; he was handsome and eloquent:
239 Appearing for the Defence ‘accusamus apud te philosophum formonsum et tam Graece quam Latine’ – pro nefas! – ‘disertissimum.’ ‘We accuse before you a philosopher, who is handsome and who, in both Greek and Latin’ – what a shame! – ‘is a very skilful speaker.’
So, Apuleius says (Apol. 4.1), quoting the words of the advocate Tannonius Pudens, the prosecution began its case against him. In response Apuleius cleverly deflected the accusation. If it were true that he was handsome and eloquent, the gifts of the gods could not be rejected, and in any case philosophers from the past such as Pythagoras and Zeno of Elea had been handsome and their physical appearance had simply complemented their highmindedness. Yet Apuleius was not handsome. He was no more than relatively good looking. His body was in fact worn away by ceaseless intellectual activity which had left him pale and thin. To illustrate his point, he pointed to his hair, which his accusers said he wore long to make his appearance still more appealing. It was a tangled, knotted mess and there was nothing at all elegant about it. It was, he said (Apol. 4.12), ‘much like flax for stuffing cushions, irregularly shaggy, bunched, and piled up, really inextricable’ (stuppeo tomento adsimilis et inaequaliter hirtus et globosus et congestus, prorsum inenodabilis). He had not even bothered to comb it for a long time. As for eloquence, if he were a fine speaker it would not be surprising since he had devoted himself to literary studies (studiis litterarum, Apol. 5.1) since his youth, and he had studied single-mindedly day and night. However, he was a hopeful rather than an accomplished speaker, and whatever eloquence he had was completely non-threatening (sed nihil ab eloquentia metuant, Apol. 5.2). The ancient poet Caecilius had said that innocence is eloquence. Well, Apuleius had led a blameless life, so perhaps he could justifiably be called eloquent.2 Why would Apuleius’ accusers have raised this charge against him? What was so odd about good looks and the ability to speak well in Latin and Greek, about forma (shape/beauty) and facundia or eloquentia (eloquence) – the key terms that Apuleius used in making his rebuttal? What was the connection between the two? These are the questions I want to consider in this chapter. My answers will focus on the theme of Apuleius’ cultural identity, on the local contexts of the trial at Sabratha and Apuleius’ life in Oea, and on evidence from writers on Roman rhetorical theory. I note at once that Apuleius did not flatly deny the charge but only pilloried it, which I take to suggest that in some way the position he claimed for himself certainly was threatening.
240 Keith Bradley To begin, I want to stress a sensitivity to personal aspect on Apuleius’ part that I think was widely shared in Roman imperial society at large. This will help explain Apuleius’ remarks. The evidence comes from his most famous work, the Metamorphoses, the story of the young nobleman Lucius who was magically transformed into an ass and underwent a series of painful misadventures before being restored to human form through the beneficent intervention of the goddess Isis. Although a work of fiction, the Metamorphoses is set in the real world of the Roman Empire of the second century ad and displays in its characters a range of social types that any ancient reader would immediately recognize. With these types physical appearance is an important element of categorization: to a large degree individuals are identifiable by their clothing and deportment, what Apuleius himself neatly calls habitus et habitudo (Met. 1.20).3 At one extreme is the type of the beggar, a figure who must have been a common sight in antiquity, someone who could be seen sitting at a city street corner, pale and emaciated, clothed in no more than a layer of filth and a ragged old cloak that barely covered his nakedness. This was a figure who could seem ‘de-formed’ (deformatus, Met. 1.6). At the opposite extreme is the type of the cultivated young noble, Lucius himself, whose clothing and deportment, though not described in detail, expressed sophistication to all who saw him and whose physical comeliness was matched by a moral purity symbolized by his body’s freedom from the taint of sex. This was a type who could be called a man of education or culture, a vir ... ornatus (Met. 1.20; cf. 1.23), a figure who, notably, was capable of delivering a vigorous defence of himself in court when falsely accused of murder, and also of thanking a city, if only briefly, for honours bestowed upon him (Met. 3.4–6; 3.11), so that eloquence emerges as a natural companion of nobility. Between the two extremes there are all sorts and conditions: the domestic slave girl dressed in a simple linen tunic touched up with a bright red sash (Met. 2.7), liveried slaves who wait at table (Met. 2.19), the highwayman and the miser who in their rags and tatters look much like the beggar (Met. 7.5; 1.21; cf. 4.9), an Egyptian prophet wearing full-length linen robes and sandals woven from palm leaves, as though in uniform (Met. 2.28), civic magistrates with their insignia of office (Met. 1.24; 3.11), and a centurion with his vine staff (Met. 9.39; cf. 9.40; 9.41; 10.1). Complementing Lucius in type is his relative Byrrhena, whose retinue of servants and whose jewels inlaid with gold and gold-threaded clothes make her at once noticeable as a woman of elite status, a matrona (Met. 2.2).4 Some characters are described in detail. First, a group of priests of the Syrian Goddess (dea Syria, Met. 8.27):
241 Appearing for the Defence die sequenti variis coloribus indusiati et deformiter quisque formati facie caenoso pigmento delita et oculis obunctis graphice prodeunt, mitellis et crocotis et carbasinis et bombycinis iniecti, quidam tunicas albas, in modum lanciolarum quoquoversum fluente purpura depictas, cingulo subligati, pedes luteis induti calceis. Next day they all put on tunics of various hues and ‘beautified’ themselves by smearing coloured gunge on their faces and applying eyeshadow. Then they set forth, dressed in turbans and robes, some saffron-coloured, some of linen and some of gauze; some had white tunics embroidered with a pattern of purple stripes and girded at the waist; and on their feet were yellow slippers.
Secondly, slave workers in a mill (Met. 9.12): dii boni, quales illic homunculi vibicibus lividis totam cutem depicti dorsumque plagosum scissili centunculo magis inumbrati quam obtecti, nonnulli exiguo tegili tantum modo pubem iniecti, cuncti tamen sic tunicati ut essent per pannulos manifesti, frontes litterati et capillum semirasi et pedes anulati, tum lurore deformes et fumosis tenebris vaporosae caliginis palpebras adesi atque adeo male luminati et in modum pugilum, qui pulvisculo perspersi dimicant, farinulenta cinere sordide candidati. As to the human contingent – what a crew! – their whole bodies picked out with livid weals, their whip-scarred backs shaded rather than covered by their tattered rags, some with only a scanty loincloth by way of covering, and all of them showing through the rents in what clothes they had. There were branded foreheads, halfshaven heads, and fettered ankles; their faces were sallow, their eyes so bleared by the smoky heat of the furnaces that they were half blind; and like boxers, who sprinkle themselves with dust before fighting, they were dirty white all over with a floury powder.
Thirdly, a woman in turmoil (Met. 9.30): diem ferme circa mediam repente intra pistrinum mulier reatu miraque tristitie deformis apparuit, flebili centunculo semiamicta, nudis et intectis pedibus, lurore buxeo macieque foedata, et discerptae comae semicanae sordentes inspersu cineris pleramque eius anteventulae contegebant faciem. Round about midday a woman suddenly appeared at the mill got up as if she were on trial for her life, strangely disfigured and woebegone, barely covered in pitiful rags, barefoot, deathly pale and drawn, her grizzled hair dishevelled, dirty and sprinkled with ash, hanging down in front and hiding most of her face.
242 Keith Bradley Evidently enough, in the world of the Metamorphoses dress and deportment are vehicles that send signals about social and economic standing and specific social functions and situations – not least the situation of the courtroom as the last example notably suggests, where a despondent demeanour is thought appropriate for a defendant in peril and hair, significantly, is thought to be full of demonstrative potential. Apuleius, it should be noted, had a peculiar interest in hair, its most notorious manifestation in the Metamorphoses being an erotically charged, rhapsodic digression from Lucius on the attractiveness of women’s hair (Met. 2.8–9) – carefully arranged hair is said to be the ultimate sign of proper grooming – which reaches a climax in a description of the hair of the slave girl Photis (Met. 2.9): uberes enim crines leniter remissos et cervice dependulos ac dein per colla dispositos sensimque sinuatos patagio residentes paulisper ad finem conglobatos in summum verticem nodus adstrinxerat. Her luxuriant tresses were carelessly flung back, hanging down her neck and over her shoulders; where they just touched the upper edge of her tunic she had gently looped them up and gathered the ends together into a knot on the top of her head.
Dress was also full of gendered possibilities, as Apuleius shows in the words of a robber who had resorted to a ruse to escape the emperor’s troops (Met. 7.8): sumpta veste muliebri florida, in sinus flaccidos abundante, mitellaque textili contecto capite, calceis femininis albis illis et tenuibus indutus. I put on a woman’s dress, brightly coloured and hanging in loose folds, covered my head with a gauze turban, and slipped on my feet a pair of those thin white shoes that women wear.
Clothing in this case has a transformative value, making things appear to be what they are not. So also when the wife of a Roman courtier crops her hair to look like a man and anonymously follow him into exile (Met. 7.6), or when a robber whose comrades replace his rags with a fancy robe finds himself completely re-formed (reformatus, Met. 7.9). All this, it might be said, is unexceptional. But because the Metamorphoses illustrates the code-like capacity of dress and demeanour, and expresses through its realistic base assumptions about personal appearance that its author must have taken to be widely shared among his readers, not only in Rome, say, but also in the extra-urban, provincial world in which the story of Lucius is set, there are
243 Appearing for the Defence grounds for thinking that the charge of forma and facundia in the Apology was not as trivial as it first seems and for postulating that Apuleius, alert to the code, was engaged with more than the superficial in his defence of the accusations made against him.5 The trial took place in a recoverable setting. It was held in a judicial basilica in the centre of Sabratha where the Roman proconsul of Africa Claudius Maximus, visiting the city to hold the local assizes, heard cases brought before him. The basilica was within sight of the sea and the smell of fish was doubtless in the air because the production of fish sauce (garum) at Sabratha was so extensive that its smell could hardly be avoided. Claudius Maximus will have worn the toga praetexta as he sat on his tribunal, elevated above the litigants, and he will have been surrounded by a group of similarly togate advisers who were part of the retinue that accompanied every governor on his travels, including the circuit tour of the province he was required to make for judicial purposes. When, for instance, on 1 May 165 the governor of Macedonia, P. Antius Orestes, entered the sanctuary of the Great Gods in Samothrace, he was escorted by his advisors (amici), his assistants (apparitores), a military guard, and fifteen personal slaves. The defendant and his prosecutor will also have been formally dressed. And the governor’s herald will have directed operations, ‘bellowing at the top of his voice,’ as Apuleius puts it on another occasion (Flor. 9.10), and perhaps underscoring the sollemnity of the proceedings by directing attention to the statues of the emperor Antoninus Pius that decorated the court.6 The principals were not the only people present at the trial. There was also a substantial crowd of bystanders, people presumably of the sort portrayed generically, as types, in the Metamorphoses: if not highwaymen and other robbers (though even their presence should not be discounted), then certainly decurions, merchants and moneylenders, millers, pastry cooks and fullers, market gardeners, paupers and beggars, widows and nurses, stewards and doctors – a varied mixture of the men and women, free and slave, high and low, who could be found in almost any provincial Roman community. In type again many can also be seen in the lavish and abundant mosaics with which the elite of Roman North Africa filled their houses and villas. Consider at one extreme the dominus Julius and his wife, surrounded by servants and retainers on their great rural estate (fig. 14.2 in chap. 14), or the Venus-like domina who is shown with her slaves, adorning herself and displaying her magnificence in her rich clothing, jewellery, and elaborate hairstyle (fig. 14.3), just like Byrrhena, in celebrated examples from Carthage and the rural villa at Sidi Ghrib, respectively (now in the Bardo Museum). Or at the opposite end of the social scale, think likewise of the fishers who are commonly represented in North African mosaics wearing
244 Keith Bradley no more than loincloths as they toil on the sea in the heat of the day with their nets, lines, and fishing spears – humble men lacking in status and dignity. (It was men like this Apuleius had asked at Oea to collect specimens for what he claimed were his zoological and medical researches [Apol. 29–41].) As the spectacle of Roman justice displayed itself in a remote corner of the Empire, the crowd of observers was probably marked by a similar contrast of aspect, and many will have been conscious of the difference between themselves and the principals who sat upon and stood before the tribunal.7 Before this audience, but with attention directed especially at his judge, Apuleius delivered his speech of defence, which exists now of course as a written text to be read. Whether the written version is the speech Apuleius originally gave at his trial or a more polished version revised for publication remains unknowable. A statement from one of several later speeches given at Carthage in the 160s (Flor. 9.13) implies that Apuleius’ words were sometimes taken down verbatim and published without alteration. But the practice of the younger Pliny a half century earlier in Rome had been to rework and publish in fuller form his forensic speeches; and earlier still Pliny’s teacher Quintilian had remarked (Inst. 7.2.24) that only one of his speeches had been published, while profiteering stenographers had circulated others misrepresenting what he said in the process. Whatever the case, the presumption must be that the Apology as it now exists preserves the substance of what was said at the trial, no matter what the degree of artifice involved in the presentation. The speech, moreover, was given by a speaker who had performed in public before. Shortly after arriving in Oea, Apuleius had spoken on the majesty of the god Aesculapius and this address, by his own account, had been well received and was subsequently made public in book form. There were probably other such speeches (cf. Apol. 73.2). An extract from his address on Aesculapius was read out during his trial (Apol. 55.10).8 Not least for this reason, Apuleius is often said to have had much in common with the Greek sophists of his age, itinerant speechmakers who travelled from city to city parading their paideia in public performances designed to display the delights of classical Attic diction. Much is known of these show performers and the competitive ethos which enveloped their lives, especially from Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists, a work which for present purposes is especially important because it discloses from a host of passing details a particular sophistic sensitivity to physical appearance. Of Marcus of Byzantium, for instance, Philostratus writes: ‘The expression of his brows and the gravity of his countenance proclaimed Marcus a sophist, and indeed his mind was constantly brooding over some theme ... His beard and hair were always unkempt, and hence most people thought that he looked too boorish to be a learned man’ (VS 528–529). Of Aristocles of
245 Appearing for the Defence Pergamum, a sophistic convert, Philostratus says: ‘Now, so long as he was a student of philosophy he was slovenly in appearance, unkempt and squalid in his dress, but now he began to be fastidious, [and] discarded his slovenly ways’ (VS 567). Alexander Peloplaton was of ‘a godlike appearance,’ and was ‘conspicuous for his beauty and charm. For his beard was curly and of moderate length, his eyes large and melting, his nose well shaped, his teeth very white, his fingers long and slender, and well fitted to hold the reins of eloquence’ (VS 570). Hermocrates of Phocaea was another remembered for ‘the beauty of his personal appearance,’ a figure ‘indeed possessed of great charm’ who ‘looked like a statue with the bloom of early youth’ (VS 612). A man could make a mark by the crescent-shaped buckles he wore on his shoes (VS 555), or by the perfect elegance of his appearance (VS 572).9 It is easy from this point of view to see how a link with Apuleius might be made. By definition, sophists were men of eloquence who were fastidious about matters of self-presentation, and Apuleius’ determination to deny in court his physical attractiveness could be taken to mean that he had developed a reputation for pursuing the cult of beauty, if not dandyism, with which sophists were fixated. The notion becomes all the more appealing given that as a young man Apuleius had studied in Athens, where he cannot have failed to find himself exposed to contemporary sophistic culture, discourse, and style. One sophist almost certain to have taught in Athens when Apuleius was there, probably in the early 140s, and possibly one of his teachers, was P. Hordeonius Lollianus, an immigrant from Ephesus who came to hold high office in Athens and to occupy a chair of rhetoric in the city. He gave instruction in declamation, favouring a concise Attic style, and was remembered for his good technique and the straightforward manner in which he arranged and presented his material and ideas. He also composed a book on declamation, of which nothing now but fragments survive, but even as late as the fifth century he was still regarded as an authority. If not an actual teacher of Apuleius, Hordeonius symbolizes the type of instructor to whom Apuleius can be imagined to have attached himself. On the other hand, unlike two genuine sophists from the west, the Gaul Favorinus and the Roman Aelian, Apuleius did not attract the attention of Philostratus, nor in his extant works does Apuleius ever call himself a sophist, consistently preferring the term philosophus, which, even if understood broadly as a ‘philosophizer’ or ‘intellectual’ rather than in the narrow sense of an original, systematic thinker, clearly sets him apart from sophists. The extent to which Greek sophists were engaged with philosophy remains contentious. But Apuleius’ self-description presents to my mind a claim of identity far different from theirs, and his denial of any pretensions to beauty and eloquence can be taken as a way of distinguishing himself from them.10
246 Keith Bradley In this connection it is worth pausing for a moment to observe that the flow of cultural traffic under the Principate did not move in a single direction from east to west as is frequently assumed. When Apuleius studied in Athens, the city had of course long been politically subject to Rome (even if technically ‘free’), and Rome’s power consequently manifested itself in directly visible ways. No one who looked at the city’s monuments for instance could fail to miss Rome’s presence: the signs and symbols of Roman taste and authority were everywhere unmistakable, whether M. Agrippa’s Odeion in the old agora, the Roman agora of Caesar and Augustus, or the imposing items of Hadrian’s massive building programme. From the first century onwards Roman architectural influence had steadily if fitfully grown, producing colonnaded streets in the centre of the city of a common imperial type, and, at the northern end of the Stoa of Attalus, a large basilica that symbolized the arrival in Athens of Roman justice. On the Acropolis there was a temple of Rome and Augustus that stood before the eastern entrance of the Parthenon, and through the Propylaea could be seen a monument to Agrippa displaying the great man’s chariot. The library that Hadrian built was modelled on the Flavian Temple of Peace in Rome, and in effect was a Roman imperial forum of the kind to be seen in many cities where emperors displayed their grandeur through prestige building. Honorific inscriptions and statues likewise proclaimed the presence and power of Roman emperors far and wide, so that there could be no doubt of the political realities of the day. Greece had not entirely conquered its captor; rather the reverse held true – recall the poignant remark of Apuleius’ near contemporary Pausanias (7.16.10) that a Roman governor continued to be sent to Greece in his day – and any notion that a visitor to Athens from the west found himself exclusively dominated by Greek cultural forms and traditions is simply mistaken. Athens in the second century was in many respects a Roman city, and the student Apuleius would not necessarily be swept away by the older traditions of Greek culture and Athenian resplendence represented by its more ancient buildings and sites, as they now appear, say, in Pausanias’ catalogue, nor would he necessarily lose sight of the Roman ethos of either his birthplace, the Roman colony of Madauros, or the great city of Carthage where he had studied as a child.11 The Apology when originally delivered cannot have been a form of display oratory like the speeches of the sophists and it was not composed as a piece of literature. It was and remains in the first instance a judicial speech. It is unlikely, therefore, that Apuleius’ strategy in court had anything to do with presenting himself as a sophist. It is surely more plausible that his aim was to present himself to his judge, a man of known philosophical interests, in a way that evoked the conventional image of the philosopher – which is
247 Appearing for the Defence what Apuleius calls himself and dwells upon – and as an ascetic who had rejected luxury and spent all his time in intellectual pursuits. (Recall the statement that he was worn thin from a life of continual study.) This image, or type, comparable to the types of the Metamorphoses, is evident in contemporary portrait sculpture where men are shown with masses of unkempt hair, coarse facial features, distant expressions, and straggly beards. It was an image with which Claudius Maximus can be presumed to have been familiar, as also many of the residents of Roman Tripolitania. Apuleius’ goal, moreover, may not only have been tactical; he may also have intended to give an accurate indication of who, or what, he really considered himself to be. The claim he makes in the Apology to being a philosopher is borne out after all by the composition of philosophical works, some of which can still be read, no matter what their quality, and it was as a philosophus Platonicus that he was at one point honoured in Madauros. In late antiquity, notably, his work on demonology was of special interest to Augustine, who took great pains to refute much of what Apuleius the philosopher had written.12 At the same time, there may be another, complementary, approach of which to take account. For obvious reasons Apuleius’ courtroom motivations or intentions can never fully be known. But the disordered hair may have registered something other than the philosophical. In Egyptian mummy portraits of the imperial age tousled curly hair is sometimes shown on men who were soldiers, their untidy hair signifying military masculinity in a way that can be presumed common in view of the portraits’ adoption of metropolitan fashions. Could such a claim also underlie Apuleius’ remarks on his appearance? To talk about beauty in a young man, to describe features such as the beard, eyes, and hair, was to run something of a rhetorical risk on a public speaker’s part according to the handbook of Menander Rhetor (2.398), the implication being that connections might easily be made between male beauty and effeminacy. So perhaps the prosecution’s original charge against Apuleius had been designed to raise a hint of scandal. It is at this point, I propose, that evidence from the Roman rhetorical tradition becomes relevant.13 Apuleius’ knowledge of Latin literature was comprehensive. In the Apology he appeals with ease to Ennius, Catullus, and Vergil (among others), and allusions to a very wide range of Latin authors are detectable in the Metamorphoses. Assimilation of Roman rhetorical theory as represented by the theoretical works of Cicero and Quintilian should thus be readily granted. The Roman rhetorical tradition was of course Greek-influenced, but it had long had a distinctive cast. Cicero at an early stage of De oratore (1.23) drew a firm line between the Greek rhetorical legacy and the independence of the Roman tradition, and Quintilian in his great work on the institution of the
248 Keith Bradley orator found it easy to match Roman against Greek achievements (Inst. 10.1.105; cf. 12.10.27–39).14 Notice accordingly some of the prescriptions on self-presentation that were part of the tradition. Cicero was very specific in Orator (55–60) on how to exploit for rhetorical success what he calls, almost literally, body language (corporis quaedam eloquentia, Orat. 55; cf. De or. 3.222: sermo corporis). Apart from being able to vary the voice according to circumstance and the emotional demands of the moment, in his physical carriage (gestus) the speaker was to do nothing to excess, but was to preserve an upright and lofty bearing with little pacing up and down or sudden change of direction. Control of facial expression was equally important. What was needed was to convey an impression of dignitas, grandeur or dignity, and venustas, charm or elegance. Foolish or threatening looks were to be avoided at all costs, and what was most important was to keep control of the eyes, so that the right amount of joy or grief at a particular stage of delivery could be communicated. Sensitivity to the danger of appearing unmanly is patent (Orat. 59): nulla mollitia cervicum, nullae argutiae digitorum, non ad numerum articulus cadens; trunco magis toto se ipse moderans et virili laterum flexione, brachi proiectione in contentionibus, contractione in remissis. There should be no effeminate bending of the neck, no twiddling of the fingers, no marking the rhythm with the finger-joint. [The speaker] will control himself by the pose of his whole frame, and the vigorous and manly attitude of the body, extending the arm in moments of passion, and dropping it in calmer moods.
Much of a similar sort appears in Cicero’s other rhetorical writings. Gestures must be manly, he says in De oratore (3.220), while from a passage in Brutus (225) it appears that nothing is worse than an orator seeming to be ‘soft’ (mollis), than for a new dance to become all the rage and be named after a speaker who develops a reputation for effeminacy while speaking in public – a reference to the notorious case of Sex. Titius and the ‘Titian’ dance craze, which was still worthy of remark from Quintilian (Inst. 11.3.128) a century later.15 Quintilian was obsessed with securing a correctly gendered result from his prescriptions. The boy he proposed to train as a speaker was not to speak with the voice of a woman, any more than with the voice of an old man, an alcoholic, a slave, a eunuch, or an invalid (Inst. 1.11.1–2; 11.3.19). Music was a valuable part of his formation, but it must be the manly music of old, not the womanish warbling of the modern stage (Inst. 1.10.31). Virility was to be found in the old Latin poets, and studying published speeches would
249 Appearing for the Defence reveal the effeminate styles to be avoided (Inst. 1.8.9; 2.5.10). The signs of effeminacy were legion: you had to avoid rhythmical effects suggestive of the dancing girl and declamation that made your listeners think of eunuchs castrated by slave dealers (Inst. 9.4.142; 5.12.17–23). Under no circumstances were you to go in for unmanly depilation, plaster on womanish cosmetics, or gyrate when performing with a hip-swivelling gait (Inst. 5.9.14; 8. pr.19–20; cf. 8.3.6). Men are de-formed (deformentur), Quintilian says (Inst. 11.1.3), if they wear jewels and pearls and full-length clothes like those of a woman: it is as bad as if a woman were to dress in the costume of a general celebrating a triumph, besmirching the most manly – because most militaristic – of all Rome’s honours. No, the orator’s dress must be virile and splendid (Inst. 11.3.137), and Quintilian gives elaborate instructions on how to wear the toga, its cut and its style and its texture: you don’t have to wear the roughly woven kind of old, but you mustn’t wear a toga made of silk – and even the tunic you wear underneath should conform to a manly mode (Inst. 11.3.137–149). Not to follow these rules is to fall victim to all the fashions of the decadent present, and to fail to emerge as a true Roman orator of proper moral character.16 The style of the orator’s hair is a significant element in this preoccupation with public presentation, in which there is a constant presumption that the orator, any orator, is an object of widespread scrutiny and judgment, and that individual repute depends on playing a role, much like that of an actor (cf. Inst. 1.11.1–2), which can be evaluated according to commonly understood standards of deportment. Quintilian is emphatic that elaborately arranged hair is a sign of womanly weakness. He inveighs (Inst. 2.5.12) against what must have been a common practice of men using heated irons to curl their hair, not only branding it as effeminate but also stigmatizing it as a perversion of natural forma, natural good looks. He recommends (Inst. 11.3.148), in contrast to the elder Pliny, that an orator in full flow should not mop his sweaty brow so as not to mess up his hair: no, let it fall out of place because this produces a good emotional effect and creates a good impression of inattentiveness to fashionable appearance. You just had to be careful not to push your hair backwards in the wrong direction from the forehead, making it stand on end and scaring your audience to death (Inst. 11.3.160). Evidently enough, if from Quintilian’s point of view there was nothing to be said for crimps and curls, dishevelled hair was very much the mark of a good man skilled in speaking, as well of course as a traditional way of arousing sympathy, as if the orator were in mourning (Inst. 6.1.30, 33). This evidence does much, I think, to explain Apuleius’ self-portrait, especially the description of his hair. His self-deprecating comments were one of the many devices by which he could appeal to his judge to regard him both
250 Keith Bradley as an orator formed in the Roman tradition as well as a like-minded philosopher. He knew the type of the orator after all, as the flagrant parody in the Metamorphoses (3.27) of Cicero’s most famous rhetorical line, attributed to a slave addressing the Ass, makes clear (‘quo usque tandem ... cantherium patiemur istum’; ‘How long, for God’s sake ... are we going to put up with this miserable brute?’). More importantly, at one point during his trial he deftly listed a string of grand Roman orators from the Republican past in whose reflected glory he could himself bask: Cato, Laelius, Gracchus, Caesar, Hortensius, Calvus, Sallust, and Cicero (Apol. 95.5). The forma of the Roman orator was far more valuable in court than the dandyism of the Greek sophist.17 The accusation concerning forma and facundia, however, was not tied to the moment of the trial alone. Apuleius’ critics had been able to accuse him of something that had created a negative impact during the several years he spent in Oea, and for some reason his presence in the local community, and particularly his eloquence, had been regarded as a threat, as his own language indicates (Apol. 5.2): sed nihil ab eloquentia metuant, quam ego, si quid omnino promovi, potius spero quam praesto. But as things are, my opponents should have nothing to fear from my eloquence; if I have made any advance, it is through hope rather than attainment.
What could this have been? My discussion now moves to the pre-trial context, but remains focused on the Roman rhetorical tradition. The ideal Roman orator had not only to look physically impressive but was to be a man steeped in doctrina as well. The two went hand in hand. Consider as evidence a list of successful speakers from the Republican past and the way Cicero describes them in Brutus: 1 Ti. Gracchus: ‘accomplished in Greek literature’ (Graecis litteris eruditus, Brut. 104) 2 P. Rutilius: ‘a learned man accomplished in Greek literature’ (doctus vir et Graecis litteris eruditus, Brut. 114) 3 M. Gratidius: ‘learned in Greek literature’ (doctus ... Graecis litteris, Brut. 168) 4 Q. and D. Valerius of Sora: ‘learned in Greek and Latin literature’ (docti et Graecis litteris et Latinis, Brut. 169) 5 L. Philippus: ‘trained up in Greek learning’ (Graecis doctrinis institutus, Brut. 173) 6 D. Brutus: ‘a man learned in Greek and Latin literature’ (homo et Graecis doctus litteris et Latinis, Brut. 175)
251 Appearing for the Defence 7 L. Aelius: ‘most accomplished in Greek and Latin literature’ (eruditissimus et Graecis litteris et Latinis, Brut. 205) 8 M. Terentius Varro: ‘a man outstanding in intellect and every kind of knowledge’ (vir ingenio praestans omnique doctrina, Brut. 205) 9 L. Sisenna: ‘a learned man devoted to the best of intellectual pursuits’ (doctus vir et studiis optimis deditus, Brut. 228) 10 M. Piso: ‘accomplished in Greek learning’ (Graecis doctrinis eruditus, Brut. 236)
Learning, particularly Greek learning, was a test of the ideal Roman orator.18 Consider next another group of men, but from a different time and place. They are known from epitaphs from the cities of Roman Africa and were also remembered as devotees of literature and eloquence – men such as Q. Iulius Felix from Cirta (CIL VIII 7432) and Iulius Rusticianus of Roman equestrian rank from Calama (CIL VIII 5367), both of whom died young but who by the time of their deaths had firmly dedicated themselves to studia, just as Apuleius had done (‘From my youth on I have devoted all my powers to literary studies,’ ab ineunte aevo unis studiis litterarum ex summis viribus deditus, Apol. 5.1). There was the orator C. Iulius Proculus (CIL VIII 646), who was praised at Mactar for bringing the pleasures of learning (studia again) to public audiences dressed, notably, in the toga, and M. Dalmatius Urbanus (CIL VIII 8500 = ILS 7761), remembered at Sitifis for his fine speaking and knowledge of literature and the liberal arts, in both Latin and Greek: ‘a man perfectly accomplished in study of all the liberal arts and literature in both languages and gifted with perfect eloquence’ (summarum artium liberalium litterarum studiis utriusq(ue) linguae perfecte eruditus optima facundia praeditus). One supremely gifted but anonymous individual from Thibilis (CIL VIII 5530 = 18864), not unlike Apuleius himself, was an accomplished declaimer with a talent for the extemporaneous – Quintilian would have approved – and the author of philosophical dialogues, epistles, pastorals, and eclogues. P. Flavius Pudens Pomponianus (CIL VIII 2391 = 17910), clarissimus vir, was said, significantly I think, to have added a ‘Roman shine’ (or ‘polish’) to his ‘Attic eloquence’ (Atticam facundiam adaequanti Romano nitori). Of special interest for the purposes of this chapter is C. Cornelius Fortunatianus of Sicca (CIL VIII 15987 = ILS 7742ab), who died at the age of twenty-three and was said to have been ‘outstanding in his intellectual pursuits and handsome in appearance’ (studiis praecellens formaq[ue] decorus).19 The epitaphs of these mostly young men give expression to an ideal of Roman speech-making that is evidently close to the ideal that underlies Cicero’s descriptions of Republican orators. They illustrate how the lives of the provincial elite in the cities of Roman North Africa under the Principate
252 Keith Bradley were permeated by the oratorical and literary traditions of the Roman metropolis, the vitality of which in the capital itself can be assumed from Quintilian’s work in his epoch and a generation before Apuleius from the rhetorical and literary record of the younger Pliny, who in his day was another devotee of studia among a circle of like-minded men. Alongside the physical and especially architectural development of provincial communities, the intellectual traditions of the metropolis found their way abroad and were welcomed by those who aspired to participation in the greater Roman enterprise. From this perspective it should come as no surprise to see that in the Metamorphoses the young provincial aristocrat Lucius is a man of doctrina (Met. 3.15; cf. 11.15), and that the sons of a well-to-do provincial paterfamilias are said to be ‘well educated and irreproachably behaved’ (doctrina instructis et verecundia praeditis, Met. 9.35).20 The process by which the culture of the capital was transmitted to the provinces is commonly called ‘Romanization.’ But Romanization is not the straightforward historical category it was a generation ago – a unidirectional construct which for the better (it was assumed) firmly planted Roman civilization in culturally barren lands. On the contrary, allowance is increasingly made as the impact of Roman norms on local provincial populations is considered for the possibility of local resistance to Rome, for signs of negotiation and accommodation between the intrusive, alien ways of the metropolis and the pre-existing patterns of local culture, and the likelihood of the emergence over time of hybrid cultural forms. In North Africa specifically the Latinate norms introduced by Roman settlements did not fill an empty void but met long-established Punic and other indigenous traditions that continued to thrive alongside them, as the long survival of Punic as a vernacular language and the endurance of Punic forms of religious worship cloaked in classical guise best indicate. Signs of cultural and social tension accordingly are to be expected in the cities of Roman Africa. The potential for antagonism and disturbance in colonized regions was strong.21 When Apuleius, quite accidentally, became a resident of Oea, he entered a community of the sort of which the Metamorphoses is full, towns where a small elite held sway over a majority of the population but where social ranks easily mingled in day-to-day life. A small town murder trial could quickly bring together magistrates, decurions, and people – the banker, the public herald, the well-to-do doctor, the magistrates’ attendants, domestic slaves (Met. 10.1–12). Village love affairs could likewise involve all sorts of social mixing: neighbouring bakers and fullers, their slave workers and retainers, well-placed decurions and their domestics, some highly trusted, the poverty-stricken market-gardener and the impoverished woman wandering around in her mourning might all find themselves intimately
253 Appearing for the Defence engaged with one another (Met. 9.10–31). Of his enemies, the family of the Sicinii from whom Apuleius pried away the wealthy Pudentilla – and his whole trial was in essence a struggle for money – nothing is known beyond the Apology. They must have had some means. Apuleius had met one of Pudentilla’s sons in Athens some years earlier and they were probably fellow students there (Apol. 72.3). The son had died an untimely death when returning (it seems) from a journey to Carthage just before Apuleius’ trial (Apol. 96.5–6), his fate recalling the deaths of two other young men, both students at Carthage when they died, L. Veditius Maternus Veditianus of Thubursicu Numidarum, the son of a locally prominent father who died at the age of eighteen (ILAlg. 1363), and L. Baebius Barbarus, who was twenty when he passed away (CIL VIII 12152). It was possible for young men like these to travel, even to travel abroad, to acquire an education in Latin and Greek and for some, as seen earlier in this chapter, it was possible to achieve distinction as men of learning. Their families had the resources to make this happen. But it was not axiomatic that every young boy travelled and learned. Pudentilla’s other son is said to have spoken only Punic, not to have known Latin, and to have had only a few words of Greek (Apol. 98.8). (Greek was not extensively used in Roman North Africa.) I suspect that he had many counterparts in Oea, not only among the working population represented by the fishers of the mosaics I referred to earlier, but even in his own family. The Sicinii, although prosperous, cannot all be assumed to have been well-educated or committed to metropolitan culture.22 Apuleius was committed. His origins were obscure, but when he arrived in Oea, he brought with him the learning of the philosopher and orator acquired from his years of study abroad, and his learning was a source of distinctiveness that must have made him stand out in the city, like Lucius in Hypata, as a ‘man of culture’ (a vir ornatus). There were probably few who could rival his sophistication. Yet distinctiveness on the part of an outsider was not without its problems. Lucius was recognized in Hypata as a man of high rank and impeccable pedigree (Met. 3.11). But because he was a stranger to the community he became an obvious object of assault when the whole city population needed a victim in whose humiliation it could find amusement at the Festival of Risus (Met. 3.2–11). Different, intruding, disturbing, the outsider could easily find himself the target of accusation: ‘the defendant [is] an outsider’ (reum ... peregrinum, Met. 3.3). In Oea, Apuleius was undoubtedly a disturbing influence. The most alarming aspect of his behaviour, it must be thought, was the practice of sinister magical rituals. The accusations brought against him in court cannot have been groundless, and when an opportunity arose to hold him accountable it was evidently taken. Magic was a threat. But eloquence in and of itself was also
254 Keith Bradley a threat, representing as it did the rising dominance of metropolitan culture in a local environment far from culturally stable or homogeneous. Against a background of cultural interchange and transition, in which Punic forms still enjoyed a telling presence, Apuleius gave public presentations of his educated, classical, Greco-Roman eloquence – and somehow persuaded Pudentilla to marry him. Beforehand, recall, the Sicinii had for many years kept Pudentilla’s wealth within their control. But once Apuleius entered the scene their plans to do so in the future were thrown into disarray. Eloquence and learning bestowed power, and power exercised by an outsider was dangerous. Local networks of power were disrupted, and familial and economic turmoil followed.23 In Sabratha, at his trial, it was more than appropriate for Apuleius, wearing the toga, looking upwards to the proconsul on his tribunal, speaking in Latin in a Roman basilica, to display himself as a fully fashioned, fully masculine orator in the Roman tradition. It was appropriate, that is, for the social observer and portraitist who understood very well the communicative and transformative capacity of dress and deportment to present himself when he appeared in his own defence in a fully Roman idiom. This was the way to win his case. Beneath this self-display, however, something might be sensed of the tensions felt on the fringes of Empire as the process of cultural exchange implicit in the term Romanization worked itself out under the Principate.
Notes This is one of several essays investigating aspects of Apuleius’ historical experience. To avoid excessive annotation, I frequently refer to earlier items in the sequence. I extend thanks to Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith for inviting me to produce the original version, the flavour of which I have tried to retain, and to my colleague Katy Schlegel for careful comments on a penultimate form. For the Apology, I cite the edition of Vallette 1924 (repr. 1971) and the translation of Hunink in Harrison, Hunink, and Hilton 2001; and for the Metamorphoses I cite the edition of Robertson and Vallette 1940–45 (repr. 1985, 1992, 1995) and the translation of Kenney 1998. 1 For details on Apuleius’ trial, see Bradley 1997 and Hunink 1997: 1.11–20. The case was heard in the proconsular year ad 158–59, which probably began and ended in April. If Claudius Maximus travelled through his province to hear cases immediately after arriving in Carthage, the principal city of Africa Proconsularis, and returned there in September, as suggested by later evidence (Lane Fox 1986: 487), the trial could be placed between April and September 158.
255 Appearing for the Defence 2 Apol. 4–5. 3 Real world: Millar 1981. 4 Beggar: cf. Whittaker 1993: 298. On the vocabulary of ‘de-’ and ‘re-formation’ in the Metamorphoses, see Krabbe 2003: 57, 84n12; cf. Bradley 1998a. 5 Hair: see also Met. 2.23, 30; 8.24; 9.31; 10.6, and on 2.8–9 the detailed comments in van Mal-Maeder 2001: 21–2, 159–82; cf. Englert and Long 1972–73. There were undoubtedly associations with magic. Finkelpearl 1998: 62–7 posits a connection between Apuleius’ encomium and earlier Augustan, especially elegiac, poetry. 6 Basilica: Bradley 1997. Tour: for the governor’s assizes, see Burton 1975, and on Africa in particular Lepelley 1994. Garum: Wilson 1999 and 2002. Advisers (consilium): Apol. 1.1, 65.8, 67.5, 99.1. P. Antius Orestes: Oliver 1966. Herald, toga, tribunal: cf. Flor. 9.10. A herald is conspicuous in the trial of Lucius at the Festival of Risus in Met. 3.1–10. Statues: Apol. 85.2. 7 Bystanders: Apol. 55.12, 76.5, 98.2. Types: for the range of characters in the Metamorphoses, see Bradley 2000a. Julius mosaic: Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1996: 167–72 (fig. 121); cf. Dunbabin 1978: 121. Domina mosaic: Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1996: 155 with fig. 116. (These mosaics belong to a later period but this does not affect the general point made.) Fishers: Dunbabin 1978: 125–30 with plate XLVIII nos. 119, 120; plate XLIX nos. 123, 124; Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1996: 128 with fig. 81. 8 On the question of publication, see the summary remarks of Hunink 1997: 1.25. Artifice: to be expected in any courtroom text, on which see Gotoff 1993. 9 The bibliography on the Second Sophistic is enormous; for various contemporary approaches, see Anderson 1993; Brunt 1994; Swain 1996; Whitmarsh 2001. 10 While sophistic influence on Apuleius is commonly understood, to label him a ‘professed sophist’ (Hunink 1997: 1.26) seems inaccurate to me. On Apuleius in Athens, see Sandy 1993. P. Hordeonius Lollianus: PIR2 H 203. Favorinus and Aelian: Philostr. VS 489, 624. 11 Odeion: Travlos 1971: 365–77; Shear 1981: 361. Agora of Caesar and Augustus: Travlos 1971: 28–36; Shear 1981: 358–61; Boatwright 1983. Streets: Shear 1981: 368. Basilica: Shear 1981: 376; Boatwright 1983: 176; Spawforth and Walker 1985: 97–8. Temple: Travlos: 1971: 494–6; Agrippa monument: Travlos 1971: 483, 493; cf. Alcock 1993: 197. Library: Shear 1981: 374–6. Pausanias: the first book of his Description of Greece expresses a sense of wonder inspired in the visitor to Athens ca. ad 150 by its ancient monuments; on the date of composition, see Paus. 7.20.6, with Habicht 1985: 10–11; cf. Geagan 1979: 401–2; Swain 1996: 330; Bowie 2001: 21 (ca. 160). Madauros and Carthage: Bradley 2005. 12 Judicial speech: the possibility that the Apology is a fiction and that the events it apparently describes never took place cannot be discounted but seems to me
256 Keith Bradley
13
14 15 16
17
18 19 20 21
22
23
unlikely. Plausible: cf. Bradley 1997. Contemporary portrait sculpture: Zanker 1995: 235–42. Honoured: ILAlg. 2115, commonly taken to refer to Apuleius. Augustine: De civ. D. 9 passim. Mummy portraits: Doxiadis 1995: 23–4 (nos. 17–19), 188–9; 110 (no. 79), 209; 174 (no. 112), 222; Walker and Bierbrier 1997: 95–7 (nos. 87–8), commenting on the influence of the hairstyle of Lucius Verus. On effeminacy and sophists, see Gleason 1995: 55–81; cf. 7, referring to Polemo’s (probable) description of Favorinus, esp. the claim that ‘he took great care of his abundant tresses, rubbed ointments on his body, and cultivated everything that excites the desire for coitus and lust.’ Appeals: Bradley 1997: 213. Allusions: Finkelpearl 1998. On body language, not quite in the modern colloquial sense, note Fantham 2004: 296: ‘deliberate use of the body.’ For Quintilian on the theory of rhetorical performance, including his debt to Cicero, see Fantham 1982. See also, as part of a modern theoretical approach to Roman theory, Gunderson 2000: 70–2. Like-minded philosopher: Bradley 1997. Cicero’s line: see Finkelpearl 1998: 51– 3. This is not to suggest, however, that Apuleius was a ‘rhetorician’ (Gleason 1995: 8n29). For the link with the Republican orators, see Hunink 1997: 2.231. For detailed information on the orators listed, see Sumner 1973. Cf. Bradley 2005: 19. On Pliny’s studious friends, see Sherwin-White 1966: 65–9. Important modern works on Romanization include Benabou 1976; Millett 1990; Woolf 1998; MacMullen 2000; see further Bradley 2005. Linguistic and religious evidence: Bradley 1997; 2000b (with references). On social norms in the Metamorphoses see Bradley 2000a. Fellow students: Harrison 2000: 39, taking the son as Apuleius’ protégé. Greek: Kotula 1969; cf. Adams 2003: 220–1. Outsider: Bradley 2000b. For recent discussions of the Festival of Risus, see Finkelpearl’s summary in Schlam and Finkelpearl 2000: 154–7.
13 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa t. corey brennan
I It may seem an odd starting point for an article on Roman clothing, but perhaps one can squeeze something that is relevant for this topic out of a muchdiscussed passage in the Historia Augusta biography of Commodus (SHA Comm. 17.7–8). The passage treats, of all things, the transport of wheat from Africa to Rome: [Commodus] classem Africanam instituit, quae subsidio esset, si forte Alexandrina frumenta cessassent. ridicule etiam Carthagine Alexandriam Commodianam togatam appellavit, cum classem quoque Africanam Commodianam Herculeam appellasset.
Magie in the 1921 Loeb edition translates as follows: He did organize an African fleet, which would have been useful, in case the grainsupply from Alexandria were delayed. He jestingly named Carthage Alexandria Commodiana Togata, after entitling the African fleet Commodiana Herculea.
This translation of the clause ridicule appellavit seems generally accepted.1 But all other (eleven) instances of ridiculus in adjectival or adverbial form in the Historia Augusta denote something that seems laughable not from the agent’s but from the biographer’s perspective.2 In other words, the Historia Augusta life of Commodus makes the claim that this emperor, after establishing an African grain fleet named ‘Commodiana Herculea,’ actually went on to rename Carthage ‘Alexandria Commodiana Togata,’ and that was absurd.
258 T. Corey Brennan Now, this notice has a certain ring of plausibility. Problems with the grain supply to Rome almost toppled Commodus in the year ad 190.3 And Commodus’ fetish for imposing the name ‘Commodianus’ on institutions and cities – including even, in 192, Rome – is perfectly well attested.4 So is the all-consuming identification with Hercules that so characterized Commodus in the years ad 190–92, his last on the throne.5 But the trouble is that no source other than the Historia Augusta has anything to say about this emperor organizing a state-owned grain fleet to sail out of North Africa. Such an institution would be quite at odds with Roman practice, which relied on private shippers for this task. Indeed, it seems likely that there was no such fleet, as H. Pavis d’Esurac has shown.6 Nor is there any corroborating evidence for a renaming, however short lived, of Carthage as ‘Alexandria Commodiana Togata.’ Indeed, the nexus Alexandria-Carthage in this context may well reflect only the milieu of the Historia Augusta biographer (i.e., the last decades of the fourth century or later, as shown long ago to a high degree of plausibility by Dessau),7 when Alexandrian grain exports mostly found their way to Byzantium, to the chagrin of Rome’s population, which had to count primarily on Carthage for the annona.8 I would argue also that the appellation ‘Togata’ is highly unlikely, especially for the highly Romanized Carthage of the late second century. Carthage of course had first seen a Roman colony in the time of the Gracchi; in Commodus’ day it was the third greatest city of the Empire, after Rome and Alexandria. True, ‘Gallia Togata’ for the (old and established) Cisalpine province in Italy is reasonably common in literary sources, starting in the late Republic.9 But the Romans never made that particular formulation an administrative designation. As far as I can tell, the adjective togatus never occurs in the official toponym of any locality in the Roman world, colonia or not, in any period.10 Why not? To join the adjective togatus with the name of a people – other than the Romans themselves – or a place necessarily draws attention to previous outsider status. That this type of collocation can take on a pejorative tone is well seen in a passage of Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, where the Fate Clotho is made to say that Claudius ‘had decided to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, Britons as toga-clad’ (constituerat ... omnes Graecos, Gallos, Hispanos, Britannos togatos videre, Sen. Apoc. 3). Here the further a people is situated from Rome as centre, the more condescending (surely) their appellation as ‘togati.’ When Apuleius wanted to flatter a Carthaginian audience of the mid-second century, there is no talk of their membership in the class of urbes toga-
259 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa tae (for which see Stat. Silv. 1.4.11, a formula actually unparalleled in classical Latin) or the like. Apuleius praises their city (Flor. 20.10) as: Karthago provinciae nostrae magistra venerabilis, Karthago Africae Musa caelestis, Karthago Camena togatorum. Carthage the reverend teacher of our province, Carthage the heavenly Muse of Africa, Carthage the Camena of the toga-clad.
His formulation suggests, inter alia, that Carthage had long passed the point of simple assimilation to Rome in dress and hence basic status. The city, which had its own venerable history (the adjective caelestis points up the Punic past, i.e., by alluding to the goddess Tanit / Juno Caelestis), was now an animating force (magistra ... Musa ... Camena) for the inspiration not just of the Roman province but of the privileged class of toga-clad Roman citizens, even those of Italy (made clear by Camena).11 II Tertullian in the structurally complicated and linguistically obscure treatise De Pallio (perhaps best dated to 205)12 voices a very different view of Carthage’s relationship to the Roman world. Tertullian’s work is ostensibly a speech urging an audience at Carthage to forsake the Roman toga it long ago adapted as its clothing, and to turn to the dress of philosophers – the Greek-style pallium that the city in fact once favored in Punic times. principes semper Africae, viri Carthaginienses,13 vetustate nobiles, novitate felices, gaudeo vos tam prosperos temporum, cum ita vacat ac iuvat habitus denotare. pacis haec et annonae otia. ab imperio et a caelo bene est. (Pall. 1.1.1–2) You, who have always been leaders of Africa, men of Carthage, noble of old and blessed today, I am glad that you live in such happy times that you can find both the time and the pleasure of censuring clothing! This is the sort of pursuit of peace and plenty. All is well on the part of the empire and on the part of the sky.
It was Utica where the toga was first adopted in Africa (cf. Pall. 1.2.1). At Carthage the change came late, says the author (1.2.3), only in the Augustan age, when it appears the city assumed the title of Colonia Iulia Carthago, later Colonia Concordia Iulia Karthago.14 But for the Carthaginians the change is only superficial (Pall. 4.1.1):
260 T. Corey Brennan quid nunc, si est Romanitas omni salus, nec honestis tamen modis ad Graios estis? But now, if Romanity is to the benefit of all, why are you nonetheless inclined to the Greeks, even in less honorable matters?
Some of Rome’s provinces, Tertullian argues, have taken the worst Greek practices. But they neglect the simple and dignified pallium, whose many virtues are extolled at length. Philosophers are just one of many exemplary types who have adopted this cloak, the mere sight of which is said to cause the morally impure to blush (6.1.3). The tract ends abruptly with what for Tertullian is the most powerful argument of all in favour of a change of dress from toga back to the pallium (6.2.5): gaude pallium et exsulta! melior iam te philosophia dignata est ex quo Christianum vestire coepisti. Rejoice, pallium, and exult! A better philosophy has deigned you worthy, from the moment that it is the Christian whom you started to dress.
V. Hunink in his recent full commentary on the De Pallio observes that there is nothing approaching consensus among scholars on the basic aims or even the genre of this odd work. Hunink himself is of the view that, despite Tertullian’s use of some Biblical allusions and, in the powerful final section, the term Christianus, ‘the whole structure and content of the speech make it difficult to take it as a serious contribution to a debate on religion ... It is difficult to see any other aim of the speaker than that of delivering a good, persuasive, or, at least, entertaining speech. By this, he may have wished to underscore his status and position as a learned sophist and a man of great culture and hidden wisdom.’15 However, a reexamination of Tertullian’s text – of course based in good measure on the expert commentary that Hunink himself provides us – seems to reveal a stratum of deep seriousness. Now, a main theme of the De Pallio (dominating especially chapters 2–4, i.e., well over half of the work) is the universality of change, and how change is a function of nature.16 Here, I would hold, Tertullian is arguing that his audience should habitum vertere17 in two senses, namely a change of fashion and a (significant) change of affect. But the difficulty in convincing his audience of even the first point should not be underestimated. The prickly prologue of 1.1.1 (gaudeo vos tam prosperos temporum ... habitus denotare) really is disingenuous, for mode of dress will have been an immediate and important signifier of status for Tertullian’s addresses at Carthage.
261 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa The point can be lavishly illustrated. Note, almost at random, Apuleius’ description in his Florida (22.5) of the attributes of Crates of Thebes (365– 285 bc) before his radical rejection of riches for Cynic philosophy. Five details follow, each evidently constituting an important social marker, that is, for Apuleius’ contemporary (North African) audience. lectum genus, frequens famulitium, domus amplo ornate vestibulo, ipse bene vestitus bene praediatus. a choice ancestry, a large domestic staff, a home distinguished by a large vestibule, well-dressed in his person and well-endowed in the possession of land.18
Or another passage from an address at Carthage (9.36, 40) to the proconsul Sex. Cocceius Severianus Honorinus in ad 162–63 (9.39). Here Apuleius compares himself favourably to Hippias of Elis, a contemporary of Socrates who made a memorable19 sartorial display at Olympia (Apul. Flor. 9.25– 27). In this piece Apuleius offers some entirely provocative statements regarding his own alleged disdain for clothing of a conventional quality, which in turn should be interpreted as confirming the general social importance of fashion for his Carthaginian audience. Indeed, elsewhere Apuleius goes to great lengths to underline the seriousness of Roman clothing distinctions. In a panegyric for a noble of consular rank, he offers the following climax (Flor. 8.2): ex senatoribus pauci nobiles genere et ex iis consularibus pauci boni et adhuc ex bonis pauci eruditi. sed ut loquar de solo honore, non licet insignia eius vestitu vel calceatu temere usurpare. Of senators, few are of noble birth, and of these men of consular rank, few are morally good, and still of the good few are erudite; but to speak of the honor alone, it is not permitted rashly to usurp its distinctive marks, in respect to either its clothing or footwear.
In fact, our record suggests a whole series of attempts to combat usurpations of status, seen especially in restrictions on purple for clothing. For Roman elites this was a crucially important issue, and became especially so in the unsettled third and fourth centuries, when decurions were trying to avoid crushing financial responsibilities.20 Of dubious reliability is Seneca (Clem. 1.24.1), who says that the Roman senate once entertained a comprehensive system of clothing distinctions to distinguish free and non-free – but abandoned the notion when it realized that slaves would be able to recognize
262 T. Corey Brennan their great numbers.21 More useful is the Historia Augusta biography of Severus Alexander (SHA Sev. Alex. 27.1–3), which states that the jurists Ulpian and Paul allegedly dissuaded this emperor from establishing ‘class uniforms’ for the imperial staff, including the slaves, on the grounds that such a reform would generate too much social friction. Again, the historicity of the incident must remain highly suspect. But the anecdote as presented here in the Historia Augusta does offer us a plausible glimpse into Roman mentalities, at least possibly valid for later antiquity (i.e., the late fourth century or beyond). To return to the tract at hand: there is the matter of Tertullian’s impassioned plea to revive the pallium, which really must go beyond mere entertainment, as has sometimes been argued.22 For Romans in general, the distinction pallium / toga had long been basic. Romans viewed the pallium as a distinctive characteristic of Greeks.23 One need think only of the ancient classification of dramatic productions (fabulae) into palliatae (‘in Greek dress,’ such as those of Plautus and Terence) and togatae (‘in Roman dress’). Toga-wearers, of course, thought their mode of dress superior.24 As one might imagine, the Roman toga took on an added importance in a provincial city such as Carthage, where the Punic and African background played a massive role. One of the most remarked upon attributes of the ‘Afri’ was their ungirded, trailing dress. Vergil’s description of the shield of Aeneas makes the point succinctly (Aen. 8.722–724, 726): incedunt victae longo ordine gentes, quam variae linguis, habitu tam vestis et armis. hic Nomadum genus et discinctos Mulciber Afros finxerat. The conquered peoples proceed in a long line; they are as varied in their speech as they are in mode of dress and in their arms. Here Mulciber had placed the race of Nomads and the ungirded Africans.
Servius, in commenting on discincti (ad Aen. 8.724), aptly quotes Plautus (Poen. 975), which shows the antiquity of the stereotype: quod Plautus ridet in Poenulo dicens ‘quae est illa avis?’ cum Afrum vidisset vestem dimissam trahentem. Plautus mocks this in the Poenulus saying ‘what is that bird?’ when he had seen an African dragging a trailing robe.
263 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa Or consider the Claudian-era geographer Pomponius Mela of Baetica (Chor. 1.41–42), singled out by T.R.S. Broughton as an illustrative text for the ‘general social development of the [African] country as the Romans found it.’25 The coast dwellers in the formerly Punic cities, Mela asserts, are ‘cultivators whose customs do not differ from our own’ except in regard to language and religion. It was a different situation, however, as regards their neighbours in the Punicized interior of the Bagradas and Miliana valleys. Those people do not live in cities but in the vernacular huts known as mapalia. There they maintain a quite rudimentary lifestyle, which extends to their clothing: primores sagis velantur, vulgus bestiarum pecudumque pellibus. Their chiefs are clad in (simple) cloaks, the mass of people in the skins of wild beasts and herd animals.
Still further into the interior, the people are said to be nomads; not a word on their clothes, but they could hardly be more primitive. In the Punic foundations of North Africa, Tertullian is at pains to tell us (Pall. 1.1.3–4), the ungirded mantle held sway before the period of developed Roman rule. Indeed, old Carthage seems to have fostered special regard for the art of the pallium: Polemon the Periegete (early second century bc) could author a book on peploi dedicated at Carthage, which included the tale (told also elsewhere) of how the city in the fourth century purchased an extraordinarily ornate himation for 120 talents.26 But in the high Empire, the authentic pre-Roman style of mantle was confined at Carthage (apparently) to the ritual context; Tertullian notes that it could be observed in the dress of priests who saw to the cult of Aesculapius (= Eshmoun).27 For Roman Carthage’s urbane elite, the presence of sagati (people clad in cloaks) and even (to believe Mela) pelt-wearers in the interior regions of Africa Proconsularis will have contributed (surely) to a certain degree of boundary anxiety. So the alleged renaming of the city by Commodus as ‘Alexandria Commodiana Togata’ is rightly termed ridicule by the Historia Augusta biographer. For the venerable Colonia Concordia Iulia Carthago, a city with deep Punic history situated in one of the Empire’s very wealthiest provinces, such a title contains three separate insults; Togata, as we have seen, would imply that such a distinction had to be made. (Of course, some centuries later the rise of Islam would thoroughly level all clothing issues involving ‘ungirded’ vs ‘girded.’)28
264 T. Corey Brennan III This brings us to the central problem this chapter aims to explore. Did Tertullian actually expect his audience to exchange their treasured togas – that is, the most visible and important attribute of Roman citizenship – for the Greek pallium? His exhoration habitum vertere is undoubtedly passionate; but when it comes to dress, is it sincere? The question seems worth asking, for the symbolic struggle sketched in the De Pallio between the mantle and the toga is not a principal concern of Tertullian elsewhere. To be sure, the pallium had a prominent role in scripture, namely Matthew 5:40 (‘if any man ... take away your tunic, let him have your cloak [himation] also’), a passage which Tertullian duly cites in other works though not in this one.29 Indeed, very likely at this time this mantle was already a symbol of Christian humilitas.30 But in Tertullian’s writing in general to wear a pallium is not necessarily a marker of moral goodness (see Test. 2.7). Nor is the toga virilis of the Roman citizen to be minimized as an effective marker of rank and honor (Idol. 16.1–2, 18). I would argue that in the De Pallio the argument for the Carthaginians habitum vertere in the sense of ‘clothing’ is not a serious one. In particular, Tertullian presents his dense reflections on the law of change in terms that almost seem to make a case for the retention of the toga virilis.31 (The technical term is avoided here, perhaps deliberately; contrast the disquisition on the toga as symbol of manliness at Idol. 16 and especially 18.) Among Tertullian’s (many) paradoxical arguments in favour of the literal adoption of the pallium is the emphatic contention that Greek-style effeminization can take place without it (cf. Pall. 4.1.4). Plus, he asserts, in contemporary Carthage the eagerness of certain lowlifes to wear a Roman toga has led to a levelling of clothing distinctions and with it usurpations of status (Pall. 4.8.4), although it is hard to see how wholesale adoption of the pallium would mitigate matters: libertinos in equestribus, subverbustos in liberalibus, dediticios in ingenuis, rupices in urbanis, scurras in forensibus, paganos in militaribus: vespillo, leno, lanista tecum vestiuntur. [You may see] freedmen in the attire of knights, slaves loaded with floggings in that of nobility, captives in that of freeborn, bumpkins in that of city dwellers, buffoons in that of men of the forum, citizens in that of soldiers. The corpse-bearer, the pimp, and the trainer of gladiators: they dress like you.
Interspersed in this general section of the De Pallio is invective against con-
265 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa temporary male effeminati (4.8.2) and, most interestingly, their female counterparts (4.9.5), whom Tertullian terms frictrices (= tribades).32 These swipes at effeminacy in Roman North Africa resonate with Apuleius’ Apologia and Salvian’s (fifth century) De Gubernatore Dei, and indeed a significant antique tradition.33 To turn the polemic on its head: there surely was an ideology of the (heterosexual) effeminatus. It was a deliberate social stance in which the principal aim was conspicuously to display one’s heightened urbanitas. Apuleius as he describes himself in his Apologia, delivered in the theatre at Sabratha in Tripolitana in 158 before the especially distinguished proconsul Claudius Maximus, provides an excellent case.34 Meanwhile in this speech Apuleius has nothing but abuse for rudes, sordidi, and imperiti. But even the effeminati of the great African cities might have had their own peculiar status anxieties; Tertullian alleges in graphic terms (Pall. 4.1.3) that certain Numidians had started to cultivate an effete self-image for themselves:35 unde apud aliquos Numidas etiam equis caesariatos iuxta cutem tonsor et cultri vertex solus immunis? unde apud hirtos et hirsutos tam rapax a culo resina, tam furax a mento volsella? From where else is it [sc. other than Greece] that with some Numidians, who even wear their hair long due to horses [sc. a natural or artificial ‘ponytail’?], the barber comes close to the skin and just the crown remains exempt from the knife? Whence is it that with hairy and hirsute men the resin is so rapacious at the arse, the tweezers are so ravenous at the chin?
IV Tertullian’s polemic against effeminati seems basic to the serious argument in his treatise on the Greek mantle. One passage in particular (Pall. 1.3.1) summarizes nicely Tertullian’s ostensible attitude toward how the Carthaginians dress now. As for the pallium, he comments: et si quid praeterea condicio vel dignitas vel temporalitas vestit, pallium tamen generaliter vestrum immemores etiam denotatis. And if any circumstance of class or dignity or time makes you wear other garments, you forget and even criticize the pallium, that used to be yours in all circumstances!
Change – as in the change to a toga – is not always an improvement. We have seen that Roman dress, with its more elaborate honorific subcategories,
266 T. Corey Brennan has (paradoxically) permitted usurpation and hence leveling of clothing distinctions. And the extinction of dress markers, Tertullian argues, constitutes a danger to public morality: the effeminati and frictrices with their topsyturvy fashion sense are the extreme example. But they are all wrong headed, Tertullian seems to argue, for the pallium is the best emblem of erudition (Pall. 6.2.1–2). Just as in works such as De Spectaculis – with its fervent denuncation of the most prevalent forms of Roman popular entertainment – Tertullian no doubt is significantly exaggerating his case. Carthaginian elites were hardly going to abandon the toga. It may be that Tertullian is using the pallium as a rhetorical device to pull the Carthaginians back to the centre – their status as urbs togata, if you will – from an urbs effeminata in the making. Yet Tertullian’s central concern, I would argue, is that his audience ought to change their habitus in the sense of change their ‘attitude of mind.’ The author makes this point forcefully in the last sentence of the tract (Pall. 6.2.5), the first and only explicit reference to the Christian faith. One advantage of that habitus, his audience will have noticed, is that one could adopt it without a dramatic public renunciation of the prestigious and established Roman garb. And if the Carthaginians do nothing? It may be that Tertullian had looked towards that eventuality already in an earlier portion of the De Pallio. ‘In the earlier part of the speech’ observes McKechnie, ‘Classical myths get paired carefully with Bible stories (the Flood with Atlantis, Sodom and Gomorrah with Old Volsinii and Pompeii; the creation of the world with the invention of kingship.’ But ‘the effect they produce is not militantly Christian.’36 Is this correct? Let us look at Tertullian’s reference, in a passage that occurs in the general context of a disquisition on water, especially the sea, as an agent of violent change (Pall. 2.2.3–4.2), to Sodom and Gomorrah (2.4.2): ... ut Deus censor est et impietas ignium meruit imbres, hactenus Sodoma et nulla Gomorrha et cinis omnia et propinquitas maris iuxta cum solo mortem vivit. ... now that God is censor and impiety has earned rains of fire, so much for Sodom and there is no Gomorrha anymore. All has turned into ashes and the soil is living its death along with the nearby sea.
What is striking here is the mention of the propinquitas maris in connection with Sodom and Gomorrah; though Tertullian elsewhere in his writings makes ample mention of the destruction of these cities (about sixteen times in all), the sea (i.e., the Dead Sea) never figures into it. Surely these details were for the benefit of his Carthaginian audience, whose city was situated in
267 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa one of the most impressive port settings of the ancient world. And if the relevance of the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah should escape anyone, Tertullian after brief mention of the natural disasters that befell Volsinii and Pompeii drives his point home (Pall. 2.4.4): utinam et Africa semel voraginiem paverit, unicis castris fraudatis expiata! multa et alia huiusmodi detrimenta habitum orbis novavere situsque movere. And may Africa have feared a chasm once and for all, now that she is expiated through the loss of a single camp. Many other similar catastrophes have renewed the look of the earth and shifted the location of places.
This is hardly consonant with a mere sophistic display. Rather, the De Pallio has embedded within it a serious moral message, one which – for all the oddities of presentation – firmly aims to win over the Carthaginian audience to Christianity.
Notes
1
2
3 4
I am grateful to Jonathan Edmondson, Alison Keith, and the two anonymous referees of this volume for their help in improving my article. I also must thank my hosts at three institutions where I delivered preliminary versions of this paper: M. Labate and A. Schiavone at Florence’s Istituto di Studi Umanistici (2003); H. Yunis at Rice University (2005); and C. Champion at Syracuse University (also 2005). Naturally, I am wholly responsible for my errors in fact or interpretation. Hunink 2005 provides the text (which is essentially that of Gerlo 1954) and translation of all passages I cite from the De Pallio. See for instance Whittaker 2000: 535: ‘The emperor used jokingly to call Carthage “Alexandria Commodiana Togata.”’ Hekster (2002: 85n241) translates not quite accurately: ‘Commodus also wanted to rename Carthage Alexandria Commodiana Togata.’ Von Saldern (2003: 156) takes the passage at face value (‘Sowohl der Stadt Karthago als auch der Flotte habe der Kaiser seinen Namen als Beinamen gegeben’), but devotes the entirety of his lengthy discussion of it (156–160) to the question of the classis. SHA Tres Gordiani 21.3 provides a particularly clear example, where the author speaks of items which the historian Iunius Cordus ridicule ac stulte composuit. Discussion with sources and bibliography in Hekster 2002: 73–5. In general for this practice in the Greek East, see Von Saldern 2003: 291–3. On Rome, see Hekster 2002: 95–6 with 107 on the difficulty of associating RIC III
268 T. Corey Brennan
5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
(Commodus) 560 and 570 (ad 190) with this renaming. Jerusalem too was renamed after Commodus, but only in 201 (Hekster 2002: 191). Hekster 2002: 103–11, with the comments of Baldwin 2005: 84. Pavis d’Esurac 1974: 397–408, essentially followed by Von Saldern 2003: 156–60. Dessau 1889: 337–92. Of course, not all have been convinced that the date of this work should be moved from the time of Constantine; for a good short summary of the current state of the question, see Potter 1999, adhering to the communis opinio of a date ca. 400. Pavis d’Esurac 1974: 407. [Caes.] B Gall. 8.24.3, 52.1–2; Cic. Phil. 8.27; Pomp. Mela 2.59; Pliny HN 3.112; Suet. Gramm. 3.6. See further Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. To judge from a search of the indices of Talbert 2000. On the language of this passage in general, see Hunink 2001: 206. Thus Barnes 1971: 35–7; Hunink 2005: 13–15 provides an ample discussion of the (many) possibilities on the date that have been floated. I am inclined to agree with McKechnie 1992: 55 that the De Pallio was delivered, and ‘the speaker is actually in front of a crowd or Romans and Carthaginians in Carthage, and he’s wearing a pallium.’ See also (in agreement) Hunink 2005: 16–17, 22–3, 284, 292. Mayer 2006, however, considers the matter far from certain. For this apparently conventional address, cf. Apul. Flor. 16.1. See Oehler 1919: 2162–3. Hunink 2005: 21, 23. See especially Pall. 2.1.2 (change even in Plato’s world of Forms) with Hunink 2005: 94–5. For the phrase, see Pall. 2.1.1, though Hunink ad loc. (2005: 91) is sceptical that habitus here means both ‘dress’ and ‘habit, custom.’ Yet references to a change in habitus are repeated enough in this treatise (see 1.1.3, 2.1.1, 2.3.3, 2.4.4, 4.2.1, 4.2.5 and 4.8.1) and rare enough elsewhere in the Tertullianic corpus to seem significant. On the vocabulary of this passage, see Hunink 2001: 211–12. For the story, see Plato Hipp. Min. 368b-d; Cic. De or. 3.127; Quint. Inst. 12.11.21; Dio Chrys. 71.2. The standard treatment is Reinhold 1971. See also Edmondson, chap. 1, in this volume. On attempts to regulate slaves’ clothing, see George 2002: 44. See McKechnie 1992. For example, Plaut. Curc. 288: Graeci palliati; Pliny Ep. 4.11: Graeco pallio amictus. See, for example, Cic. Phil. 5.14: Graeculi iudicis, modo palliati, modo togati (a Greekling juror, now wearing a pallium, now a toga); Suet. Iul. 48: duobus tricli-
269 Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa
25 26 27
28
29 30 31
32
niis, uno quo sagati palliative, altero quo togati cum inlustrioribus provinciarum (‘[Caesar gave banquets] in two dining rooms, in one of which were wearers of the sagum [i.e., a Roman military cloak] and pallium, in the other the togaclad [sc. Roman citizens] with the more distinguished individuals of the provinces’); Val. Max. 2.2.2: in Greece and Asia, for all their love of learning, magistratus ... prisci ... nulla non in re pallium togae subici debere arbitrabantur (‘[Roman] magistrates ... of old ... were of the opinion that in all matters the [Greek] pallium ought to be subordinate to the [Roman] toga’). Broughton 1929: 11. For Polemon on peploi, see Preller 1838: 132. Tert. Pall. 1.2.1, cf. 4.10.3. On this see Picard 1959: 225; cf. Mayer 2006 on the establishment of the cult of Aesculapius at Carthage (possibly no earlier than Antonine in date). For a short introduction to the main attributes of early Islamic dress, see Stillman and Maida 1986: 732–5, esp. 732, noting that this vestimentary system was ‘simple, functional, and suitable to the ecology ... many of the items of clothing [i.e., in the time of the Prophet and early Islam] worn by men and women were identical. Indeed, many of the articles were simply large pieces of fabric in which the wearer wrapped himself.’ De Fuga in persecutione 16: qui tibi tunicam sustulerit, vel etiam pallium concede; cf. De Patientia 7. See Kreis-von Schaewen 1949: 251. These include the bizarre examples from the natural world of the peacock, serpent, hyena, stag, and chameleon (3.1.1–3.5), the hyper-resourcefulness of the tailoring art (3.4.1–7.1), and the negative exempla of the effeminized Achilles (4.2.2–5), Hercules (4.3.1–8), the boxer Cleomachus (4.4.1–3), joined by some eastern dynasts (the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Physcon, the legendary Assyrian king Sardanapalus) and Roman emperors (4.5.1–2, unidentifiable), then finally Alexander the Great (4.6.2–4). ‘This comprehensive attack,’ observes Hunink (2005: 175) of the examples of Pall. 4.2.2–6.4, amounts ‘to a rejection of essential parts of Greek and Roman culture,’ a section which ‘seems to be the most outspokenly polemical one in the whole speech.’ For a short discussion of this ancient construct of female homoeroticism see Brennan 1997. The equation frictrices = tribades (thus TLL s.v. frictor 1321, cols. 38–41) has been doubted (see e.g., McKechnie 1992: 61–2, taking them here as prostitutes who are ‘providers of the cheapest and most perfunctory sexual excitement for paying customers’; similarly Hunink 2005: 232). But Tert. Resurr. Carn. 16, the only other Latin text where the term frictrix appears, groups this figure with serious societal outsiders, an archigallus – surely the masculine equivalent – as well as a gladiator and carnifex. And in the present passage there is the implication that the frictrices are both to be distinguished from ordinary
270 T. Corey Brennan
33
34 35
36
lupae but also identifiable on sight, as masculinized women presumably would be. For Apuleius’ defence of himself as philosophus formonsus, see especially Apol. 4, 7, 12, 15 and Bradley, chap. 12, in this volume. On a much different level, Salv. Gub. Dei 7.17–20 offers a lurid disquisition on the role played by effeminati in Carthage at the time of the Vandal Genseric’s capture of the city in 429; the invading Vandals, Salvian emphatically asserts, remained remarkably untouched by the vices they found and extinguished (7.86–87, 94). See in general Herter 1959: 620–50, especially 622 for Polybius on Carthage, representing it as softened already by its long period of peace following the Second Punic War (31.21.3 [32.2.3]; cf. Sil. 2.361), and 650 on the Vandals. See further Bradley, chap. 12, in this volume. McKechnie (1992: 58) notes that ‘since Salmasius’ editio princeps in 1622 editors have noted that the Numidians in question are the Carthaginians.’ But one would like a parallel for this in the Tertullian corpus; Pall. 4.1.3 is the only mention of Numidia or Numidians by this author. It is perfectly reasonable to take it at face value (as does Hunink 2005: 180–1), especially since Carthage of course is not situated in Numidia. McKechnie 1992: 60 and 49, respectively.
14 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing guy p.r. métraux
... And he who descends into the crypt ... will observe, in the quiet niche with [Cardinal Manning’s] sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault like some forlorn and forgotten trophy – the Hat. Lytton Strachey, ‘Cardinal Manning,’ in Eminent Victorians (1918: 120)
Negotiations about Nudity, Costumes, and Accessories: A Martyrdom at Carthage When two female criminals were presented, naked, for execution in the amphitheatre at Carthage, the spectators were so offended at the women’s nudity that they made a spontaneous disturbance. To restore order, the presiding official Hilarianus had to interrupt the proceedings so that the convicts could be clothed in suitable long tunics (Passio 20.2).1 Vibia Perpetua, a matron and noblewoman of the city, and her servant Felicitas were being martyred with several other Christians – the others, all male, were presented clothed. Perpetua had recently given birth to a male child and had been nursing him in prison, and Felicitas had given birth prematurely a few days before, so both were lactating (Passio 2–3, 15). In preparing them for execution, the impresario of the Carthage amphitheatre hit on an appropriately theatrical idea: to expose the women nude to a cow or a heifer (rather than a bull) that had been goaded to aggression (Passio 20.1). Even the editor of the martyr story considered that this method of damnatio was unusual, and it is part of the amphitheatrical tradition that has been aptly termed ‘fatal charades.’2 The nudity of the women (not the method of execution or even the execution itself) shocked the audience to the extent of uproar,
272 Guy P.R. Métraux which prompted a negotiation between audience and authority, one in which (in this instance at least) the spectators were successful in getting their point across (Passio 20.3). The matter was a minor one – the nudity of the convicts – but the spectators’ objection was carried.3 However, on that day of execution, this was only the second negotiation about dress (or undress) that took place; the first had taken place just before the criminals were brought in to the arena.4 The day of the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicitas, and their fellow criminals was 7 March 203 (the birthday of the Caesar P. Septimius Geta), a Saturday, the day of Saturn, and two of the male criminals were named Saturnus (or Saturus) and Saturninus. This happy coincidence of day and names gave the impresario of the amphitheatre a novel and entertaining idea: for presentation to the wild beasts, the male criminals were to be costumed as sacerdotes of Saturn,5 in the distinctive purple-striped tunics and scarlet cloaks of that order, while the women were to be dressed in the white tunics of priestesses of Ceres, their hair bound in fillets and their heads crowned with turbans.6 However, the impresario had not reckoned with Perpetua, a strong-minded, highly educated woman, very bold of speech, who objected disputatiously to wearing these outfits. She carried her point: a military tribune had to intervene in the negotiation on the side of the Christians, and the male criminals were brought into the arena in their prison garb, which must have made a much less fine show (Passio 18.4–6). In compensation, the two women were presented nude. Doubtless the impresario was disappointed in the matter of the scarlet cloaks and turbans and embarrassed about the countermandering of the nudity, but he was far from merely being a bad artist of singular ideas that did not work.7 Rather, his mistakes – first the religious costumes, then the nudity – are significant not because they were mere errors of taste but because they were, for the times, mistakes of cultural and visual signification that offended both pious criminals and an audience looking for respectable pleasure. His errors – they happened to be about dress and undress – were seriously transgressive at both the special level of Perpetua (as a noblewoman of Africa and a Christian) and the ordinary level of a very prudish popular audience.8 A final negotiation in the Carthage amphitheatre – the third in the incidents of her martyrdom – was instituted by Perpetua herself. She evidently knew her public (both her fellow citizens and her fellow Christians), and she was not a woman to make mistakes of taste or decorum like those of the impresario of the amphitheatre. Rather, she played to her audience by signifying both her modesty as a matron and her message as a martyr, and she did so with an accessory: a hairpin. In the course of her passio (after being clothed in a long tunic and returned to the arena), the cow gored her thigh
273 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing and loosened her hair. Perpetua was able to cover her legs with the remains of the torn tunic. After that, she asked the amphitheatre officials to bring her a hairpin (acus) so that she could rearrange her hair; she did so to avoid appearing, to her audience, to be in mourning (with hair undressed) on the day that was to be her greatest triumph (Passio 20.4).9 She was successful in negotiating her request for a pin, and she ultimately died with her hair in good order. Desecularization of Clothing in Late Antiquity These three instances of negotiation – the costume, the nudity, and the redressing of the disordered hair with a pin – are mere incidents involving protagonists, populace, and authorities in the account of the martyrdom of Perpetua.10 At the same time, they are small instances of a larger process in late antiquity that R.A. Markus has termed ‘desecularization,’ a process of investing meaning – even holy significance – into ordinary objects, including clothing, and situations that came to characterize Roman society and that also favoured special communities of pious believers, both pagan and Christian.11 For example, Christians of the Montanist persuasion (Perpetua among them) extended the religious signficance of bread and wine to other, quite ordinary, elements: milk and honey could be substitutes, or anything that the believer invested with holy signficance.12 Perpetua herself exhibited some disposition to such investiture, as she herself tells us in her account of the visions she had during her martyrdom. Among others, the tall man who both orchestrated her martyrdom and smilingly consoled her was, in her vision of him, dressed in a long white tunic with the sash and handkerchief of the president of the Games: she evidently was having a vision of Christ, but Christ dressed in a sacralized version of otherwise traditional clothing appropriate to the formality of the games and executions (and perhaps the formalized memory that they once had some ritual status).13 She costumed Christ in clothes that had a vivid circumstantial reference to her situation as a combatant but also assumed a sanctified status. Perpetua’s realignment of what had been ordinary or traditional into a fully realized, religious or semisacred, certainly symbolic, realm was shared by others in late antiquity. Of course, the process of desecularization was mainly a phenomenon of rhetoric and literature, but the tendency to see ordinary things as having holy significance – or even invested with apotropaic or ‘good luck’ force – could also encompass dress and accessories in late antiquity, giving them a glittering new meaning that went well beyond any secular tradition that used clothes to denote status and accessories merely to signify wealth or social affiliation. Instead, images and fortune could go hand in hand, and artisans in
274 Guy P.R. Métraux several different speciality trades did so for a family over several generations. One of the writers in the Historia Augusta tells us that the family of the Macriani (of whom Macrianus and Quietus were emperors for a time in ad 260– 61) had this peculiarity: from the third through the late fourth century, the men’s rings and silver services, together with the women’s hairnets, bracelets, rings, and other ornaments including embroidered garments, bore portraits of Alexander the Great in gold or silver, and all who did so in these materials were successful in whatever they undertook. The account illustrates the seamless application, by artisans and patrons, of great iconographies to adorn accessories such as hairnets, and the author of this account tells us that he saw with his own eyes a big plate of electrum with the head of Alexander in the centre and scenes of his life in relief around the rim which a descendant of the Macrianus family used at a banquet.14 In antiquity, clothes and accessories were always meaningful; in late antiquity, they became even more so to audiences well disposed to be impressed and to make fine (if not always accurate) distinctions about such matters. This chapter explores the increased visual significance of clothing and accessories in late antiquity, both in texts and in works of art (funerary and domestic). Two themes are at issue: for women (not goddesses), the growing prudery about nudity and what could be substituted for it, and for men, two instances in representations of the toga. Many of the examples discussed come from Roman Africa, in part because of the richness of secular representation in the mosaics of that province, and this chapter is intended to suggest how clothes (or lack of clothes) might have seemed and what they might have meant to patrons and viewers ca. ad 200–400 in specific visual instances. Substitutes for Female Nudity in Late Antiquity For ordinary humans (as opposed to imperial personages) in the late Roman Empire, the third century was the last century of nudity: in general, living or dead individuals came to eschew nudity in matters of self-representation, especially women. More than a century before, on the tomb of the Haterii in Rome, a monument built to house the deceased of a family of freedmen in the time of Domitian, nudity for women had been a matter of course.15 Later in the second century, women and men could still be shown naked but with that wisp of decency that mythological or divine reference always provided: the statues in the formula of the ‘Pasiteles group,’ in which private or imperial couples were shown as Venus and Mars or other pairings attest to the sanitizing force of representation in formam deorum, a device that clothed all in traditional nudity, or in ‘nudity as costume’ as Larissa Bonfante has happily termed it.16
275 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing For women in private images in late antiquity, among the last moments of nudity came in the representation of old women with the youthful bodies of Venus: the geriatric female face remained, but it was equipped with a fertile young body and thus divinely reclothed with the distinction of age and the respect that was its due, and these representations – however jagged they may look – were appropriate to funerary situations, as we might expect.17 Still, ‘playing Venus’ in life was a prerogative, perhaps even an obligation, for Roman women, so there had to be an alternative form of self-display with reference to Venus after the nude body fell out of favour. This was effected with accessories and mirrors. Ultimately the origin of the adorned Venus goes back to the Homeric Hymn of Aphrodite in which the horae offered her a gold crown, earrings, and a gold necklace. In the late Roman Republic, washing, dressing, perfuming, and adorning statues of Venus in public baths was undertaken by respectable mothers and their daughters-inlaw during the annual festival of Venus Verticordia, a ceremony which may have been instituted to sanitize the worship of the goddess.18 In addition, the visual representation of mirrors in antiquity had been a perquisite of brides: in the Villa of the Mysteries, the bride with gold bracelets and knotted sash is being presented with her own image in a little mirror held by an eros while her hair is being dressed.19 The respectability of the mirror-reflected bride was thus a good formula by which to tame images of the goddess and to align them with matronly adornment. Still, these literary and visual antecedents were, by the third century, considered rather remote and recondite and, in the main, material for showy demonstration by scholars and literary men, not ordinary patrons and the artisans who worked for them. Scholarly concerns would have played a small role in the visual culture of the time. What was more important was a contemporary culture of signs that could align Venus with images of matrons – something by which ordinary patrons and artisans could easily coordinate the divine personage with the human lady, the bedecked beauty of the human being with that of the goddess seen as a continuum in visual representation. In late antiquity, visualizing culture came to be of utmost importance, effectively allowing ordinary patrons and viewers to participate in culture with reference, in this case, only to dress and accessories without much troublesome allusion to the past in the way of literature or old art. Repackaging antiquity as a visual continuum was a significant phenomenon of late antiquity. Venus and Dominae The Venus-dominae visual continuum became popular in the third and fourth centuries and appeared with some frequency in mosaic floors from domestic buildings in Africa, in a set of images that may well have been
276 Guy P.R. Métraux invented there.20 Venus, of course, was for the most part represented nude or partially nude – that was a perquisite of the goddess. At the same time, four elements were developed as clues to her identity during the third century: (1) the presentation of the jewel box (loculus)21 seems to have been almost obligatory, even though it was relatively rare in earlier representations; (2) quite often the presence of a looking glass, either held by the goddess or proferred by an attendant; (3) sometimes the offering of ribbons or other accessories, especially when the goddess was shown as anadyomene with her hair undressed; and (4) roses and sometimes crowns.22 The same devices – in various combinations and omissions – could be used to represent the domina, so the visual reference between divine and human figures would have been explicit and familiar. In addition, there was a germane and contemporary rhetorical division which might have been current in these matters. Tertullian mentions, as if it were a well-known distinction, that the habitus feminae comprises two aspects: cultus, by which is meant gold, silver, and gemmed jewellery as well as clothes, and ornatus, namely the treatment (cura) of hair, skin, and those parts of the body that attract attention.23 The accessories of cultus are obvious, while the mirror as well as the ribboning of the hair are props of ornatus. In a grand depiction of the goddess recumbent on a boat on a large earlythird-century mosaic from Utica showing the triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite, Venus is attended by erotes as sailors, two doves that hold a necklace or mirror in the air above her head (the mosaic is damaged in this area), and an eros holding a jewel-case open to her view (see fig. 14.1).24 From Thuburbo Maius, a fourth-century panel shows Venus holding a small oval mirror with a jewel box at her feet, her hair undressed, flanked by an eros on her right holding a necklace of coloured beads and another offering ribbons and roses from a basket.25 Similar scenes are known from Leptiminus and Thysdrus, all part of the mosaic floor decorations of private houses.26 The jewel box, mirror, ribbons, and roses also identified dominae in private houses, in decorations that complimented the mistress of an establishment with allusion to Venus. The best known is that of the domina shown twice in the mosaic from Carthage known as the ‘Domain of Dominus Julius’ of the late fourth century (fig. 14.2).27 As always with representations of domains, the villa – in this case a grand façade with a columned loggia on the upper floor, turrets, a private basilica, and a domed bath-building – occupied the centre of the image. On a lower register at the left, the domina (clearly identified as such by her symmetrical pairing with the dominus on the right) is shown dressed in a long, long-sleeved tunic – appropriate to still-chilly weather – with clavi embroidered in a triple row to indicate its
277 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing thickness. The lady has risen from her chair to lean on a pedestal; in her left hand, she probably held a mirror (the mosaic is damaged in this area) to look at herself, while with her right hand she reaches for a necklace of coloured stones to add to the double strand of pearls, gemmed hair band, and earrings that she already wears. The necklace is proffered by a female servant who carries a jewel box. Behind the domina’s chair, a male servant offers a basket of flowers, and the whole scene has a backdrop of rose bushes and, perhaps, myrtle. No more explicit allusion to Venus could be imagined, one easily parsed by viewers who had seen representations of the goddess and her props.28 In the same mosaic, in the register above the villa, the domina appears again, this time in a grove of cool cypress trees, seated on a tall bench with a basket of fruit by her side. Servants on either side are offering a small animal and a basket full of fruit; a cockerel scratches at the foot of the bench, and a basket coop provides a home for the partridges pecking at seeds that the lady has scattered. Instead of a mirror, the lady carries a square raffia fan on a stick to cool herself, and the tunic that she wears has clavi embroidered in a single row and, besides, shows her breasts, navel, and sensuous swelling stomach, to indicate its gauzy lightness and the summer’s heat. In addition, the garment has dropped slightly to reveal her left shoulder, the sign, since Hellenistic times, of Venus’ erotic allure and aristocratic negligence. In the Julius mosaic, damage to the floor does not permit us to identify the lady’s seasonal footwear. But at a very elaborately decorated large villa about 30 km north-west of Carthage, near the modern village of Sidi Ghrib, the portrait of the domina shows the lady wearing delicately reticulated calcei of cloth or leather,29 perhaps appropriate for autumn, while the inventory of her cultus – the accessories needed to clinch her beauty – includes a charming pair of pointy-soled toe-thong sandalia for summer weather (fig. 14.3). This large mosaic panel – the figures are a little less than life-size – was made for the vestibulum or apodyterium of the private bath-building of the villa; it was symmetrically paired with an image of the dominus and two servants (or a servant and a big male guest with blond ringlets) off to the hunt, so the female-beauty/male-hunting in the autumn months may have been the iconographical point of the representation.30 The image of the domina at Sidi Ghrib is interesting for many reasons, not all of them broached here. The lady is the largest figure, shown seated in the centre on a silver or ivory collapsible chair equipped with a cushion. Her multicoloured sleeveless tunic has multicoloured embroidered clavi in several rows to show the seasonally appropriate thickness of the cloth; it is either embroidered with gems at the neck, or else there is a pearled necklace over it. She wears a turban-like headdress panelled with pearls and coloured
278 Guy P.R. Métraux sections, and the lady is shown in the action of adjusting either her hair or her right earring with her right hand, her left hand perhaps holding another gem or a pin between index and thumb. This gesture of cura would have been recognized as an element of the ornatus of female beauty. For the cultus of her toilette, she wears one gold bangle on her right wrist; on her left, there are no less than five on her wrist, and another high up, above the biceps, in an allusion to Venus’ bangle.31 To the left of the domina, a female in a long tunic and narrow, scarf-like piece of embroidered cloth worn draped over the elbows opens a round jewel box to reveal its contents; to the right, a similarly dressed female holds up a pearl-edged mirror that reflects the lady’s image. The scarves worn as accessories to the tunics may be head-coverings removed for the intimacy of the female interior scene, and as such they may identify the attendants as having a status above that of servility, that of women whose modesty required head-coverings outdoors. The attendants might thus be identified as relatives of the domina (and thus of a relatively high class and so enhancing her status) rather than as mere slaves. Also to the right, there is a big silver situla with a handle, part of the inventory of her cultus that is disposed in a catalogue of images at the far right and left sides of the panel. On the far left, from top to bottom: the pair of pointy-toed sandalia mentioned above, perhaps with square gems on the thongs, then a rectangular flange-sided receptacle containing a hank of rumpled cloth, then a silvery basin in the form of a scalloped shell, emblem of Venus. On the right, also from top to bottom, a silver ewer, a hat, and an octagonal or hexagonal jewel box or flask casket wrapped in a delicate silver net. Some parts of this panoply – the silver basin and ewer – distinctly recall items in the contemporaneous Sevso Treasure which comprised two silver situlae with a matching ewer, two matching ewers that went with a basin, and a casket for carrying perfume flasks.32 Thus for the domina at Sidi Ghrib, ornatus and cultus were complete, locked into allusion to Venus in a scene that deployed images of contemporary luxury and not-so-discreet divine reference. It must also be said that the panoply or inventory of items betray a showy desire to display as well as a certain anxiety for completeness and cataloguing of accessories and dress, an anxiety that we will see later on in the instance of males’ togae.33 A final, troubling, instance of the Venus-domina affiliation comes from Carthage, in a mosaic floor of the ‘Maison de la Cachette,’ a floor datable to the fifth century ad (fig. 14.4).34 It is troubling because, although the mosaic shows a villa with porticoes, turrets, and possibly a domed basilica or bathbuilding in the centre, the building is set on an island in the midst of a marine display with fish, decently clothed (tunics or loincloths) erotes fishing, in a representation of an island villa that is unique. In addition, the
279 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing scene fits uncomfortably with others that show country houses, mainly because it blends a secular image (the villa) with prominent tondi of winds, probably seasonal breezes, at the corners. The winds and the marine setting seem incongruous with the villa, but the villa might well incorporate – again uncomfortably – images of the domina and dominus. Below the architectural representation of the villa, tritons frame a long-haired Venus, coiffed with a gemmed scoop-diadem, seated astride a silver shell, nude, with a ribbon in her right hand and holding a mirror with her reflection in her left. The rest of the mosaic is destroyed, but its symmetries suggest that, above the villa, there may have been a male god to correspond with the Venus below. On the model of the Julius mosaic, both the male and female owners of the property should be present. Is it possible that, in the context of the villa motif, the domina and dominus were represented as goddess and god respectively? In this case, the owners were presented without allusion but explicitly, even daringly, as gods. The mosaic of the ‘Maison de la Cachette’ may be an exception, but an interesting one. Clothed ladies with Venus-like allusions were all very well, but a nude domina at her villa explicitly shown as Venus is an extension of the iconography in the fifth century that remains to be investigated. The other instance from Carthage – the Julius mosaic – and the domina from Sidi Ghrib replaced old-fashioned nudity with modern decency. Decency: Traditional Nudity and Modern Tunics Substituting accessories for nudity to emphasize the Venus-like beauty and desirability of women was indirect prudery. Actual prudery – the replacement of traditional nudity with clothes – was also an impulse in late antique representation. An example of such departure from tradition for females, combined with adherence to tradition for males, can be seen in a late-third-century tomb from Henchir (ancient Thina or Thaenae in Africa Proconsularis) in which the deceased were represented in mosaic (fig. 14.5).35 Numitoria Saturnina had her husband C. Iulius Serenus (41 years, 3 months, 8 days) and herself (48 years) depicted in floor mosaics over their inhumations. The couple were shown recumbent on feasting beds with a panoply of birds, roses, and nude male erotes, but the music-making female psychai with butterfly wings who formed part of their retinue were decently clothed in long grey tunics, a departure from the conventional representation of psychai shown nude or partially clothed. The tunics cover their legs and almost all their arms. Such prudery may have been prompted by some personal predilection, but the departure from the conventional representation of psychai required both some thought and will
280 Guy P.R. Métraux on the patroness’ part and some adaptation by the mosaicist. Numitoria Saturnina had up-to-date requirements about representation that, in effect, modernized the little females on her and her husband’s tombs with long tunics. Such prudery in visual terms was not limited to Numitoria Saturnina, nor was it only what a pagan woman might have thought appropriate for the tomb images she was commissioning, nor did it apply only to psychai. Throughout Roman art, erotes were customarily shown nude, even in the later fourth century and into the fifth when the decencies of a wide-spread Christianization of the upper classes might have prompted the application of some coverings.36 But eventually even erotes succumbed to the new style. At Carthage, the central lobe of a triconch dining room added to a large house, the ‘Maison du Triconque,’ was decorated with an impressively large and detailed mosaic in the early fifth century (fig. 14.6).37 The mosaic shows a rotunda of yellow Corinthian columns supporting a dome, coffered and studded with gold rosettes on the inside; roofed porticoes of white and yellow Corinthian columns project on either side. On the outside of the structure, there is a vine with bunches of grapes, while on the inside of the rotunda, cascades of roses fill the space. Four erotes in dancing positions are shown, adding a long garland of braided yellow and red ribbons to the strands of pearls already swagged between the columns of the central structure. This extremely animated scene, which with the grapes and roses may represent an honouring of Dionysos and Venus, nonetheless has a touch of prudery. Like the psychai of Numitoria Saturnina, the erotes are modernized with tunics sleeved to the wrist, and the tunics are short enough to show their legs in vigorous dancing poses but long enough to cover their genitals. Female Nudity: Reviled and Revived The issue of nudity and public prudery – and how these developed both asymmetrically and in tandem in late antiquity – can be illustrated by two final examples, one an account of an event at Carthage in the year 434, the other a bowl depicting a partially nude female martyr made sometime in the late fourth or early fifth century. Carthage, like most other cities of the Roman empire, was peopled with statues: Tertullian says that they could be seen where, by rights, they could be expected to be set up – namely in temples, theatres, and circuses – but also in less legitimate places – streets, the forum, the baths, bars, and private houses (De spect. 8). Some of these statues may have been nude, and while he did not object to their nudity as such, his inveighing against them indicates as much the fatigue of a cultured citydweller at the coarsening of public space with ever-multiplying images as it
281 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing does his principles as a Christian. Tertullian did not advocate the destruction of statues, but two centuries later, opinion had hardened against images of all kinds, and against nude images especially. Late in the year of 433, a nun (ancilla Dei) was bathing in a bath-building of sufficient size and pretension to be decorated with statues: this was probably the public thermae of Carthage, the Baths of Antoninus Pius, begun under Hadrian but finished decoratively in the 160s. In the course of her ablutions, the nun saw a statue of an erotic Venus that was part – a perfectly normal part – of the decorative panoply of public baths.38 As a joke (playing at ‘statues’ is still a convivial game), the nun imitated the statue’s erotic posture, and thus made herself vulnerable to the demon which lived inside.39 The demon lodged in her throat for eighty-five days, preventing her from eating. A complicated series of events then ensued, culminating in a kind of exorcism by application of the consecrated chalice of wine to her throat on Easter Sunday of the next year, by which the demon was finally expelled through the agency of the bishop. A deacon who was in attendance suggested that the statue of the Venus impudica be brought from its original location in the Baths and destroyed, which was done. These events – incidents in a long miracle story recounted by Quodvultdeus, who was an eyewitness and later bishop of Carthage before his exile by the new Vandal occupiers in 439 – is mainly about demons and the miraculous effect of the consecrated wine, but it is also about the hostile attitude towards the normal nudity of divinities in statues. What was and had been commonplace had now become demonic impudicitia, in a process of ‘negative’ desecularization by which the norms of antiquity became the impious environments of late antiquity. For a statue in the thermae – a piece of public property and decoration in an urban amenity – to be removed from its location and destroyed in the presence of the municipal bishop was as much an attack on the old norms of nudity as on the demonic presence in the idol. The statue’s erotic nudity made it additionally vulnerable and appropriate to destroy. At the same time, but in a distinctly different example, nudity maintained its heroic, even divine connotation, in a context refreshed with Christian meaning. As we have seen, in the early third century, Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s nudity had offended popular opinion – even popular opinion in an urbane, pagan audience. By contrast, in the late fourth or early fifth centuries, a ‘special order’ bowl was made that depicted an almost-nude female Christian martyr presented to lions (fig. 14.7). The bowl is, as far as I am aware, unique, even though it is one of innumerable plain and decorated products called African red slip ware (Hayes Form 53A) made all over the southern and eastern Mediterranean.40 However, this one received an unusual decoration in its interior.41 In an ansate tabula, the words Domina
282 Guy P.R. Métraux Victoria are written in fine serifated capitals to resemble a monumental inscription. The words may possibly refer to Victoria, a North African martyr of 304, or else they mean ‘My Lady, yours is the victory.’42 To the left of the tabula stands a female in the orant pose, her hair unbound and streaming over her shoulders; she is nude from the waist up but wears, low on her hips, the subligaculum of a gladiator, signifying the combat that she is about to undertake.43 The combat is to be with lions: a lion is depicted on the opposite side of the bowl from the martyr, and a lioness may have faced her as well. The lion and lioness together may indicate that the woman represented is Thecla, the saint of Asia who was a friend of Saint Paul’s in the Acts of Paul and Thecla and whose fame had spread throughout the Christianized empire. Whatever the identity of the martyr, her nudity clinched her status as both gladiatorial combatant and Christian victim, at a time when gladiatorial combats had both ceased and ceased to be represented, but when the memory and images of the martyrs had come to be prominent.44 Nudity in this case sacralized, for a Christian audience of the late fourth or early fifth century, what had been offensive to the pagan audience in the Carthage amphitheatre in the early years of the third century; it is, of course, an exception that proves the rule. Male Togas: Meaning and Draping Compared with female clothing and accessories, the male toga had a narrower range of visual expressiveness but could be draped to convey different messages and meanings. The history of men’s dress in late antiquity can be seen (as is often claimed for male costume in general) as a series of small, conservative changes developing over time, resulting in uniformity (and ultimately uniforms) for men that, paradoxically, individuate men as well as differentiating them and their costume from females and feminine apparel.45 At the same time, subtle differences may constitute male stylishness, on the idea that, as for women, fashion is as much about how and when clothes are worn as what the costumes might be. The history of these minute distinctions in male togates in late antiquity has been carefully outlined,46 most succinctly by Shelley Stone whose account outlines the linear development of the toga from its short form in the late Republic to its more voluminous manifestations in late antiquity, with the strategies of folding and pressing that, in effect, made the garment both more stable to wear and more complicated to prepare and get into.47 Stone’s account of the late developments of the upper parts of the toga – the rollings, foldings, and pressings that resulted respectively in the balteus (so-called, a tight roll of cloth across the chest), the umbo (folding to add weight of cloth on the left
283 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing shoulder to secure the rest of the garment), and finally the banded toga (pressed with flat-rolled or zig-zag pleats to form a tight sash over the shoulder) – may all, I would suggest, have been devices for extending and lengthening the lower part of the garment: the sinus (the draped area on the right side which both covered and defined the right thigh, knee, and even shin).48 Ultimately the sinus grew so fashionably long that it had either to be lifted elegantly in the right hand or else be pulled across the body and pouched over the left forearm. In general, the resulting male chic was a pronounced right thigh and knee revealed under the cloth, handsomely framed by the u-shaped draping of the sinus in examples in free-standing statues and reliefs of the later second and third century. This is one of the few moments in which the toga came to have a sexualized character in revealing men’s bodies. Still, these changes were, as Stone points out, slow and very conservative. At the same time, toga-wearers themselves and the artists who represented them were aware of the different meanings of draping: there are numerous examples (cited with admirable pertinacity by Stone in her developmental account) of togas draped in old-fashioned ways – Trajan on the Arch at Beneventum, for example – with the intention of affiliating a current emperor with the sartorial past in order to point up his political legitimacy. In general, the attendants of emperors wore togae draped in a more current way, perhaps signifying their vulgar preoccupation with merely contemporary and inferior fashion as opposed to ‘good old-fashioned’ values in clothing maintained by their superior, the emperor. These two alternatives in the draping of the toga – its slow development and occasionally its retrospective draping to convey a certain iconography – are the norms for the history of the garment throughout Roman representation. However, there is a third aspect, more personal and immediate, directly related to private representation and personal self-image like those of the dominae cited above. The toga – its character and draping – can support biography and self-pride. Like ‘playing Venus’ for women, ‘playing the togatus’ may well have been a matter of importance for men, with the draping of the garment and its manner of wearing and framing gestures calculated to niceties of context and meaning. Of course, the toga had always served to enforce distinctions of status, age, moments in gender history (in the case of girls dressed in the toga praetexta exchanging it for the bride’s costume), identity as a Roman, as many of the earlier chapters in this volume illustrate; but these merely social functions of the toga were evidently too impersonal for the commissioner of a large, high quality sarcophagus, the ‘Brother Sarcophagus’ now in Naples, made in the mid-third century (fig. 14.8).49 The sarcophagus is unusual in that it represents the same man
284 Guy P.R. Métraux in different moments of both his cursus honorum and his cursus vitae, draped differently each time.50 The commissioner of the sarcophagus was the impresario of his own costume and, in an exercise of exquisite good taste, sought to illustrate his life, honours, and even, I would suggest, his taste in philosophy and intellection – almost all conveyed in details of draping and costume. The man in the ‘Brother sarcophagus’ is presented as an elegantly slim figure with a long face and head, a short curly beard, rounded but stippled crown hair, and short locks crimped over his forehead and temples in a ‘diadem’ configuration in the manner of Nero and Domitian. This coiffure must have been intentional because the other male figures have either curly drilled, or drilled u-shaped, locks in a manner that makes them more standardized as opposed to the man’s individuation; the difference in sculptural technique (for example, his soft hair) identifies him as the protagonist as opposed to the chorus of (hard-haired) supernumeraries. The man is presented four times, twice as the togate actor in events of his own life, and once (in the centre) in two different aspects of his own mentality or mental drama. On the right side, our man is getting married. He is accompanied by a cornucopia-bearing figure of a handsome young man with a neck-torque: this is Hymenaeus, the announcer and celebrator of the wedding. To the man’s right, his bride advances, heavily and unrevealingly draped in tunica recta and stola, and behind her a woman in a belted tunic wearing a scoop-diadem in her hair – the pronuba or matron of honour, or perhaps a diademmed Venus herself – raises her arms to adjust either the flammeum (the scarf-like hair-covering) or the vittae (ribbons) appropriate to the bride. The pronuba is assisted by an eros in the background, and the bride, modestly lowering her head, turns towards her husband, lifting her veil to reveal her face to him while advancing her right hand towards his. This is an exciting scene, and our man acts in it with both his body and his toga. Like his bride, the groom advances his right hand for the joining of hands (dextrarum iunctio). He aggressively thrusts his right hip towards her while turning his left leg, and the toga responds, the sinus framing both legs and dividing them. At the upper body, the loosely rolled umbo departs low from the hip, and it is pulled out into a flap that marks the man’s groin and gives enough cloth to the garment for the man to veil himself. The toga and the way in which it is worn in this scene are designed for maximum revealing of the body twisting underneath the cloth. By contrast, the toga and body in the scene on the left side of the sarcophagus are shown with the utmost formality. Our man is, in HimmelmannWildschütz’s interpretation, being inducted as a consul (the processus consularis), accompanied by four togate figures who turn deferentially towards
285 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing him.51 Here, the body is held back, in such a way as to emphasize the formality of the toga’s draping; the garment is folded into a rigid pressed band departing from the right hip and riding high over the left shoulder and reappearing over the right shoulder. The sinus is short and inexpressive, framing a barely visible right thigh and knee, and the right arm and hand are drawn into the body and upward in a closed, hieratic gesture that is intended to contrast vividly with the open gesture in the marriage scene on the other side. The two scenes – marriage and induction as consul – frame the two portraits of the man in the centre of the sarcophagus. He appears, as it were, in opposition to himself, or, rather, in his own two aspects: Greek philosopher and Roman man of public action. To the left, the man appears dressed in a pallium, his left shoulder and arm covered, his right elbow covered in a sling of cloth with the right forearm and hand protruding from it. The garment opens to reveal the nude torso in a manner that refers specifically to the traditional costume of philosophers. The man as ‘philosopher’ holds a scroll in his left hand and points to himself with his right hand; his counterpart, himself in another aspect, is dressed in a tunic and heavily draped toga with a triangular umbo that gives it majesty and formality. The togate man extends his hand downward, palm open and index finger splayed to show us his alter ego, himself as philosopher. The contrast between pallium and toga, together with the same man represented as himself twice and the indexical gesturing of the one to the other, give an impression of ‘dressing up’ and ‘dressing as’ undertaken with serious calculation on the part of the commissioner, a matter of careful instruction and planning for the artist who made the sarcophagus. No clearer contrast between the active life and the contemplative mode – between negotium and otium, Roman engagement and philosophical diffidence – could be imagined, and the effect is intensified by the balanced opposites of the private life of marriage on the right and the public life of office and honours on the left.52 The effect is carried by misesen-scène (marriage, induction to office), gestures (dextrarum iunctio, pointing), and, of course, the portrait of the man repeated four times, but it is the three different drapings and wearings of the toga, and the contrast between it and the pallium, that carry the meaning.53 In conveying his biography and self-image with his clothes for his funerary monument, the man who commissioned this sarcophagus was as finicky as Perpetua had been in negotiating for a pin to secure her hair, that she not appear to be in mourning. An Innaccurate, but Meaningful, Toga Accuracy in conveying meaning was a concern for both the female saint and the male aristocrat depicted on the ‘Brother Sarcophagus.’ Both were alert to
286 Guy P.R. Métraux the meaning of clothes, anxiously accurate in dress, accessories, and drapery. However, in the visual arts accuracy was not always an important or even a necessary virtue: clothes convey meaning, and meaning can trump fussy concerns about historical status or verisimilitude. An instance in which historical accuracy about apparel and status was sacrificed in favour of modern glamour and meaning can be found in a mosaic from a house at Hadrumetum (Sousse) in Africa Byzacena, dated to the later second or early third century (fig. 14.9).54 This is the famous representation of Vergil, seated with a scroll on his knee unfurled to Aeneid 1.8 (Musa mihi causas memora quo numine laeso quidve ...: ‘Muse, remind me the causes, tell me what offence to her numen ...’). The poet is flanked by muses – Calliope or Clio with a scroll, certainly Melpomene with a tragic mask – in a representation that accords very well with the fashion for high literacy and poetic sensitivity that came to be part of domestic decoration in late antiquity.55 In this mosaic, Vergil’s toga has a thick folded umbo over the left shoulder and is worn over a tunic with clavi. The toga’s long sinus, draped tightly over the right knee, seems to have been thrown over the left forearm, but an extra piece of cloth descends from the left shoulder to slide under the scroll and between the figure’s legs. Accuracy of the toga’s draping seems to have been less important than what the garment shows on its lower edge, on the edge of the sinus, and on the edge of the extra drapery: a broad red-brown stripe. This identifies the toga as a toga praetexta, the mark, for Roman men, of magisterial status either at the level of the Roman state or of the local municipality. Vergil had not been a local magistrate, still less a magistrate of the Roman state, so he is ‘dressed up’ and ‘dressed as,’ much like the man in the ‘Brother sarcophagus.’ The transfer, for a late antique viewer, might have seemed natural: the distinction of the poet made the inappropriately banded toga a natural extension of his fame, while the banded toga itself conferred a social distinction which the poet had acquired in terms of his posthumous reputation only, not in the actual facts of his biography. In the balance of poetry and costume in late antiquity, meaning – that is to say contemporary meaning and feeling for the past – trumped any niggling devotion to historical accuracy. Vergil’s chic – in this instance at least – is as much a function of what should have been as what actually was the case. Conclusion These instances of change in late-antique representation of dress and accessories are both highly individuated and, as is often the case with specific examples, part of a larger trend. It is certainly the case that Perpetua, Numitoria Saturnina of Thina, the African matrons dressing up as Venus, and the
287 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing man in the ‘Brother Sarcophagus’ were not merely conscious of their costume: they were concerned with its meaning. In some cases, the women invested in ‘decent’ garments both for themselves and for erotes without sacrificing either personal beauty or their attendants’ gaiety, and the examples of male togate figures seem to indicate that both wearing the toga and how it was worn were significant. Both the prudish avoidance of nudity and the specificity of the toga’s draping seem to be part of a process, one in which what was once merely normal – nudity – and what was once merely traditional – the toga – come to be replaced with new standards of representation, new ways of covering up or wearing clothes. The process – whether we call it ‘desecularisation’ in Markus’ phrase or some other term – is very distinct in the third century and later: clothes come to be invested with both an actual and a literary meaning that carries them into cultural metaphor and beyond, into a kind of holiness. The holy significance of clothing continued in later centuries. In 404, when Synesius of Cyrene, by then bishop of the Ptolemais towns, wrote his autobiography Dion, he sent a copy of it to Hypatia, his teacher in Alexandria, with a letter seeking her approval (Ep. 154). In this letter, he contrasted his teacher’s dazzling white wool cape – the tribon which, as a philosopher and teacher, she had the right to wear – with the dark dirty cowl of the monks, whom he detested for their ignorance and superstition.56 The contrast between the philosopher’s immaculate tribon and the monks’ maculate cowl is vividly visual and invested, as Synesius also invested Hypatia’s hands as he imagined her gestures in opening his letter, with the quality of holiness: theia.
Notes I wish to thank Jonathan Edmondson for his close reading of the text of my contribution and his suggestions, as well as Alison Keith and him for their inspired organization of the Roman dress symposium in October 2004. Eve D’Ambra and Michael Koortbojian also deserve my thanks; all mistakes remain mine. Juliana Zalucky and Amy Zurrer provided welcome help. In this chapter, Passio refers to the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. 1 For the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, see Bastiaensen 1987: 107–47, 412–52; Musurillo 1972: 106–30, including discussion of the redactions; Barnes 1971: 70–80; discussion in Robeck 1992: 11–69 and Robert 1982: 228–76; on its date: see Barnes 1968: 523–5. 2 Coleman 1990; see also Shaw 1993; Potter 1993 and 1996: 129. The Latin text refers to the animal as a vacca (cow), whereas the Greek text specifies the animal as h4 da&malij (heifer, Lat. iuvenca). The difference has been discussed by Robert
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3 4
5 6 7
8
9
(1982: 246–54) and earlier in Friedländer and Wissowa 1922: 87–9. This is not the place to discuss the relative priority and authenticity of the Greek or Latin texts of the Passio, on which see Robert 1982, but I note that, in the iconography of the execution, the pairing of the martyrs as mothers who had recently given birth and a cow who had already given birth might well have seemed more appropriate than the pairing of mothers and a heifer which had not yet had a calf. On negotiations in amphitheatrical spectacles, see Wiedemann 1992: 165–80; Edmondson 1996: 98–111; Potter 1996. Another reason why the spectators objected to the nudity may have been that it indicated that the female martyrs were being subjected to another, quite different, punishment: public exposure in a brothel, the condemnation ad stuprum involving stripping of clothes and loosening of hair for exhibition to male clients. The damnatio ad stuprum was, of course, quite different from the decent pomps and official circumstances of the amphitheatre and the dignities and pleasures of public executions ad bestias, and thus beneath the dignity both of the victims and the spectators. The martyr account of Saint Agnes, who was exhibited naked to the public at Rome and was miraculously clothed in a sudden growth of long hair, became popular in Italy and elsewhere in the fourth century; it is an instance of the punishment of public humiliation by exhibition as a prostitute that would not have taken place in the context of games. See Prudent. Perist. 14. For damnatio ad stuprum, see Crescenti 1966; for St Agnes: Grig 2004: 79–85. Leglay 1966: 359–71. Tertullian remarks on the special costume of the priests of Saturn at Carthage: De pallio 4. On this treatise, see further Brennan, chap. 13, in this volume. It is not clear, from the Latin text of the Passio, whether the person who decided what was going to be produced at the execution was also the munerarius (the person who supplied the funds for games and other spectacles such as venationes and gladiatorial displays) or his agent/herald (praeco), or some other official. The writers of the martyr story in both the Latin and Greek versions unhelpfully designate the devil (diabolus/o9 dia/ boloj: Passio 20.1) as the instigator of the events and the decision-maker, so I have referred to this person as the ‘impresario.’ The audience strained at the gnat of nudity but swallowed the camel of cruelty: the objection was to the indecent nudity, not the execution or its techniques as such. In the redaction of the text, it is claimed that the audience was upset over the execution and so objected to the nudity of the women, but this interpretation seems strained as the audience did not react to the later cruel events in the same way, certainly not on the side of the martyrs: see Potter 1996: 152. For disordered hair as a sign of mourning in women, see Herzog-Hauser 1937: col. 2231.
289 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing 10 Much more important, of course, are the visions that Perpetua experienced in the course of her martyrdom. Numerous interpretive accounts of them have occupied scholars in many different ways: Robert 1982; see also von Franz 1980. 11 Markus 1990: 16, 226. 12 Barnes 1971: 77; Heine 1989: 60–1. 13 Passio 10.11–14; Robert 1982; Robeck 1992: 65–9. 14 SHA Macrianus 12. 15 The most complete discussion is in Wrede 1981: 71–2, 82–3, 89–90, 123–61, 164; see also Kleiner 1992: 196–9, figs. 164–6. 16 For statues and double portraits in the ‘Pasiteles’ formula, see Simon 1987. For ‘nudity as costume’: Bonfante 1989. Since Bonfante’s article, it is clear that the history of nudity in antiquity has yet to be written, but Hallett 2005 is a significant start. See also the masterful discussion of private, funerary, imperial, and public nudity in Koortbojian, chap. 3, in this volume. 17 D’Ambra 1996. 18 On Venus Verticordia, see Schilling 1954: 226–33, 389–95. A later festival was called the Veneralia: Macrob. Sat. 1.12.15; Lydus Mens. 4.65. 19 Mazzoleni, Pappalardo, and Romano 2004: 31, 106, and fig. on p. 122. Mazzoleni interprets the presentation by an Eros of a mirror to the bride as a scene in which the bride’s future is being told. For mirrors (and other items of female adornment) on women’s funerary monuments, see Shumka, chap. 8, in this volume. 20 Duval 1986. 21 Tert. De cultu fem. 1.9.3. 22 The tradition of Venus/Aphrodite and her accessories is a long one: LIMC II,1, s.v. Aphrodite. The goddess could appear as a mirror-stand herself (in chiton or chiton-and-himation: LIMC II,1, nos. 87–97 and II,2, 15–16; in peplos: LIMC II,1, nos. 111–121 and II,2, 17–18; nude: LIMC II,1, nos. 370–377 and II,2, 35). In statues and statuettes in marble and terracotta as well as on Apulian red-figure ware, the goddess was shown holding a mirror and often arranging her hair: LIMC II,1, no. 8 and II,2, 6; LIMC II,1, nos. 494–496 and II,2, 48. Offerings of ribbons, crowns, and flowers were part of the goddess’s epiphanies and could be offered by erotes or by Eros himself: LIMC II,1, nos. 1189–1236 and II,2, 120– 126. The goddess also appeared wearing or being offered a crown in the form of an angular jewelled tiara or a curved scoop-diadem: from the theatre at Carthage, a marble statue of a nude Venus (now in the Musée du Bardo) wears a tiara with big globular decorations or jewels: LIMC II,1, no. 757 and II,2, 75. See also Wyke 1994. 23 Tert. De cultu fem. 1.4.1–2. Of the two, ornatus of the hair was morally the more dangerous according to Ov. Ars am. 3.129–135. 24 CMT 1.2: Utique, 51–58, no. 205 (with earlier bibliography), plan 14, pls. XXXIII–XXXV and L; Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1995: 149–52, figs. 80 and 115.
290 Guy P.R. Métraux 25 CMT 2.4: Thuburbo Majus, 101–102, no. 418 (with earlier bibliography), pls. LV and LXXX. 26 For illustrations and discussion, see Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1995: 148–9, figs. 105, 108–9. 27 Merlin 1921; Dunbabin 1978: 119–21; Duval 1986; Raeck 1987: pls. 138–9; Parrish 1984: 111–13, no. 9 and pls. 15–16; Dunbabin 1999: 118–19, fig. 122. 28 By contrast, her husband on the other side reaches for a scroll proffered by a servant, who also bears a xenia of a brace of game birds, while behind him another servant brings fruit in a basket and a rabbit. The contrast is between Venus-like luxury and beauty in the female sphere and, in the male sphere, business (the scroll), hunting (the perquisite of proprietorship), and utility (the fruits). In this scene, the roses may represent springtime, while in other parts of the mosaic, the departure of the dominus for a hunt on horseback accompanied by hunting dogs and a servant with a net may represent autumn, the season for hunting bigger game. The upper register showing the domina fanning herself may represent summer, and on either side, the scenes of reaping olives and a seated servant (sitting by a fire? – the mosaic is damaged), winter. Apuleius (Met. 10.31–32) associated Venus with all four seasons, especially spring, the Graces, and comfortable light clothing. 29 Goldman 1994a: 116–22, fig. 6.25. Calcei could be worn with socks, but the Sidi Ghrib domina shows no toes even though the toe area of the feet is apparent, and the calcei have a light, invisible sole, so she may have been wearing socks for the cool weather her husband was preparing to go out in. 30 See Ennabli 1986; for the domina, ibid., 42–4; for the dominus, ibid., 44–6 and pl. XIV for both; for the date, ibid., 55–6 (L. Neuru). For the interpretation that the dominus is himself on his way to bathing (with a guest?) and the servant is carrying kindling rather than limed sticks to capture birds, see Dunbabin 1999: 322n24. 31 Representations of the goddess often include bracelets, but the bracelet high on the left arm appears to have been an invention of Praxiteles for his Aphrodite of Knidos in the fourth century bc, and the fame of that statue and its numerous copies and versions (for example, the Capitoline and Medici Venuses) made the upper-arm bangle her distinctive sign: LIMC II,1, no. 391 (Vatican, ‘Venus Colonna,’ marble); no. 396 (Delos, marble); no. 399 (Munich Glypothek, ‘Aphrodite Braschi,’ marble); no. 414 (Boston MFA, bronze statuette) and II,2, 49–53. One version wears upper-arm bangles on both arms: LIMC II,1, no. 393 (Rome, Mus. Naz. Romano, marble). The bride on the Villa of the Mysteries frieze also wears such a bangle on her left upper arm: see above, n19. 32 Mango and Bennett 1994: 13. Of the fourteen silver, silver-gilt, or nielloed-silver items in the Sevso Treasure, seven were associated with washing and the bath – a set of two ewers with geometric decoration and a basin, a set of two situlae and a
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33
34 35 36 37 38 39
ewer depicting the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, and a flask casket. The flask casket (445–473, cat. no. 14, figs. 14–1-4) shows, in relief, a seated domina surrounded by servants carrying some of the components – a receptacle with cloth, basin, mirror, ewer, situla and casket – that are also shown in the panoply of the Sidi Ghrib mosaic. This careful visual catalogue in the Sidi Ghrib representation of the domina is a reminder that such visual representations of goods in the property of females – the mundus muliebris – could also be represented on their tombs, surrounding their funerary inscriptions: see Shumka, chap. 8, in this volume, with examples. In addition, the subject of the legal opinions gathered in the Dig. 34.2 is exclusively the inheritable status of jewellery; equipment in precious metals of the toilette; gold and silver plate of all kinds, including drinking vessels and furniture coverings or decorations; statuettes, clothes, shoes, leg bindings, perfumes, and the testamentary provision for posthumously requested statues. Many of the objects at Sidi Ghrib and in the Sevso Treasure would have been itemized as subject to rules about wills, the legal interpretation of the testators’ intentions, and the legal disposition of the goods as inheritable property. CMT 4: Carthage, 151–155, cat. no. 175 (with earlier bibliography), plan 19, pls. LXVIII–XXIX and XC. Gauckler 1910: 15–16, cat. no. 27; Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1995: 80–1, fig. 50. For erotes and their history, see Stuveras 1969. CMT 4: Carthage, 72–74, cat. no. 101 (with earlier bibliography), plan 8 and 9, pls. XXXV–XXXVII, LXXIX–LXXX. Quodvultdeus Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei 4, Dimidium temporis 6.9–10; for text and commentary, see Braun 1964: 2.605–11. Quodvultdeus Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei 4, Dimidium temporis 6.9: ... cum in balneo lavans simulacrum quoddam Veneris impudicae respiceret et se ipsam, eique se consimilans, ut domicilium se diabolo praebuit; ‘... as she was washing in the bath, she saw a statue of an erotic Venus and imitated her pose, so the devil found a home in her.’ The nun herself would not have been nude but probably have been wearing a tunic or a wrap. Statues of Venus were commonly partially clothed with drapery, the better to emphasize the voyeuristic mechanisms of the nude body’s erotic potential. By this time, demons and statues had been closely coupled. The dwelling of demons around statues, perhaps even in them, is attested in both pagan and Christian writers by the late second century. In his Contra Celsum (8.24–28) Origen cites with some satisfaction Celsus’ reference to previous (pagan) philosophers’ opinions that demons like the smell of sacrifices and so can be found near statues of divinities. Athenagoras of Athens, writing around the same time (i.e., in the 170s), confirms this view from a Christian perspective (Leg. pro Christ. 26–27). Later, Tertullian (Apol. 22.6) and Minucius Felix (Oct. 27) are of substantially the same opinion.
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40 41
42
43 44
45
46
Quodvultdeus seems to repeat these ideas – but in this case, about a decorative statue in a bath-building to which no sacrifices may have been made – when he describes the sequence of events by which the demon found a new domicilium in the nun’s throat. Hayes 1972: 78–82. The bowl is in a private collection. Herrmann and van den Hoek 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003: cat. no. 49. Such objects were mass-produced and were intended for normal use in domestic environments. However, from time to time individuals must have wished for something done to their ‘special order’ that departed, in their decoration, from the normal production runs, and evidently the potters were willing to oblige. The most numerous examples of such ‘special order’ ceramics are vases with Mithraic iconographies and inscriptions that may have been used in religious ceremonies: Wightman 1971: 238; for the ‘Mainz cup,’ an example of Wetterau ware (Rupp 1987), see Horn 1994; Merkelbach 1995; Beck 2000; for further discussion of ‘special order’ ceramics, see Métraux 2006: 139–140. The title of domina for a female martyr may have been legitimated on the basis of the use of dominus to honour male martyrs: Marculus and other martyrs were called domini; for references, see Grig 2004: 54, 175n91. For detailed discussion about gladiatorial costume, including the subligaculum, see further Carter, chap. 5, in this volume. Besides her nudity, the saint on this bowl recalls the gladiatorial aspect of martyrs, both male and female. The martyr as gladiator is a very prominent theme in the Passio of Perpetua and Felicitas; Perpetua has visions of herself as both a combatant and a victor. By the time the bowl was made (in the late fourth to early fifth century), gladiator imagery was a dim visual memory, but perhaps it had become glamorous and iconographically useful for the representation of martyrs as transmitted by the texts of their passiones. This coordination of visual image and the texts of the martyr stories is one of the important themes of Grig’s analysis (2004) of the new culture of the passiones at the same time. Martyrs, of course, were not gladiators when undergoing execution: gladiatorial status was appropriated by the martyrs and writers of martyr stories as part of a claim to higher status than the status that criminals would actually have had. In modern times, it is a paradox that conservative male dress gives men greater individuality than women, while, conversely, the greater variety of female dress and accessories tends to blend women into types; see further Hollander 1994. I am not aware of any study that applies something of the same analysis to Roman female dress, which was often standardized, at least in visual representation, in much the same way as Roman male dress. For female dress, see Olson, chap. 6, Fantham, chap. 7, and Keith, chap. 9, in this volume. Most completely in Goette 1990, though the lively accounts in Wilson 1924 and 1938a are still valid.
293 Prudery and Chic in Late Antique Clothing 47 Stone 1994, 13–45. See also Edmondson, chap. 1, and Koortbojian, chap. 3, in this volume. 48 The development might be compared to the gradual exaggeration of American football uniforms since the 1970s: extra protective gear for the upper body has vastly extended the shoulders and chest in contrast to increasingly explicit definition of the lower body with skin-tight pants. 49 For the sarcophagus, see Himmelmann-Wildschütz 1962; Andreae 1969: 7–13; Panella 1970: 697–8, figs. 702–703; Andreae 1978: 304, fig. 142; Koch and Sichtermann 1982: 102–3, fig. 101. For technical aspects of the togas worn by the figure on the sarcophagus, see Goette 1990: 86–87, pls. 73.4 and 74.2; Stone 1994: 25, fig. 1.16. 50 For free-standing statues of the same man dressed in different ways, see further Koortbojian, chap. 3, in this volume, and fig. 3.3, 3.4, 3.5; for different busts, ibid. and fig. 3.6 and 3.7. 51 Himmelmann-Wildschütz 1962, citing other instances of the processus consularis, as do Koch and Sichtermann 1982: 97–106. 52 It need hardly be said that this contrast – between the pallium and ‘other’ clothes (either civilian or priestly) – is precisely the subject of Tertullian’s De pallio written several years before, and while he frames part of his discussion as a Christian vs pagan opposition, there is no reason at all to imagine that the discussion about clothes (and by implication about which life is the better) could not have been valid in an educated pagan elite as well. Tertullian was a sophisticate and might well have picked up standard topics of literate discussion from his social equals and contemporaries. For an insightful analysis of this, see Brennan, chap. 13, in this volume; for male dress in North Africa, see also Bradley, chap. 12, in this volume. 53 Compare the three late-antique portrait-statues of the same man in three different ‘costumes’ (one togate, two in different styles of nudity), which must have formed a commemorative group illustrating the different honorific (togate), exemplary lifestyle (otium/hunting), and ideological (heroic/nude) aspects of the individual: see Koortbojian, chap. 3 and esp. figs. 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5 in this volume. 54 Foucher 1960: 49–50, cat. no. 57.104, pl. XXV; Dunbabin 1978: 131, 242, pl. 130 and 1999: 115–16; Blanchard-Lemée et al. 1995: 222, fig. 167. 55 In addition, it is possible that the portrait of the poet may also be a portrait of the commissioner as the poet, mainly because the short-haired, high-pate, and heart-shaped face could serve equally well as the poet or as the kind of stippled-haired portrait formula of men with haggard mien that came into fashion in the third century. For domestic decoration of a literary nature, see Kondoleon 2006. For the portrait of Vergil as a portrait of the commissioner, Métraux 2006: 149. 56 Garzya 1972: 36–7.
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Fig. 1.1 Statue of Augustus capite velato from the Via Labicana, Rome. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo.
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Fig. 1.2 Statue of a Roman matrona, wearing a stola and palla, found on Tiber island, Rome. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
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Fig. 1.3 Statue of a matrona wearing a stola, found in the Roman theatre at Parma. Parma, Museo Nazionale.
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Fig. 1.4
Patrician, senatorial, and equestrian calcei. After H. R. Goette, JdI 103 (1988): 451, fig. 35a-c.
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Fig. 1.5 Statue of a man wearing a laena from Augusta Emerita (Mérida, Spain). Mérida, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano.
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Fig. 3.1 Fragmentary bronze relief with an older and a younger man in togas. Claudian or Neronian. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum.
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Fig. 3.2 Statue of the so-called Delphi philosopher. Hellenistic. Delphi, Archaeological Museum.
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Fig. 3.3
Togatus, ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj.
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Fig. 3.4
Paludatus (soldier), ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj.
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Fig. 3.5 Paludatus (hunter) with dog, ca. ad 250. Marble. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj.
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Fig. 3.6 Bust of an unknown man, third century ad. Rome, ACEA (Centrale Montemartini).
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Fig. 3.7 Bust of an unknown man, third century ad. Rome, ACEA (Centrale Montemartini).
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Fig. 3.8. The Emperor as Philosopher. Bronze statue probably of Marcus Aurelius from Turkey, (?) Bubon in Lycia, ca. 175–200. Cleveland Museum of Art.
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Fig. 3.9 Marble statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, near Rome, ca. 19 bc. Vatican Museum.
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Fig. 3.10 Equestrian portrait of M. Nonius Balbus, from Herculaneum. Early Augustan. Marble. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
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Fig. 3.11 Statue of a young man in Greek dress (himation), from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum, ca. 30–20 bc. Marble. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
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Fig. 3.12 Marble statue of the so-called General, from Foruli (Abruzzi), mid-first century bc. Chieti Museum.
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Fig. 3.13 Marble funerary relief of a young man, from the river Ilissos, Athens, ca. 330 bc. Athens, National Museum.
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Fig. 3.14
Etruscan urn cover with semi-nude figure, from Volterra. Florence, Museo Archeologico.
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Fig. 3.15
So-called Testamentum relief. Trajanic. Marble. Rome, Musei Capitolini.
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Fig. 3.16 So-called Tivoli general, ca. 100 bc. Marble. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo.
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Fig. 3.17 Marble grave relief with nude portrait, ca. 50 bc from Rome, Via Appia, at the fourth milestone.
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Fig. 3.18 Roman denarius of 100 bc (RRC 329/1a), depicting the Genius of the Populus Romanus. London, British Museum.
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Fig. 3.20 Roman aureus of 36 bc (RRC 540/1), showing a semi-nude statue of Divus Julius, wearing the hip-mantle. London, British Museum.
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Fig. 3.19
Silver cup from Boscoreale, depicting the Genius of the Populus Romanus.
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Fig. 3.21 Cuirassed statue, from Mauretania. Julio-Claudian. Marble. Cherchel, Musée Archéologique.
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Fig. 3.22 Relief depicting Venus, Mars, and Divus Julius. Julio-Claudian. Marble. Algiers, Musée National d’Antiquités.
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Fig. 3.23
Statue of Divus Augustus. Tiberian. Marble. Vatican Museum.
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Fig. 3.24.
Statue of Tiberius, from Leptis. Marble. Tripoli Museum.
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Fig. 3.25
Julio-Claudian portrait group. Claudian. Marble. Ravenna, Museo Nazionale.
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Fig. 3.26
Private statue, ca. ad 40. Marble. Formia, Museo Nazionale.
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Fig. 5.1 Vase showing retiarius and secutor. Colchester Museum.
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Fig. 6.1
Relief of mother and togate girl, 50 bc. Rome, Musei Capitolini.
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Fig. 6.2 Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the south frieze.
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Fig. 6.3 Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the north frieze. Paris, Louvre.
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Fig. 6.4 Funerary relief of the Sertorii, ad 50, from Ince Blundell Hall. National Museums Liverpool, World Museum Liverpool.
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Fig. 6.5
Bust of a young girl, Severan period. Rome, Musei Capitolini.
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Fig. 6.6
Relief of a family group, 13 bc–ad 5. Rome, Villa Doria Pamphilj.
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Fig. 6.7
Bust of a young girl, ca. ad 200. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.
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Fig. 7.1 Uffizi.
Altar of the Lares Augusti from the vicus Sandaliarius, Rome. Florence,
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Fig. 7.2
Ara Pacis, Rome: detail of the south frieze.
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Fig. 7.3
Bust of a Vestal Virgin with ritual infulae. Florence, Uffizi.
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Fig. 7.4
Statue of Drusilla from Caere. Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Profano.
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Fig. 7.5
Statue of Agrippina the Elder. Palermo, Museo Nazionale Regionale.
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Fig. 8.1 Funerary stele of P. Ferrarius Hermes and his wives Caecinia Digna and Numeria Maximilla from Pisae.
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Fig. 8.2 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, (?) Aetia from Ortona.
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Fig. 8.3 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, (?) Aetia from Ortona: right side.
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Fig. 8.4 Funerary cippus for Poppaedia Secunda and her daughter, (?) Aetia from Ortona: left side.
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Fig. 14.1 Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite: detail showing Venus. Floor mosaic from Utica, building known as the Maison de Caton. Approx. 2,50 x 2,80 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo.
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Fig. 14.2
The Domain of Dominus Julius. Floor mosaic from Carthage. 5,50 x 4,50 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo.
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Fig. 14.3 Panel showing the domina. Floor mosaic from the private baths of the villa at Sidi Ghrib. 2,95 x 1,80 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo (reserves).
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Fig. 14.4 du Bardo.
Venus and a marine villa. Floor mosaic from Carthage, Maison de la Cachette. 4,33 x 4,00 m. Tunis, Musée National
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Fig. 14.5 Tomb mosaic of Numitoria Saturnina and C. Iulius Serenus from Thina (Henchir). 2,00 x 1,70 m. Sfax, Musée Archéologique.
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Fig. 14.6 Erotes decorating a rotunda. Floor mosaic from Carthage, Maison du Triconque. Approx. 4,50 x 3,50 m. Carthage, Parc Archéologique des Thermes d’Antonin.
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Fig. 14.7 St Thecla (?) in the Arena. Ceramic bowl (African red slip ware). 16,5 cm in diameter, 3,2 cm high. Private collection.
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Fig. 14.8
The ‘Brother Sarcophagus.’ Marble. 2,30 x 1,50 m. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
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Fig. 14.9 Vergil and Muses. Floor mosaic from Hadrumetum (Sousse). 1,20 x 1,20 m. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo.
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INDEX LOCORUM
LITERARY TEXTS Accius Trag(oediae) 654
177
Acro. See Ps-Acro Apollonius Rhodius Argon(autica) 1.496–511 213 1.721–767 213 schol(ion) ad 1.764 216n44 Appian B(ellum) Civ(ile) 1.54 2.24 2.106 2.144 4.30 Mithr(idateios) 22–23 93 Apuleius Apol(ogia) 1.1 4–5
43n37 44n42 89n21, 93n64 93n64 51, 64n25 25 43n36
255n6 255n2
4.1 4.12 5.1–2 5.2 29–41 55.10 55.12 65.8 67.5 70.7 72.1 72.3 73.2 73.9
76.5 85.2 87.10 87.10–11
95.5 96.5–6 98.2 98.5–7
239 239 239 250 244 244 255n7 255n6 255n6 61n8 238 253 244 62n13, 63n19, 64n21, 69n67 255n7 255n6 65n32 62n13, 63n20, 64n21, 65n27, 69n69 250 253 255n7 56, 62n13, 64n21
332 Index Locorum 98.6 98.8 99.1 101.5 Flor(ida) 8.2 9.10 9.13 9.25–27 9.36, 39–40 16.1 20.10 22.5 Met(amorphoses) 1.6 1.20 1.21 1.23 1.24 2.2 2.7 2.8–9 2.19 2.23 2.28 2.30 3.1–10 3.2–11 3.3 3.4–6 3.11 3.15 3.27 4.9 7.5 7.6 7.8 7.9 8.24 8.27 9.10–31
67n55 253 255n6 69–70n69 261 243, 255n6 244 261 261 268n13 259 261 240 240 240 240 240 240 240 242, 255n5 240 255n5 240 255n5 255n6 253 253 240 240, 253 252 250 240 240 242 242 242 255n5 240–1 252–3
9.12 9.30 9.31 9.35 9.39–41 10.1 10.1–12 10.6 10.31–32 11.9 11.15
241 241 255n5 252 240 240 252 255n5 290n28 185 252
Aristotle Hist(oria) an(imalium) 551 b 14 201n1 Arnobius Adv(ersus) nat(iones) 2.67 42n22, 48, 142, 152n26 Artemidorus Onir(ocriticus) 1.5 1.16 2.3 2.31 2.32 5.58
134n51 134n51 130 128 127–30, 132n12, 134n51 134n51
Asconius ad Cic(eronis in) Pis(onem) 4.8 43n34 ad Cic(eronis) pro Scaur(o) 29 44n56 ad Cic(eronis in) Verr(em) 2.1.152 62–3n16 Athenaeus 5.213b
25
Athenagoras of Athens Leg(atio) pro Christ(ianis) 26–27 291n39
334 Index Locorum 303 306 (Pro) Cael(io) 4.9 5.11 17.41 25.61 31.75 (In) Cat(ilinam) 2.22 (Pro) Clu(entio) 18 De or(atore) 1.23 3.127 3.167
67n54 67n54 67n54 55, 57, 67nn53– 4, 123 68n60 190n37 68n60 133n39 44n42 247 268n19 46n80, 108n3 248 248
3.220 3.222 (De) Div(inatione) 1.3 93n64 (Epistulae ad) Fam(iliares) 9.21.1 214n13 9.22.2 67n56 fr. 12 Courtney 218 (De) Har(uspicum) resp(onsis) 44 188n19 (De) Leg(ibus) 2.7.19 92n56 2.23.59 42n27 2.25.64 42n27 (De) Leg(e) agr(aria) 1.6 155n64 2.34.94 46n76 (De) Leg(e) Man(ilia) 7 25 11 25 32–33 43n36 (Pro) Mil(one) 28 201n14
(Pro) Mur(ena) 69 60n5 (De) Nat(ura) D(eorum) 3.16.41 92n56 3.18.46 92n56 (De) Off(iciis) 1.61 89n22 1.77 46n80 1.130–133 177 3.4 214n13 3.80 92n48 Orat(or) 55–60 248 Phil(ippicae) 2.18.44 36, 45n67, 59n1, 201n7 3.31 132n21 5.14 268–9n24 5.20, 30 132n21 6.10, 13 132n21 8.27 46n81, 268n9 9.13 90–1n39 12.20 132n21 13.13.28 27 (In) Pis(onem) 6 93n64 29.72 108n3 30.73 46n80 38.92–93 35, 45n63 (Pro) Planc(io) 21 44n42 (Epistulae ad) Q(uintum) fr(atrem) 2.3.1= SB 7.1 31 2.11 = SB 15 26 (Pro) Rab(irio) Post(umo) 26 81 (Oratio post) Red(itum in) sen(atum) 12 31 (Pro) Sest(io) 53 31 121 93n64
334 Index Locorum 303 306 (Pro) Cael(io) 4.9 5.11 17.41 25.61 31.75 (In) Cat(ilinam) 2.22 (Pro) Clu(entio) 18 De or(atore) 1.23 3.127 3.167
67n54 67n54 67n54 55, 57, 67nn53– 4, 123 68n60 190n37 68n60 133n39 44n42 247 268n19 46n80, 108n3 248 248
3.220 3.222 (De) Div(inatione) 1.3 93n64 (Epistulae ad) Fam(iliares) 9.21.1 214n13 9.22.2 67n56 fr. 12 Courtney 218 (De) Har(uspicum) resp(onsis) 44 188n19 (De) Leg(ibus) 2.7.19 92n56 2.23.59 42n27 2.25.64 42n27 (De) Leg(e) agr(aria) 1.6 155n64 2.34.94 46n76 (De) Leg(e) Man(ilia) 7 25 11 25 32–33 43n36 (Pro) Mil(one) 28 201n14
(Pro) Mur(ena) 69 60n5 (De) Nat(ura) D(eorum) 3.16.41 92n56 3.18.46 92n56 (De) Off(iciis) 1.61 89n22 1.77 46n80 1.130–133 177 3.4 214n13 3.80 92n48 Orat(or) 55–60 248 Phil(ippicae) 2.18.44 36, 45n67, 59n1, 201n7 3.31 132n21 5.14 268–9n24 5.20, 30 132n21 6.10, 13 132n21 8.27 46n81, 268n9 9.13 90–1n39 12.20 132n21 13.13.28 27 (In) Pis(onem) 6 93n64 29.72 108n3 30.73 46n80 38.92–93 35, 45n63 (Pro) Planc(io) 21 44n42 (Epistulae ad) Q(uintum) fr(atrem) 2.3.1= SB 7.1 31 2.11 = SB 15 26 (Pro) Rab(irio) Post(umo) 26 81 (Oratio post) Red(itum in) sen(atum) 12 31 (Pro) Sest(io) 53 31 121 93n64
335 Index Locorum 144 (In) Vat(inium) 12.30 13.31 (In) Verr(em) (Act. II) 1.113 5.13.31 5.33.86 Censorinus (De) D(ie) N(atali) 1.7.3–4
61–2n12, 151n18 91n42 91n42 142, 152n24 35, 45n64, 133n39 35, 45n65, 133n39
61n11
Claudian (De) III Cons(ulatu) Hon(orii) 5 220 106–110 211 201–211 227 523–529 148, 156n81 (De) IV Cons(ulatu) Hon(orii) 212–419 236n20 565–601 224–6 602–610 227–8, 236n14 652–656 224 655–656 226–7 (De) VI Cons(ulatu) Hon(orii) 563 236n14 641–642 220–1 (In) Eutr(opium) 1.8–10 221–2 1.26–29 222 1.35 222 1.224–228 222 1.300–307 223 2.223–224 222 Pr(aefatio ad In) Eutr(opium) 2.10 223 (De Consulatu) Prob(ini) 205–206 237n23
(In) Ruf(inum) 1.249 220 (De Consulatu) Stil(ichonis) 2.339–361 229–31 2.339–340 237n23 2.341 236–7n22 2.347 236–7n22 2.349 236n20 2.350 236n21, 236– 7n22 2.354 236–7n22 2.365–367 231–2 2.367–376 232 2.407 220 Clement of Alexandria Paed(agogus) 2.38.3 175 2.104.1 187nn10–11, 188n12 2.107–111 187n10 2.107.3 187n11 2.108.5 187n11 2.115.1–2 187n11 2.116–117 187n10 2.118 187n10 2.121–129 187n10 2.123 188n12 2.124.1–2 176 2.125 188n12 3.5 188n12 3.5.1 187n11 3.5.4 187n11 3.5.31 176 3.6.3–4 175 3.8.1 176 3.8.1–3 187n11 3.10 188n12 3.11 188n12 3.13 188n12 3.15.1–2 188n19 3.15.4 188n19
336 Index Locorum 3.26.3 3.53.1 3.53.5 3.54 3.56.1 3.57.2 3.57.4 3.58–59.1 3.60.2–63 3.63 Codex Iustinianus 5.31.1 5.60.3
175–6, 187n11 175 175 187n10 175, 187n10 187n11 187n10 187n10 187n10 188n12 68n61 61n11
Corippus (In laudem) Iust(ini Augusti) 4.10 237n23 Digesta 4.4.1 4.4.11.5 11.7.2.6 34.2 34.2.25 34.2.25.9 34.2.25.10 34.2.32.7 Dio (Cassius) 37.21.3–4 38.14.7 38.16 39.28.2 43.14.6–7 43.32.2 43.43.1 43.43.2 43.43.4 44.4.4–5 45.2.5–6 48.12.5
68n61 68n60 173 188n21, 291n33 177–8 153n46, 156n79 187n5 177–8, 187n5 34 31 44n42 30 89n20 89n20 34 28 45n60 77, 93n64 63–4n20 46n81
48.18.2 48.31.3 49.16.1 51.6.1 53.26.5 54.35.5 55.10.2 55.22.4 56.8.1 56.31.2 56.46.4–5 57.13.5 57.15.1 59.2.2 59.26.6–10 60.6.9 60.7.4 61.31.2 63.13.3 69.18.3 71.35.4 72.21.3 74.5.4–5 75.4.2–5.5 79.11.2 80.14.4
45n59 34 33 61–2n12, 63–4n20 34 29 52, 65n28 63–4n20 63–4n20 29–30 90n38 33–4 32 65n27 45n69 34, 37 33 63–4n20 36–7 23 37 30 188n19 90n33 37 188n19
Dio Chrysostom 31.9–10 71.2
76 268n19
Diodorus Siculus 31.25.2 36.16.1
71–3 31
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant(iquitates) Rom(anae) 4.15.5 51 4.24 42n24 5.35.1 25 8.67.10 90–1n39
337 Index Locorum Duris FGrH 76 F 14
212–13
Elegia de Maecenate 1.21 45n60 1.25–26 45n60 Ennius Ann(ales) 113Vahlen Euripides Ion 1132–1156
93n64
Gellius (Aulus Gellius) 5.6.27 90–1n39 6.12 36, 45n66, 188n19 6.12.3 44n56, 133n39 9.2.1–5 73 13.22.1 33, 191n56 18.4.1 59n1, 67n54 Herodian 4.7.3
188n19
Historia Augusta. See SHA 209
Festus 8L=9M 17 L = 18 M 32 L = 36 M 100 L = 113 M 124 L = 142 M 228 L
190n40 169n12 62n16, 153n44 163 156n76 43n40, 80, 92n49 272–273 L 91n42 282–284 L = 245 M 142, 151–2n22 283 L = 245 M 26, 62n14 342 L = 274 M 42n27, 63n18 359 L = 284 M 132n18 364 L = 289 M 63n18 407 L = 311 M 143, 152n36 432 L = 322 M 168–9n8 474 L = 348 M 54 484 L = 355 M 170n32
Florus 2.13.91
93n64
Fronto Ep(istulae) 1.10.1
67n54
Gaius Inst(itutiones) 1.196
61n11
Homer Il(iad) 3.125–127 6.289 11.32–42 18.478–608 18.483–489 18.590 Od(yssey) 15.108 Horace Carm(ina) 1.12.53–56 1.36.9 2.12 3.14.8 3.23.3–4 4.69–80 Epod(i) 5.7 5.12 12.10–11 Sat(irae) 1.2.16–17 1.2.25 1.2.63 1.2.82 1.2.101–103 1.6.24–29
205–6 216n46 210 209 210, 213 210 216n46
236n13 51, 59n1 216n52 164 63n17 216n53 55, 66n39 62n16 187n4 68n61 133n39 201n7 201n7 194, 195 27
338 Index Locorum Inst(itutiones) Iust(iniani) 1.23 pr.2 68n61 Isidore Etym(ologiae) 18.55 18.57 19.22–34 19.24.6 19.24.8 19.24.16 19.25.1–3 19.31.17 19.34.4 Justinian Codex Iustinianus 5.31.1 5.60.3 Inst(itutiones) 1.23 pr.2 Nov(ellae) 14 pr.1 Juvenal 1.95–96 1.96 1.119–120 1.127–130 1.132–134 2.8–15 2.68–70 2.84 2.93–97 2.117–126 2.143 2.143–148 3.58–125 3.81 3.126–130 3.127 3.132
116 131n7 13 42n25 235n2 151n18 156n74 144, 153n46 43n31
68n61 61n11 68n61 156n78 101, 110n25 24 110n27 98, 109n14 98, 109n14 134n48 201n7 155n64 182, 188n19 114 123 113 130 188n19 101 110n26 110n26
3.171–172 3.177–179 5.52–69 5.76–77 5.125–127 5.156–162 5.163–165 5.164–165 6.112 6.O 1–13 6.O 3 6.O 19–22 6.O 20–34 6.O 25 7.130 7.141–145 8.199–210 8.200–201 8.207 9.34–46 9.137–138 11.203–204 Livy 1.16.3 1.18 1.32 1.36 2.8.7 2.39.12 2.54.5 3.7.7 4.25.13 5.41 7.10.6, 9–10 9.7 10.7.9 21.62 22.57.9 24.16
39, 96 108–9n8 111n37 110n26 111n37 105, 111n38 105, 111n39 62–3n16 114 122–3 125 188n19 134n48 126 190n42 102, 110n29 121–2 124 123 134n48 63n17 111n31 93n64 161 161 161 169n11 161, 164 161 170n27 42n25 28–9, 43n32, 43n35, 92n57 132n13 30 92n49 221 67n54 42n24
339 Index Locorum 24.32 25.25.6 26.9.7 26.36.5 27.4 29.3 29.19.12–13 29.36 30.15 30.36.4 30.45 31.11 33.23 34.7.1–3 34.7.11 37.28.1 38.56.13 42.34.3–5 44.16 45.26.3 45.44 Per(iochae) 26 74 105 116
42n24 164 170n27 153–4n47 25–6 25 82 25 25–6, 92n49 164 30 25–6 30 28, 92n50, 151n18 147 164 92n49 60n5, 68n64 25 164 27, 30 59n1 43n37 30 93n64
Lucan 1.33–66 2.31 2.363–364
211 170n27 143, 153n37
Lucilius fr. 519 fr. 1095
177 181
Lucretius 1.418 4.138–168 4.969–970 5.94
214n13 216n53 215n34 214n13
6.62 Lydus (De) Mens(ibus) 4.29 4.65 Macrobius Sat(urnalia) 1.6.7–17 1.6.7 1.6.9 1.6.11 1.6.16 1.6.17
1.6.25 1.12.15
214n13
44n41 289n18
66n37 152n23 62n16, 153n44 62n16 152n23 55, 67n52, 151n18, 152n23 151n18 289n18
Manilius 1.7 4.932
211 211
Martial 1.49.31–32 1.49.31–36 1.96.11–12 2.18 2.39 2.43 2.46 2.53 2.57 2.68 2.74 2.85 3.4.6 3.30 3.36 3.36.9 3.46 3.46.1
45–6n75 111n32 133n32 104, 111n34 201n7 188n19 188n19 104–5, 111n35 102 105 102 110n22 102 101, 110n20 109n14 110n20 109n15 24, 103
340 Index Locorum 3.63 4.26 4.28 4.66.3 5.8 5.14 5.22
5.23 5.24.12 5.25 5.27 5.35 5.38 5.41 6.12 6.48 7.2.7–8 7.10.11 7.67 7.86 8.28 8.33.17–22 9.27 9.37 9.49 9.49.1–2 9.49.2–8 9.57 9.100 10.10 10.15 10.47.1–5 10.47.5 10.51.5–6 10.52 10.73 10.74 10.82.2
188n19 110n20, 110n28 110n22 111n32 44n45, 44n48 44n48 100–1, 110nn23–4, 111n34 44n45, 44n48 116 44n45, 44n48 44n45 44n45, 44n48 44n45 42–3n28, 44n45 187n4 109–10n15 219 110n29 133n32 110n22 99 187n4 133n32, 133n34 182 99–100, 110n19 110n21 110n20 110n19 101, 110n20, 110n28 111n34 110n22 111n31 103 103, 111n31 201n7 110n22 110n20, 110n26 110n26
10.96 11.8 11.24 11.72 12.23 12.18.1–6 12.18.5 12.18.17–18 12.36
111n32, 111n34 190n42 110n20 133n32 187n4 103, 111n32 110n19 103, 111n32 109n10, 110n22 12.68 110n26, 111n32 14.48 133n32 14.62 190n42 14.124 110n22 14.125 110n20, 110n22, 110n26 14.141 (=14.142 S-B) 41n8 14.142 111n32 Menander Rhetor 2.398
247
Minucius Felix Oct(avius) 27
291n39
Naevius Fr(agmenta) com(ica) 113 62n14 Nicolaus of Damascus 3.5 57 4.8–10 52–3, 65n35 4.10 64n25 8.18 56, 67n55 13.28–30 56, 67n55 15.36 56 22.80 93n64 Nonius 353 L = 236 M
144, 153n43
341 Index Locorum 863 L = 538 M 866 L = 540 M 867 L = 540 M 867–868 L = 540– 541 M
142, 143, 152n29 142–3, 152n35 201n7 42n19, 141, 151n18
867 + 881 L = 540 + 549 M 143, 152n34 Nonnus Dion(ysiaca) 24.242–327 215n29 24.303–304 215n29 25.385, 392, 395, 431 215n30 Origen Contra Cels(um) 8.24–28 Ovid Am(ores) 1.1.20 1.3.7–14 1.5.9–14 1.5.15–24 1.10 2.8.27–28 3.15 3.6.65 Ars am(atoria) 1.31 1.31–32 1.509 1.513 1.514–522 1.624 1.723–729 2.40 2.258 3.129–135 3.210
291n39
201n14 193, 199 195 195 201n2 197 201n8 170n27 169n14 24, 41n11 177 177 177 147, 156n78 177 170n25 156n80 289n23 190n37
F(asti) 3.30 3.771 3.771–788 3.771–772 3.777 3.777–778 3.787–788 4.133–160 4.134 4.619–620 5.355–356 Met(amorphoses) 1.477 2.413 5.110 6.69, 71 7.429 8.744 9.771 13.643 15.131 15.675 (Epistulae ex) Pont(o) 3.2.73–75 Rem(edia) am(oris) 152 353 354 386 679 Trist(ia) 2.247–252 4.4.78 4.10.27–30
170n27 59n1, 66n47 63n19 49 66n47 55 52 184 169n14 12 12 170n25 170n25 170n25 208 170n25 170n25 166, 170n25 170n25 170n25 170n25 164, 165 90n34 190n37 182 169n14 177 24, 41n12, 169n14 164 59n1, 64n21, 66n47, 67n49
Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis 2–3 271 15 271
342 Index Locorum 18.4–6 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4
272 271, 288n7 271 272 273
Paul (Apostle) 1 Corinthians 11:4–8
158–9
Paulus Sent(entiae) 3.6.83
177, 187n5
Pausanias 7.16.10 7.20.6
246 255n11
Persius 1.32 2.70 5.30
5.32–33 5.33
188n19 47,152n29 66n39, 141, 142 62n15 67n49, 67n54 67n51 54, 59n1
Petronius 21 23 58 60.3 78.3 81.5 85–87 110 126.5–7
134n48 188n19 44n43 190n42 190n42 63n20 67n55 182, 190n37 131n3
Phaedrus 3.10.9–10 3.10.10 4.5.21
61–2n12 60n5 188n22
5.30–31 5.30–37
Philostratus V(itae) S(ophistarum) 489 528–529 555 567 570 572 612 624
172, 255n10 244 245 88–9n9, 244–5 245 245 245 255n10
Photius Bibl(iotheca) 383B
71
Pindar Nem(ean Odes) 4.44 4.94 Ol(ympian Odes) 6.86–87 fr. 179 Snell Plato Gorg(ias) 493a–494e Hipp(ias) Min(or) 368b–d Plautus Cas(ina) 768 Curc(ulio) 288 577 Epid(icus) 639–640 Mil(es Gloriosus) 251 872 Most(ellaria) 120 263–264
214n2 205 205 214n2
134n46 268n19
201n14 268n23 181 144, 153n45 201n14 201n14 191n53 156n77
343 Index Locorum Poen(ulus) 975 1121 1169a 1303 Rud(ens) 1171 Trin(ummus) 252–254 797 Truc(ulentus) 405–410
185
Pliny the Elder H(istoria) N(aturalis) 3.112 7.34.120 8.155 9.113 9.60.127 9.62.135 9.63.136 11.76 15.19 20.152 22.6 27.76 28.39 28.60 33.8 33.10 33.18 34.18 34.18–19 34.19 34.19–20 34.23 34.27 34.28 34.30 34.31
268n9 42n25 89n20 190n42 53 53 66n37 201n1 90–1n39 190n42 89n23 143 144 160 108n1 108n1, 153n44 108n1 89n20 78–9 90n32 80–1 90n39 92n48 151n18 93n67 91n40
262 46n76 201n14 133n39 144, 153–4n47 191n51 214n13
37.65–75 37.121 Pliny the Younger Ep(istulae) 1.9.1–2 1.9.1–3 2.11.23 4.11 5.6 5.6.45 6.30.4 7.3.2 8.6.13 10.116 Plutarch Ant(onius) 71.3 Cam(illus) 33 Cat(o) maj(or) 18 20.6 Cat(o) min(or) 44.1 Cic(ero) 23.6 24.8 30–31 Demetr(ius) 41.4 Mor(alia) 37c 37c–e 266c–e 267a–c 271e
236n14 236n14
48 51 188n19 41n15, 108– 9n8, 268n23 23 111n31 111n31 111n31 89n20 51, 58, 65n27
58, 61–2n12, 63n20 147–8, 156n80 32 130–1 44n56 93n64 68n59 31 212–13 65n32 55, 67n54, 67n56 161 159–60 186
344 Index Locorum 274d 288a
133n30 62n16, 153n44 39
813e Pomp(eius) 24.6 29 Rom(ulus) 29 156n80 Quaest(iones) Rom(anae) 10 161 11 161 14 159–60 30 186 40 133n30 101 62n16, 153n44 Sulla 24 25 Ti. Grac(chus) 10 31 Pollux Onom(asticon) 7.95
Posidonius Hist(oriae) fr. 253 Kidd Propertius 1.2.1–6 1.2.8 1.2.32 1.15.6 1.22 2.1.3–8 2.1.13–14 2.1.19–20 2.15.5–6 2.15.13–16 2.16.11–26 2.18.23–30 3.4.1–6 3.15.3–6 3.15.4 4.1.131–132 4.1.131–134 4.1.132
188n15 4.11.33–35
Polybius 6.53–54 6.53.6 6.53.7 6.53.7–8 6.56.9 30.18.3 30.18.3–7 31.21.3 32.2.3
38 71 29, 92nn49–50 72 37–8 27 30 270n33 270n33
Pomponius Mela 1.41–42 2.59
263 46n80, 268n9
Porphyry schol. ad Hor. Sat. 1.2.63
41–2n16
4.11.61–62
25 193–4, 198 193 194 201n14 201n8 194 194 216n52 195 195 201n2 187n4 236n13 55 59n1 62n15, 63n20 67n49 57, 59n1, 62n13, 66n47 26–7, 142, 143, 152n25, 153n41 44n50
Prudentius Perist(ephanon) 14
288n4
Ps-Acro ad Hor. Sat. 1.5.65–66
47
Quintilian Inst(itutio Oratoria) 1.8.9 1.10.31 1.11.1–2 2.5.10
248–9 248 248, 249 248–9
345 Index Locorum 2.5.12 5.9.14 5.12.17–23 6.1.30, 33 6.3.61 7.2.24 8. pr.19–20 8.3.6 8.5.28 9.4.13 9.4.142 10.1.105 11.1.3 11.1.31 11.3.19 11.3.128 11.3.137–149 11.3.138 11.3.143 11.3.148 11.3.156 11.3.160–161 12.10.27–39 12.11.21
249 249 249 249 117, 119 244 177, 249 177, 249 214n13 214n13 249 247–8 249 66n40 248 248 35, 41n5, 94, 249 123 45n59 249 41n5 41n5, 249 247–8 268n19
[Quintilian] Decl(amationes) 340.13
65n36, 141
Sallust Hist(oriae) 2.59 5.20
45n61 160
Salvian De Gub(ernatione) Dei 7.17–20 270n33 7.86–87, 94 270n33 Scriptores Historiae Augustae. See SHA
Seneca the Elder Controv(ersiae) 2.6.4 2.7.6 4.1 5.6 7.3.7 9.5.1 Suas(oriae) 2.21
68n60 156n74 42n26 55 42n26 42n26 190n37
Seneca the Younger (De) Ben(eficiis) 6.33.3 109n12 (De) Clem(entia) 1.24.1 261–2 (De) Cons(olatione ad) Marc(iam) 9.2 68n64 Ep(istulae) 4.2 59n1 114.4–6 45n60 (Ad) Helv(iam de consolatione) 16.4 187n4 Q(uaestiones) Nat(urales) 1.17.10 188n22 7.31.3 125, 188n22 Servius ad Aen(eidem) 1.282 3.67 3.407 3.545 4.543 6.221 8.724 10.538 ad Ecl(ogas) 4.49
151n18, 201n7 66n40 169n10 169n10 90–1n39 66n40 262 54, 163, 170n20 64n24, 70n71
346 Index Locorum SHA (Scriptores Historiae Augustae) Comm(odus) 12.4 59n1 12.11 116 17.7–8 257 Elagab(alus) 26 37 Hadr(ianus) 22.2 33 Macrianus 12 274, 289n14 Pert(inax) 8.5–6 188n19 Sept(imius) Sev(erus) 1.7 24 14.8 61–2n12 16.8 61–2n12, 65n32 Sev(erus) Alex(ander) 27.1–3 262 27.4 42n27 Tac(itus) 16.2–4 74 Tres Gordiani 21.3 267n2 Ver(us) 3.1 65n27 Sidonius Apollinaris Carm(ina) 15.158–159 230–1 Silius Italicus Pun(ica) 2.361 2.426 7.120–122 Soranus Gyn(aecologia) 2.15 [84] 2.30
270n33 236n21 215n32
143, 173–4 173
Statius Silv(ae) 1.4.11 1.1.84–86 2.1.132–134 4.1.40–41 4.4.93 5.2 5.2.17 5.2.64–67 5.2.67 5.2.68 5.3.116–120 5.3.119 Theb(ais) 4.203 4.270 9.638 Suetonius Aug(ustus) 8.1 40 40.3–4 40.5 44.2 68 73 86.2 Calig(ula) 10.1 30.3 52 Claud(ius) 2.2 15 15.2 21.5
259 89n20 188n19 236n13 155n64 62n13 42–3n28 57, 69n66 59n1 56 58, 65n27, 69n68 66n39 170n27 236n14 170n27
62n15 90n34 32 23, 32, 33, 108n7, 145 23, 33, 108n7 188n19 33 45n60 65n27, 65n32 116, 123 22, 34, 36, 37, 45n69 62n15 108n7 22, 108n4 35
347 Index Locorum 28 34.1 Dom(itianus) 7 14.3 Galba 4.3 (De) Gramm(aticis) 3.6 Iul(ius Caesar) 45.3 48 61 76.1 Nero 16 32.3 51 Otho 12.1 (De) Rhet(oricis) 1.2 Tib(erius) 7.1 9.2 13 54.1 Vesp(asianus) 2.2 Fragments frs. 165–169 fr. 167
222 116 109n11 42n28 62n15 268n9 45n60 268–9n24 89n20 93n64 109n11 32 36, 45n70 188n19 151n18 62n15 90–1n39 22, 81 65n27 62n15 17n49 43n38
Sulpicia. See [Tibullus] Tacitus Ann(ales) 1.15 2.33 2.59 3.2 3.29.3
90n38 32 45n68 42–3n28 65n27
4.26 26 13.2.2 68n60 13.30 45n73, 91n47 14.56.2 68n60 Dial(ogus de Oratoribus) 6 109n10 7 46n76, 96, 123 34.1–7 67n54 Germ(ania) 13.1 56 Hist(oriae) 1.4 97 Terence Eun(uchus) 313–318
143, 153n39, 147 Heaut(ontimorumenos) 240 201n14 Phorm(io) 339 201n14 Tertullian Ad nat(iones) 2.11.11 63n19 Apol(ogia) 22.6 291n39 De cult(u) fem(inarum) 1.4 188n22 1.4.1–2 289n23 1.9.3 289n21 2.8.2 177 De fuga in persecutione 16 269n29 De idol(atria) 16.1 59n1 16.1–2, 18 264 16.1–3 51 De pall(io) 1.1.1 260 1.1.1–2 259 1.1.3–4 263, 268n17
348 Index Locorum 1.2.1 259, 269n27 1.2.3 259 1.3.1 265 2.1.1–2 268nn16–17 2.2.3–4.2 266 2.3.3 268n17 2.4.4 267, 268n18 3.1.1–3.5 269n31 3.4.1–7.1 269n31 4 288n6 4.1.1 259–60 4.1.3 265, 270n35 4.1.4 264 4.2.1 268n17 4.2.2–5 269n31 4.2.2–6.4 269n31 4.2.5 268n17 4.3.1–8 269n31 4.4.1–3 269n31 4.5.1–2 269n31 4.8.1 268n17 4.8.2 264–5 4.8.4 264 4.9.5 265 4.10.3 269n27 5 46n80 6.1.3 260 6.2.1–2 266 6.2.5 260, 266 De patientia 7 269n29 De spect(aculis) 8 280 22 114 (De) Resurr(ectione) 16 269n32 (De) Test(imonio animae) 2.7 264 Theocritus 15
208
Tibullus 1.3.31 1.3.55–56 1.8.9–16 1.8.16 1.10.21–24
170n27 201n8 198–9 201n14 63n17
[Tibullus]; i.e., Sulpicia or ‘Garland of Sulpicia’ 3.8 198, 199–200 3.9 196 3.12 200 3.12.14 201n13 3.13 192, 196–7, 199, 200 3.13.3–4 196 3.16 197–8, 199, 200 3.17–18 201n6 Valerius Flaccus 1.140 8.6 Valerius Maximus 2.2.2 2.2.9 2.8.7 3.1.1 3.2.7 3.5.1b 3.6 3.6.2 3.6.7 5.2.5 5.4.4 5.6.8 6.3.10 6.4.4 6.5.2 7.8.1
236n21 143–4, 153n42 268–9n24 42–3n28 90–1n39 151n18 43n35 42n25 91n41 82 44n56 30 63n19 62n16 156n74, 160, 168n5 31 44n42 45n59
349 Index Locorum 8.1 absol. 8 8.10.2 9.1.5 9.2. ext. 3 9.7.4 9.12.7 Varro (De) Ling(ua latina) 5.124 5.129 5.131 5.132
142 44n58 45n61 25 43n37 44n43
190n42 177, 181 142, 152n32 42n27, 151n20 197 170n32
6.80 7.44 Sat(irae) Men(ippeae) 313 27, 43n29 (De) Vit(a) Pop(uli) Rom(ani) 1.44 Riposati 201n7 ap(ud) Non(ium) 353 L = 236 M 144, 153n43 863 L = 538 M 142, 143, 152n29 867–868 L = 540– 541 M 42n19, 141, 151n18 867 + 881 L = 540 + 549 M 143, 152n34 Velleius Paterculus 1.12.3 46n80 2.1.5 90n31 2.40.2 34 Vergil Aen(eid) 1.8 1.229–296 1.259–260 1.279 1.282
286 21 212 103 108n3
1.282–286 1.474 1.480 2.132–133 2.156 2.221 2.296 2.429–430 3.62 3.63–64 3.80–81 3.158–159 3.173–174 3.369–371 3.370 3.403–407 3.545–547 3.697 5.250–257 5.296 7.98–99 7.187–188 7.351 7.403 7.418–419 7.440–444 8.319–327 8.624–625 8.642 8.666 8.682 8.722–726 8.729–731 9.616 11.480–481 G(eorgics) 1.24–42 1.466–492 3.22–25 4.560–563
21, 39–40, 90n26 236n21 170n27 165, 170n24 170n24 165, 170n24 165, 170n24 165, 170n24 170n27 165, 170n26 165, 170n26 212 165, 170n26 166, 170n26 165 161–2 162 165–6 208 170n22 212 235n2 165, 170n23 165 165, 170n23 235n10 168n8 208 236n21 236n21 236n21 262 212 133n39 170n27 211 221 208 211–12
350 Index Locorum Ps-Vergil Ciris passim 9–10 18–22 29–41 36–41 39
205–216 206, 208 206 206–8, 213 211–12 215n34
Vitruvius 4.1.8
143
INSCRIPTIONS AE 1913, 134 1934, 284 1962, 58 1972, 174 1974, 618 1976, 624 1978, 145 1978, 715 1982, 149 1982, 268 1983, 210 1992, 437
83–4, 92n53 119–20, 132n28 132n19 38, 45n73, 82–3, 91n46 41n13 93n59 124 41n13 93n65 91n46 124 183, 191n46
Carm. epig. 63.4 492.16 1988.14
187n3 187n3 187n3
CIL I2 1211 I2 1221 II 2970 II2/5, 1022 II2/7, 361 II2/7, 363
187n3 187n3 182, 190n36 43n34, 44n51 132n25 132n24
III 3572 III 5225 III 5283 III 5293 III 6155 = 7571 IV 2193 V 532 V 2089 VI 631 VI 872 VI 1504 VI 1799 VI 9727 VI 10180 VI 10985 VI 16090 VI 19159 VI 20905 VI 37469 VI 37811 VI 37844 VIII 646 VIII 2391 = 17910 VIII 5367 VIII 5530 = 18864 VIII 7432 VIII 8500 VIII 12152 VIII 15987 VIII 17910 = 2391 VIII 18864 = 5530 VIII 23808 IX 466 IX 2628 IX 2855 IX 2970 IX 3583 IX 3593 IX 3680 IX 3725
187n3 41n13 41n13 41n13 41n13 133n34 75, 89n14 60n5, 64n23 132n17 93n65 60n5, 64n23 187n3 182, 185, 190n39 118, 132n23 154n54 187n3 154n53 155n71 185 185 131n7 251 251 251 251 251 251 253 251 251 251 187n3 131n7, 132n19 86 92n48 190n36 190nn41, 44 190n41 190n41 190n41
351 Index Locorum IX 3824 IX 3826 IX 3952 IX 4001 IX 4026 IX 5025 IX 5136 X 688 X 7346 XI 1471
XI 6694 XI 7002 XIII 1983 XIV 1826 XIV 10230 EJ no. 99
190n44 180, 190n41, figs. 8.2–4 190n41 190n44 181, 190nn36, 41 190n41 93n65 65n27, 65n32 65n32 179–81, 185, 189n26, 190n41, fig. 8.1 190n41 190n41 187n3 187n3 187n3 66n43, 70n70
FIRA I2 18
133n41
IGRR IV 1756
66n43, 70n70
ILAlg. 1363 2115
253 255–6n12
ILGN 436
ILS 59 72 73 73a 139 140 1757 1921 5083a 5084 5105 5142 5501 6680 7742a–b 7761 8065 8093 8230 8392 Roman Statutes 24 25
43n31 86 93n65 93n65 30, 42n26 30, 42n26, 92n49 44n53 93n59 132n19 132n17 118, 132n23 131n3 92n48 75, 89n14 251 251 154n54 93n59 93n59 187n3 133n41 43n34, 44n51
PAPYRI P Mich. 7.433
118, 132n26
ILJug III 2617
119–20, 132n28
ILLRP 409
93n65
P Oxy 471
60n5, 64n26, 69n68 44n52
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GENERAL INDEX
accessories, 11, 13, 158–201, 271–9, 282, 286, 289n22, 292n45 actors, 25, 38, 71–2, 114, 175 acus crinalis, 181–2, 184, 190n40, 273 adolescence, 47–70, 141 adulteresses, 7, 25, 41–2n16, 188n12, 201n7 adulthood, 47–70, 139 Aemilius Paullus Lepidus, L., 26, 71–2 Aeneas, 44n56, 84, 161, 165–6, 168– 9n8, 169n10, 170n24, 170n26, 208, 212–13, 215n42, 230, 236n21, 262 age, 2, 7–8, 11, 22, 26, 38, 47–70, 74, 77, 83, 87, 139–57, 175, 224, 229, 251, 253, 275, 283 Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, 162, 166, 246, 255n11, fig. 7.1 Agrippina Major, 155n65, 167, 170n31, 171nn34–5, fig. 7.5 Agrippina Minor, 167, 171n35 alabastra, 182, 190n42 Alaric, 220, 235n6 allegory, 205–16 amber, 182 amethyst, 32, 225–6, 236n14 amictus, 29, 59n1, 69n68, 199, 223, 225, 234, 268n23
amphitheatre, 9, 30, 33, 41n4, 271–3, 282, 288nn3–4 ampullae, 182, 190n42 anklets, 176 Antiochus (king of Commagene), 26 Antonia Maior, 166, fig. 7.1 Antonia Minor, 166–7, 170n31, fig. 7.1 Antoninus Pius (Roman emperor), 37, 243, 281 Antonius, M. (Marc Antony), 34–6, 58, 63–4n20, 117, 213 Antonius Polemo, M. See Polemo anulus aureus, 13, 27, 30, 94, 108n1, 153n45 apex (pl. apices), 162, 169n12 Apuleius, 10, 49, 56–7, 67–8n57, 69n67, 185, 238–56, 258–9, 261, 265, 270n33, 290n28 Ara Maxima, 161 Ara Pacis, 72, 141, 144–5, 148, 155n62, 162, 166, figs. 6.2–6.3, fig. 7.2 arbelas, 129 Arcadius (Roman emperor), 221, 224, 226–7, 230, 235n8, 236n15 Arch of Constantine, 72 arena, 101, 113–15, 121–4, 127, 134n49, 225, 272, fig. 14.7
354 General Index armament, gladiatorial, 115–19, 121–2, 124–8, 130, 133n35 armatura, 115, 117, 125, 132n18 Artemidorus, 116, 127–31, 134n51 Arval Brethren, 54, 91–2n47 asbolos, 175 Asia, 25, 52, 59, 82, 91n46, 268–9n24, 282 Athens, 16n42, 57, 206, 214n3, 245–6, 253, 255nn10–11, 291n39 atrium, 50, 63n17, 71, 97, 101, 109n12, 110n28 Atticus, T. Pomponius, 49, 57 auctoritas (authority), 5, 8, 28–9, 37, 66n48, 95, 103, 106–7, 142, 186, 219, 224, 226, 228, 245–6, 272–3 Augustine, 184, 247, 255–6n12 Augustus (Roman emperor), 10, 12, 23–4, 26, 28–9, 32–4, 38, 40–1n3, 49–50, 52–4, 56–7, 61n7, 64n25, 65n35, 66n43, 67n50, 67n56, 70n70, 80, 82–3, 87, 91n40, 95–6, 108–9n8, 145, 162, 166, 168, 208, 211, 219, 232, 236n13, 246, 255n11, fig. 1.1, figs. 3.9, 3.23, fig. 7.2. See also Octavian Ausonius, 217–20, 234–5n1 balsamarium (pl. balsamaria), 182–3 balteus, 115, 282 banquets (convivia), 7, 24, 35, 45n61, 45n64, 56, 58, 61n8, 67n55, 112n41, 132, 268–9n24, 274 – imperial, 7, 9, 24 – private, 35, 97–8 – wedding, 114, 132 – see also dinners Barthes, Roland, 2, 14nn6–7, 15n21 baths, 101–2, 176, 181–2, 189n30, 275–8, 280–1, 290n30, 290–1n32, 291–2n39
beards, 7, 16n38, 27, 73, 120, 122, 177, 244–5, 247, 265, 284. See also hairstyles bearing, 28, 71, 73, 248, 256n15. See also deportment, habitus beryl, 148 bias – elite, 60n5, 134n49, 140, 185–6 – gender, 60n3, 150nn8–10 Bourdieu, Pierre, 2–3, 14nn8–10, 88n7 boyhood, 47–9, 51, 53, 55, 57–8, 61nn10–11, 66n38, 94, 105, 139, 141. See also coming-of-age, rites de passage bracelets, 274–5, 278, 290n31 braid – of hair, 27, 146, 167 – of wool (i.e., infulae) or ribbons (i.e., vittae), 146, 163, 167, 170n30, 280 breastband, 142–3, 148, 176. See also supparus breastplate, 78, 218–19, 231 bronze, 183, 190n37, 190–1n45, 205 brothers, 47, 50, 57, 62n13, 64n21, 117–18, 145, 221, 224, 226–8, 230, 232, 235n8 bulla (normally gold), 26, 42n20, 48, 50, 58, 60n3, 62n15, 62–3n16, 64n24, 66n37, 94, 105–6, 108n1, 111n39, 142, 144, 153n44, 153n46, 153–4n47, 163, 169n15 – glass, 153n44 – leather, 62–3n16, 106, 111n39 calamistrum, 179, 181, 190n35 calcei, 27–8, 33, 35–6, 39, 43nn30–1, 110n27, 186, 241–2, 277, 290n29, fig. 1.4 – consular, 43n30 – equestrian, 27–8, fig. 1.4 – of kings, 28, 43n31
355 General Index – patricii (patrician), 27–8, 43n31, fig. 1.4 – senatorial, 27–8, 35, fig. 1.4 – women’s, 186, 242, 277, 290n29 Caligula (Roman emperor), 22, 24, 34, 36, 45n69, 49, 65n27, 115–16, 123, 167, 171n35 Callimachus, 208–9 Calpurnius Piso, L., 35 camisia, 143, 152n36 camisilia, 233 candidus, 8, 27, 42n25, 54, 59n1, 94, 195, 198, 207, 211–12, 233, 241. See also white capite velato, 23, 40–1n3, 44n56, 93n62, 154n53, 161, fig. 1.1, fig. 7.1 Capitol, 51, 58, 64n24, 77, 82, 89n20 caps, 13, 14n14, 27, 30, 169n12 – slaves’, 27, 30 Carlyle, Thomas, 1, 14n1 carnelian, 176 Carthage, 243–4, 246, 253, 254n1, 255n11, 257–73, 276–82, 288n6, 289n22 Carthaginian (Punic), 11, 30, 164, 252– 4, 258–9, 261–7, 268n12, 270n33, 270n35 casket, 181–4, 191n49, 278, 290–1n32. See also cistae cathedra, 111n32, 182 Cato, C. (tribune), 30–1 Cato, M. Porcius, the Elder, 32, 130, 250 Cato, M. Porcius, the Younger, 34 Catullus, 196, 208, 247 Caudine Forks, 30 censors, 8, 29, 32, 38, 44n47 chariots, 80–1, 207, 211–12, 228, 232, 246 charioteers, 114 childhood, 47, 53–5, 57, 59, 62–3n16, 68n64, 94, 139–40, 173–4
chirodotae, 36 chiton, 145, 155n57, 176, 289n22 chlamys, 74, 82, 208 Christians, 11, 51, 158–9, 174–7, 233– 4, 259–73, 280–2, 286–7, 291–2n39, 293n52 Cicero, M. Tullius, 16n38, 27, 29, 31, 35–6, 42n25, 47–9, 52, 54–7, 59n1, 64n21, 66n45, 67n54, 68nn58–9, 81– 2, 86, 93n64, 97, 108n4, 117, 123, 142, 218, 220, 247–8, 250–1, 256nn16–17 cinaedus, 122, 125–6, 130–1, 134n46, 134n48, 182 cinctus Gabinus, 13 cingulum, 27 Ciris, 28, 205–16 cistae, 182–3, 191n47 class status, 2–4, 6–11, 14n3, 15n15, 21–2, 24, 26–32, 39, 44n44, 48, 52, 54–6, 58–9, 60n3, 64n22, 65n34, 66n46, 71–135, 139, 141, 145–50, 151n18, 153n44, 155–6n73, 166–7, 171n34, 175, 185–7, 192–201, 216n53, 221–2, 238–56, 258–66, 271–87, 292n44 Claudian, 10, 148, 211, 217–37 Claudius (Roman emperor), 21–2, 25, 33–5, 37, 84, 116, 222, 232, 258 Claudius Maximus (proconsul of Africa), 238, 243, 246–7, 254n1, 265 clavi (bands), 27, 219, 276–7, 286 – angusti, narrow, 27, 42–3n28, 90n36 – lati, wide, 27, 30, 43n29, 61n8 Clemens, T. Flavius (Clement of Alexandria), 174–8, 188n15 Cleopatra VII (queen of Egypt), 63– 4n20 cliens, clientes, 9, 23–4, 37, 39, 92n58, 95–112 clientela, 89n11, 97, 103, 106–7
356 General Index clipeus, 92n48, 121, 232 cloaks, 1, 6, 10, 12, 25, 27, 30, 34, 36, 39, 42n27, 73–4, 78–9, 82, 99, 147, 160, 198–9, 205, 208–10, 212–13, 214n19, 215nn23–4, 215n29, 216nn45–6, 216n49, 220, 237n23, 240, 259–70, 272. See also amictus, chlamys, himation, lacerna, laena, mantles, paenula, sagum Clodius, P., 31, 188n19 coiffure, 167, 174, 284. See also hairstyles coming-of-age, 4, 8, 47–70, 142. See also girlhood, rites de passage Commodus (Roman emperor), 30, 116, 257–8, 263, 267n1, 267–8n4 contrarete, contraretarius, 9, 117–19, 122, 126, 132n17, 132n25 cork, 175 Cornelia, daughter of Scribonia, 26 – mother of the Gracchi, 91n40 corona (crown), 4, 77, 143, 152n34, 170n22, 275–6, 289n22 – civica (civic, of oak-leaves), 77, 89n21 – graminea (grass, i.e., the siege crown), 77 – obsidionalis (siege, made of grass), 77 Cos, 194 cosmetics, 2, 7–8, 12, 16n38, 140, 147– 50, 172–201, 249 – boxes/cases, 148, 173, 175, 180–4, 190n37, 190–1n45 cosmological poetry, 10, 205–16 costume history, 1–3, 6, 14n2, 15– 16n31, 40n1 courtesan, 156n77, 176, 198–201, 201n14. See also prostitute coverlet, 208, 231, 236n21 cowl, 287
Crepereia Tryphaena, 148, 174 crepidae, 45n63, 81–2 criminals, 5, 7, 103, 124, 271–3, 292n44 crimson, 219, 230 Crispinus. See Vettius Crispinus cross-dressing, 2, 11, 14n3 crowns. See corona cultus, 36, 45n68, 45n70, 173–8, 186–7, 225, 231, 276–8 curling iron, 177–8, 181, 249 cursus honorum, 29, 48, 56, 61n7, 65n31, 73, 80, 82–3, 87, 284 Cyparis, 182, 185 Cypassis, 197 dagger, 9, 115 daughters, 21, 26, 68n64, 139–71, 178, 180, 183, 186, 197–8, 206, 228, 231, figs. 8.2–8.4 daughters-in-law, 169n14, 275 depilation, 120, 133n29, 175, 177, 188n19, 249 deportment, 10, 16n38, 174, 177, 240, 242, 249, 254. See also bearing, habitus deviance, 6–7, 32, 35, 113–14, 120–6 dextrarum iunctio, 284–5 diadem, 9, 54, 163, 167, 171nn34–5, 229–30, 279, 284, 289n22 dies lustricus, 48, 61n7 dignitas (dignity), 8–9, 28, 55, 66n38, 72, 82, 101–2, 105–7, 124, 186, 217, 220, 223, 243–4, 248, 260, 265, 288n4 dimachaerus, 129 Dindia Macolnia, 183 dinners, 23, 56, 97–8, 102–5, 109n11, 109n14, 109–10n15, 111nn34–5, 223. See also banquets discernicula, 181, 184, 189–90n34
357 General Index dolls, 26, 47, 60n3, 63n17, 148, 174, 187n6 domina, 243, 255n7, 275–9, 281–3, 290nn28–30, 290–1n32, 291n33, 292n42, fig. 14.3 Domitian (Roman emperor), 23, 32, 76, 109n11, 236n13, 274, 284 domus (household), 56, 64n22, 186, 229, 261 – Augusta, 12, 164 – Caesaris, 29, 36 drapery, 144, 282–7, 291–2n39 draping, 11, 67n53, 163, 282–7 draucus, 120, 133nn31–4 dress – African, 11, 257–93 – augural, 11–13, 33, 38, 43n34, 82–3, 91n46, 161–2, fig. 7.2 – barbarian, 37, 39, 46n78, 164, 232 – beggar’s, 240, 243, 255n3 – boy’s, 8, 22, 26, 36, 47–70, 94, 105, 141–2, 144, 151n18, 152n23, 153n44, 163, 166, 174 – bridal, 9, 13, 27, 48, 50, 63n18, 114, 142–3, 156n81, 163, 187n7, 229–30, 275, 283–4, 289n19, 290n31 – censors’, 8, 29, 38, 72 – centurions’, 123, 240 – Christian, 11, 158–9, 174–7, 260–73, 280, 286–7 – citizen’s, 6–10, 21–33, 37–40, 44n44, 51, 54–6, 63–4n20, 64n22, 64n26, 69n68, 71–112, 123, 142, 147–8, 187, 191n56, 219, 221, 259, 264, 268– 9n24 – civic magistrates’, 30, 240, 286 – Coan, 168, 193–5, 209, 214n20 – colour, 7–8, 12–13, 16n39, 23, 27–9, 31–4, 44n52, 53–4, 80–1, 99, 141, 147–9, 182, 190n40, 198, 206–7, 211, 215n27, 219, 225–6, 234, 241–2, 277
– consular, 10, 38, 74, 82–3, 91n46, 91– 2n47, 217–37, 261, 284, 293n51 – curule magistrates’, 8, 25, 27–31, 38, 54, 72, 80–3, 108n1, 142, 286 – dining, 23, 36 – elegiac, 192–201 – elite, 3–5, 7–12, 15n15, 27, 29, 33–4, 37–8, 47–93, 95–7, 106–8, 139–57, 167, 198, 238–56, 259, 261, 263–4, 266, 293n52 – embroidered, 29, 72, 77, 92n49, 94, 208, 210, 212–13, 215n27, 218–19, 241, 274, 276–8 – emperor’s, 12, 17n48, 24, 33–4, 36–7, 43n31, 44nn53–4, 74, 84, 92n54, 94, 217–19, 225–6, 234, 269n31, 283, fig. 3.8 – equestrian (knight’s), 24, 27, 29–32, 38, 42n28, 79, 81, 90n33, 90–1n39, 94, 99, 108n1, 110n20, 151n18, 264, fig. 1.4, fig. 3.10 – female, 6–12, 22, 24, 26, 38–9, 44n50, 45n69, 53, 64n22, 139–201, 242, 249, 271–82, 286–7, 288n4, 289n19, 290n28, 291n33, 292nn44–5 – foreign, 7, 25, 35, 37, 81, 95, 164, 234 – freeborn, 8, 47–70, 94–112, 123–5, 140–2, 147–50, 152n23, 221, 243, 264 – freedmen, 30, 32, 42n24, 97, 108n1, 118, 120, 141, 153n44, 167, 264, 274 – funerary, 42n24, 71–3, 90n33 – girl’s, 8, 22, 26, 42n20, 47–8, 53, 60n3, 94, 139–58, 162–3, 166, 174, 182, 283, figs. 6.1, 6.3, 6.5, 6.7 – gladiatorial, 9, 113–35, 282, 292nn43–4 – Greek, 6–7, 10–12, 15–16n31, 16n42, 16n44, 21–2, 25, 35–6, 43n30, 44n52, 74, 77–82, 84, 120, 130–1, 139, 144– 5, 154n54, 155n55, 155n57, 159–61,
358 General Index
– – – – – –
– – –
–
–
– – –
– – –
– –
163–5, 170n22, 205, 208–10, 212–13, 250, 258–60, 262, 264–5, 268n23, 268–9n24, 285, fig. 3.11, fig. 6.3 groom’s, 156n81, 284 hunting, 74, 77, 154n54, 277, 290n28, 293n53, fig. 3.5, fig.14.3 imperial, 7, 11, 21–46, 87, 94–112, 217–93 Islamic, 158, 269n28 leisure, 81–2, 103, 293n53 luxury, 11, 27, 32–3, 35–6, 184, 188n13, 193–5, 198, 219, 222, 224, 243, 278, 290n28 masculine, 1–135, 205–70, 282–93 matron of honour’s (pronuba), 284 matron’s (veste maritali), 24, 27, 38, 41n11, 45n69, 146, 156n80, 157n88, 158–70, 199–200, 240, 272, 275, 286–7, figs. 1.2–1.3 military, 8, 12, 22, 25, 28–9, 34, 74, 77–9, 81, 83, 88, 89n22, 116, 119, 126, 247, 249, 264, 268–9n24 mourning, 13, 27, 29–31, 42nn26–7, 44n41, 82, 94, 160, 162, 166, 249, 252, 273, 285, 288n9 non-citizen’s, 7, 23–5, 32, 95 orator’s, 10, 23, 44n58, 56, 65n31, 94, 109n10, 177, 238–56, 264 ordinary, 3, 15n15, 23, 32, 46n76, 54, 66n46, 69n68, 81, 94–112, 123, 149– 50, 181, 219, 238–56, 273–4 oriental, 36–7, 156n81, 192–201 patrician, 13, 27–8, 43n31, 45–6n75, fig. 1.4 philosopher’s, 73–4, 77, 82, 88–9n9, 238–56, 259–70, 284–5, 287, figs. 3.2, 3.8 plebeian, 27, 35, 43n31 public ceremonial, 4, 7–10, 15n28, 21–108, 113, 130–1, 141, 145, 149–
50, 151n16, 158–71, 173, 184, 200, 213, 217–37, 275 – religious, 4–5, 7, 11–12, 15n25, 23, 39, 43n34, 43nn37–8, 44n41, 47–70, 83, 85–8, 145–6, 156n84, 158–71, 177, 184–6, 240–1, 263, 272–3, 288n6, 293n52 – republican, 7, 11, 22, 28, 32–4, 48, 56, 71–3, 79, 85, 95, 117, 151n18, 183, 219, 221, 235n2, 275, 282 – royal, 3, 5, 15n15, 25–6, 28, 30, 43n30, 84, 219–21, 234 – senatorial, 27–31, 33, 35, 43n30, 61n8, 191n56, fig. 1.4 – slave’s, 7, 9–10, 15n15, 17n48, 27, 30, 32, 45n63, 54, 95, 102–7, 122, 145, 148, 153n44, 167–8, 222–3, 240–2, 261–2, 264, 268n21 – soldier’s, 4, 25, 116–17, 119–20, 165, 174, 187n6, 217, 232–4, 247, 264, fig. 3.4 – triumphal, 25, 28–9, 34–5, 37–8, 43n32, 43n40, 72, 80, 83, 90n38, 90– 1n39, 92n49, 94, 98, 109n14, 217–19, 224–5, 232, 249 – widow’s, 13, 27 – working, 2–4, 12, 15n16, 39, 46n76, 95, 100,103, 105, 186, 241, 252–3 dress studies, 1–17 Drusilla (sister of Caligula), 24, 167, 171nn34–5, fig. 7.4 dyes, 33, 45–6n75, 83, 175, 177, 182, 190–1n45, 198, 219, 225–6 earrings, 145, 148, 156n81, 156n84, 176, 275, 277–8 ecphrasis, 205–16, 224, 231, 236n21, 237n25 effeminacy, 9, 16n38, 35–6, 105, 113– 15, 119–26, 130, 133n29, 133n39,
359 General Index 221–3, 247–9, 256n13, 264–6, 269n31, 269–70n32, 270n33 Egyptians, 63n20, 98, 109n14, 145, 157n86, 240, 247, 269n31 Elagabulus (Roman emperor), 36–7, 188n19 elegy, 55, 164, 192–201, 255n5 embroidery, 92n49, 208, 210, 212, 215n27, 218–19, 237n23, 274, 276 Ennius, 36, 170n22, 247 ephebate, 63–4n20 epithalamium, 156n81, 230–1 equites, 31–3, 42–3n28 essedarius, 117, 126, 129 ethnicity, 2, 4–5, 7, 11–13, 14n3, 15nn26–8, 16n42, 21–2, 25, 34, 39, 56, 73–5, 78–82, 84, 98, 111n35, 130–1, 158–60, 163 Etruscan, 16n33, 40n1, 84, 88n6, 90n26, 105, 111n39, 153–4n47, 158– 9, 183, 188n20, 189n29, 189–90n34, fig. 3.14 eunuchs, 221–3, 248–9 Eutropius, 221–3, 226–7, 235nn8–9 ewers, 180, 278, 290–1n32 eye liner, 176 eye shadow, 175, 241 fabric, 7, 12–13, 16n39, 32–3, 99, 110n20, 117, 141–3, 167, 208–9, 269n28 falx, 121 familia, gladiatorial, 117, 125, 130 fan, 277, fig. 14.2 fashion, 2–3, 5, 11, 14n1, 15n16, 15n23, 15n30, 22–3, 55, 80, 96, 144, 146, 153n39, 174–6, 247, 249, 260–1, 266, 282–3, 286, 293n55 fathers, 31, 47–70, 144, 147, 154n49, 158, 160, 162, 218, 221–2, 229–30, 232, 253. See also paterfamilias
fathers-in-law, 130 Favorinus of Arelate, 172, 245, 255n10, 256n13 Felicitas, 271–3, 281, 287–8n2 fillets, 54, 143–6, 149, 158–71, 272. See also head-bands, head-coverings, infulae, veils, vittae flamen (pl. flamines), 11–13, 29, 43n38, 92n48, 162, 169n12 flaminica, 13 flammeum, 27, 284 flask, 179–80, 278, 290–1n32 footwear, 6, 13, 16n34, 27, 35, 43nn30– 1, 45–6n75, 81–2, 110n27, 156n78, 173, 175, 177–8, 186, 189n32, 191n56, 199, 240–2, 245, 261, 277–8, 291n33. See also calcei, crepidae, sandalia, sandals, shoes, slippers, socci, soleae Fortuna Virginalis, 26, 48, 142, 152n26 forum, 23, 29, 31, 33, 35, 38–9, 43n37, 51–2, 58, 64n25, 65n31, 75, 80–2, 91n46, 93n67, 96–8, 103, 109n14, 246, 264, 280 – of Augustus, 38, 43n31, 64n26, 69n68, 83 – of Julius Caesar, 77–8 freedmen, 12, 30, 32, 42n24, 54, 97, 108n1, 109–10n15, 118, 120, 141, 153n44, 167, 264, 274 freedwomen, 10, 183 Fronto, M. Cornelius, 23, 67n54 fuscina, 113, 115–16. See also trident galea, 121, 232. See also helmet galerus, 115, 121 Gallia togata, 40, 46n81, 258 Gallus, 117, 132nn18–19 Gauls, 28, 40, 92n57, 116, 132n18, 147, 213, 245, 258 gems, 143, 148–9, 152n34, 156n81,
360 General Index 198, 222, 225–30, 232–4, 235n5, 236n14, 237n23, 276–9. See also earrings, jewellery, rings gender, 2–4, 6–13, 14n3, 14n11, 15n23, 22, 24–6, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44nn56–8, 45nn59–60, 45n66, 54, 64n22, 130, 139–201, 222, 242, 247–9, 283 Genius populi Romani, 85–6, figs. 3.18–3.19 gens togata, 21, 26, 33, 78, 87, 90n26, 94, 101, 108, 123 Gigantomachy, 207, 212–13, 216n53 girdle, 27, 148, 156n81 girlhood, 47–8, 53, 60n3, 61n11, 63n17, 94, 139–57, 182 gladiators, 9, 25, 35, 113–35, 174, 187n6, 264, 269–70n32, 282, 288n7, 292n44. See also arbelas, contrarete, dimachaerus, essedarius, myrmillo, provocator, retiarius, secutor gladius, 116, 119 glass, 153n44, 190n37, 190–1n45, 276 gold, golden, 12, 27, 29–30, 50, 58, 62– 3nn15–16, 69n68, 70, 72, 75, 89n14, 92n49, 94, 104, 106, 111n39, 121, 133n40, 143–4, 148, 152n34, 153nn44–5, 157n87, 175–6, 182, 184, 206–7, 218–19, 223, 225–6, 229–30, 233–4, 237n23, 240, 274–6, 278, 280, 291n33 grandfather, 229–30 grandson, 12, 49, 54, 82, 229–30 Gratian (Roman emperor), 217–18, 234–5n1 greave, 115–17 green, 148, 156n81, 225 Greeks, 7, 11–12, 21, 25, 39, 44n52, 71, 78–82, 84, 92n57, 126–31, 139, 158– 60, 163, 244–8, 250–1, 256n22, 258– 60, 262, 264–5, 267–8n4, 269n31
grooming, 73, 172–91, 200, 201n14, 242 gutti, 182, 190n42 gymnasium, 78, 82, 120, 130 habitus, 22, 36–7, 43n35, 45nn68–70, 73, 79, 81–2, 88n7, 88–9n9, 108n7, 121, 152n23, 217, 225, 233, 240, 259–60, 262, 264, 266–7, 268n17, 276. See also bearing, deportment, grooming Hadrian (Roman emperor), 23–4, 33, 246, 281 haircombs, 148, 153n43, 173–91 hairdresser, 182, 185, 188n20, 189n30, 189–90n34, 190n40, 289n22. See also ornatrix hairnets, 176, 181, 189n33, 274 hairpins, 178–9, 181–2, 184, 190n40, 272–3, 278 hairstyles, 7–8, 12, 16n38, 27, 31, 40, 73, 145–50, 153n41, 155n69, 156n81, 156n84, 158–71, 173–8, 181–2, 184– 5, 193–4, 196, 198–9, 224, 226, 228, 239, 241–4, 247, 249–50, 254n5, 256n13, 265, 271–9, 282, 284, 288n4, 288n9, 293n55 – feminine, 7–8, 12, 16n38, 27, 145– 50, 153n41, 156n81, 156n84, 158–71, 173–6, 181–2, 184–5, 241–3, 271–9, 282, 284, 288n4, 288n9; figs. 6.1–6.7, figs. 14.3, 14.8 – masculine, 27, 31, 35, 73, 177–8, 239, 244, 247, 249–50, 256n13, 284–5, 293n55, figs. 3.1–3.13, fig. 14.8 – ‘melon,’ 146, figs. 6.2–6.4, 6.6 – nodus, 167, 242 – slaves’, 27, 102, 153n44, 241–2, 261–2 – See also head-bands, head-coverings, seni crines, and tutuli Hannibal, 28, 215n32, 221
361 General Index Haterii, tomb of the, 274 headbands, 9, 13, 24, 26–7, 145, 155n64, 158–71, 176, 214n2, 272, 277. See also head-coverings, infulae, redimicula, ribbons, vittae head-coverings, 9, 12–13, 54, 66n41, 158–71, 176, 271–2, 277–8, 284. See also caps, headbands, helmets, veil, and veiling helmet, 9, 115–17, 119, 128, 130, 232. See also galea, galerus ‘Herculean’ knot, 27 himation, 25, 84, 90n38, 263–4, 289n22, fig. 3.11 Honorius (Roman emperor), 220–1, 224–8, 230, 232, 234, 235n8, 236n15, 236n20 hoplomachi, 117
jasper, 148, 156n81, 225–6, 236n14 jewellery, 6–8, 12–13, 16n34, 27, 30, 140, 148–50, 174, 182–3, 188n21, 198, 219, 224–7, 229–30, 232, 234, 235n5, 237n23, 240, 243, 249, 274–9, 289n22, 291n33. See also anulus aureus, bulla, rings jewellery box (loculus), 276–8 Julius Caesar, C., 27–8, 34–5, 45n60, 47, 62n14, 66n43, 70n70, 77–8, 85–7, 91n40, 93n64, 159, 211–12, 221, 232, 246, 250, 255n11 Juvenal, 9, 24, 39, 94–115, 120–6, 130– 1, 131n1, 131n5, 133n35, 134n48, 155n64, 182, 221 Juventas, 50–1, 63n19, 64n25
identity, 2–5, 7, 14n3, 21–46, 52, 58, 71–95, 99, 107, 128, 172–91, 215n24, 238–56, 258, 276, 282–3. See also Romanitas ideology, 2, 7–8, 33–4, 37–40, 44n55, 54, 72, 84, 87, 176–7, 183–5, 213, 219, 265, 293n53 imperial period. See principate infames, 9, 25, 41n14, 123–5. See also actors, adulteresses, criminals, gladiators, pimps, prostitutes infamia, 123, 133n41 infulae, 9, 54, 66n41, 145, 155nn64–5, 159–71, fig. 7.3 instita, 24, 41n11, 155n66. See also limbus invective, 36, 67–8n57, 172, 221–3, 264–5 Isidore (bishop of Seville), 13, 116, 144 Isis, 12, 166, 185, 240 ivory, 148, 174, 181, 183, 185, 190n37, 228, 277
lace, 235–6n11 lacerna, 6 laena, 13, 29, 43n38, fig. 1.5 lana, lanea, 161, 163 lanista, 122, 125–6, 264 Lares, 47, 50, 62n15, 63n17, 90n37, 122, 142, 152n29, 162 laurel, 165–6, 232 law courts, 7, 10, 21–3, 30–1, 35, 39, 46n77, 94, 98, 238–56 leather, 62–3n16, 79, 105–6, 176, 277 legislation, 7, 22–3, 28, 31–6, 95–6, 108–9n8 – sumptuary, 5, 15n29, 32, 34, 157n87 lekythoi, 182 lex – Iulia de maritandis ordinibus, 33 – Iulia theatralis, 23, 33, 41n4, 96, 108–9n8 – Oppia, 28, 43n33, 147 – Roscia, 36 – Villia annalis, 61n7
kohl, 176, 183
362 General Index Liber (Bacchus), 46n80, 49–50, 55, 62n14, 63n19, 67n50, 227–8 Liberalia, 47, 49–50, 61–2n12, 62n14 lictors, 29, 232 limbus, 155n66 linen, 142–3, 152n36, 157n87, 169n9, 234, 240–1 lineum, 142–3, 152n36, 233 litters, 98, 102 Livia, 162, 166–8, 170n31 Livy, 28–9, 68n64, 82, 116, 147, 161, 163–4 loincloth, 79, 115, 241, 244, 278. See also subligaculum, underwear lorica, 231 lotions, 175. See also unguents ludus (gladiatorial school), 121–6, 131n10 ludi (public festivals), 12, 34, 43n32, 43n34, 80 lunula (girl’s amulet), 42n20, 143–5, 148–9, 153nn45–6, 155n62 lunulae (crescent-shaped shoe buckles), 45–6n75, 245 Lupercalia, 79, 90n30 Luperci, 78–9 Macedonia, 25, 35, 243 magic, 10, 56, 238, 240, 253, 255n5 makeup. See cosmetics manhood, 26, 51–3, 62n15, 64n25, 224 manica, 115–17 mantle, 24, 74, 82,157n90, 198, 205–6, 263–5, 291–2n39 – back-mantle, 155n55 – hip-mantle, 85–6, 93n62, fig. 3.20 – see also palla manumission, 27, 30, 42n24 Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor), 37, 232 marriage, 8, 15n28, 26–7, 47–8, 60n3,
61n11, 63nn17–18, 69–70n69, 113– 14, 130, 131n5, 139–40, 142, 144, 147–9, 155–6n73, 156n81, 163, 172, 186, 228–31, 236–7n22, 284–5. See also wedding Martial, 9, 24, 32, 45–6n75, 94–112, 116, 120, 131n1 martyrs, 271–3, 280–2, 287–8n2, 288n4, 288n8, 289n10, 292nn42–4 masculinity, 11, 44n58, 52, 114, 125, 172, 176–8, 188n17, 220–2, 247–9, 254, 264, 269–70n32 Masinissa (king of Numidia), 25 mason, 179, 185 massage, 174, 185 matrons, 24, 27, 38–9, 41n11, 45n69, 146, 156n80, 158–71, 199–200, 271– 3, 275, 284, 286–7, figs. 1.2–1.3 matrona (married woman), 24, 157n88, 167–9, 199–200, 240, figs. 1.2–1.3 – stolata, 24, figs. 1.2–1.3 Messala Corvinus, M. Valerius, 10, 197 Messala, M. Valerius (addressee of Ciris-poem), 205–16 Messalina (wife of Claudius), 171n35 mirrors, 148, 173–4, 176–91, 275–9, 289n19, 289n22, 290–1n32 Mithridates VI (king of Pontus), 25 modesty, 24–5, 55, 159, 177, 187n3, 188n12, 193, 197, 272, 278–9, 284 morality, 2, 5, 7, 9–10, 14n3, 16n38, 22, 24, 26, 32–7, 39–40, 54–8, 67nn55– 6, 67–8n57, 79, 81–2, 91n41, 94, 102, 107, 113–14, 120, 123, 126, 141, 149– 50, 163, 172–7, 186, 199, 201n10, 234, 240, 248–9, 260–1, 264, 266–7, 280–3, 289n23 mos maiorum, 33, 37, 39, 81, 86 mosaics, 116, 133n29, 188n13, 220, 243, 253, 255n7, 274–84, 286,
363 General Index 290n28, 290–1n32, figs. 14.1–14.6, 14.9 mothers, 8, 41n11, 49–50, 57–8, 62n13, 62n15, 63–4n20, 69nn66–7, 91n40, 127, 143–4, 146, 148, 156n81, 166–7, 169n14, 172, 222, 228–9, 271, 275, 287–8n2, fig. 6.1 mourning, 13, 27, 29–31, 42n26, 82, 94, 160, 162, 166, 249, 252–3, 273, 285, 288n9. See also ricinium, toga pulla mundus muliebris, 9, 156n76, 172–91, 291n33 mutatio vestis, 26–7, 30, 47–70 myrmillo, 9, 117–19, 121–2, 124, 126, 128–9, 132nn18–19, 132n25, 134– 5n52 myrmillo contrarete, 118–19, 132n25 myrrh, 193–4 Naples (Neapolis), 81–2, 84, 90–1n39, 283 neck-torque, 284 neckerchief, 36 necklace, 148, 153–4n47, 155n62, 156n81, 156n84, 184, 275–7 needles, 178, 182, 190n40, 225 Nero (Roman emperor), 32, 36, 49, 83, 109n11, 211, 284, fig. 3.22 nets, 9, 113, 115, 121–3, 244, 290n28. See also retia North Africa, Roman, 10–12, 24–5, 46n77, 59, 188n13, 235n8, 238–93 Notker the Stammerer, 233–4 nudity, 9, 11, 74, 77–9, 81, 83–6, 88, 90n31, 90–1n39, 92n54, 92n57, 111n39, 113–35, 163, 184, 191n47, 192–6, 222–3, 234, 240–1, 271–7, 279–82, 285, 287, 288n4, 288n8, 289n16, 289n22, 291–2n39, 292n44, 293n53, figs. 3.4–3.5, 3.16–3.17, 3.23, 3.26, fig. 14.7
– athletic, 78–9, 84, 120, 130 – female, 11, 271–82, 288n4, 288n8, 292n44 – funerary, 84–5, 92n57, 274–5, 289n16 – gladiatorial, 113–35, 282, 292n44 – god-like, 84–6, 92n57, 274–9, 281, figs. 3.20, 3.23 – heroic, 74, 77, 81, 83–4, 281, 293n53, figs. 3.4–3.7, 3.12 – sacred, 163 – semi-, 79, 84–6, figs. 3.14, 3.20 Numidia, 25 Numidians, 265, 270n35 occupation, 4, 10, 95, 103, 175, 185, 189n31, 191nn52–3 Octavia (sister of Augustus), 29, 167 Octavian, 34 officia, 51, 97, 106, 156n81, 285 oilflask, 179 oils, 173, 177, 179 ointments, 181–3, 256n13 ornatrix, 182, 185, 190n40 ornatus, 156n76, 173–8, 184–7, 240, 253, 276, 278, 289n23 otium, 74, 77, 81–2, 103, 111n31, 285, 293n53 Ovid, 24, 49, 52, 55, 62n14, 147, 156n80, 162–6, 168–9n8, 169n14, 170n19, 182, 193–5, 197–8, 201, 208 paenula, 6, 78–9 paideros, 175 palla, 6, 24, 147, 154n50, 159, 163, 198–200, fig. 1.2 pallium, 10–11, 13, 21, 24, 35–6, 45nn64–5, 73–4, 77, 81–2, 150n11, 257–70, 285, 288n6, 293n52, fig. 3.2 paludamentum, 6, 12, 74, 77, figs. 3.4– 3.5, 3.7
364 General Index panegyric, 10, 67n56, 205–37, 261 parasite, 98, 108n5, 110n16 parasols, 173, 178, 180, 182 parmula, 126 parmularius, 126, 134n50 pater, 27, 86, 153–4n47 pater patriae, 86 paterfamilias, 37, 66n48, 252 patrons, 9, 23–4, 37, 92n58, 96–107, 186, 193, 221, 274–5, 280 patronage, 55, 96–112 pearls, 99, 148, 156n81, 225–6, 249, 277–8, 280 pecten, 179–81 Penates, 44n56, 165–6, 170n24, 170n26 pendants, 144, 153–4n47, 155n62, 176 peplos, 6, 144, 155n55, 205–16, 263, 269n26, 289n22 peregrini, 25, 32–3, 102, 108n4, 193, 253 perfume, 7, 12, 182, 189–90n34, 190n42, 191n47, 198, 222, 275, 278, 291n33 Perpetua. See Vibia Perpetua Persius, 53–4, 62n15, 66n42, 69n66, 141 perula, 181 phalli, 144, 176 philosophers, 1, 67n49, 73–4, 77, 82, 88–9n9, 235n9, 238–56, 259–70, 284–5, 287, 291–2n39, figs. 3.2, 3.8 pilleus, 27, 30, 42n24 pimps, 25, 264 Pliny, the Elder, 44–5n59, 53, 78–81, 90nn26–7, 143, 151n18, 160, 236n14, 249 – the Younger, 23, 48, 51, 58, 97, 111n31, 218, 244, 252, 256n20 Polemo, M. Antonius (of Laodicea), 172, 256n13 Polemon the Periegete, 263, 269n26
Polybius, 30, 37–8, 71–3, 80, 270 Pompeius Magnus, Cn. (Pompey), 34, 134n46, 160 Poppaedia Secunda, 178, 180–1, 183, 190n44, figs. 8.2–8.4 Porsenna (king of Clusium), 25 portraits, 9, 40–1n3, 71–93, 139–57, 166–7, 171n39, 189n26, 189n29, 226, 247, 255–6n12, 256n13, 274, 277, 284–5, 289n16, 293n53, 293n55, figs. 3.10, 3.17, 3.25, fig. 14.8 – bronze, 72, 80 – busts, 76–7, 141, 155n65, 167, 171n34, figs. 3.6–3.7, figs. 6.5, 6.7, fig. 7.3 – funerary, 189n26, 189n29, 275 – masks, 71 – marble, 80 – mosaic, 275–9 – mummy, 145, 247, 256n13 – painted, 74, 77, 80 – private, 74–7, 85, 87, 93n59, 94, 141, figs. 3.3–3.7, 3.16–3.17, 3.26 – public, 71–3, 82–5, 94, 141, figs. 3.18–3.20 – relief, 72, 75–6, 84–5, 87, figs. 3.13, 3.15, 3.17, 3.25, figs 6.4–6.5 – see also statues principate, 32, 48, 51, 54, 72, 113–35, 144–5, 171n35, 172–91, 205–93 Proiecta, 181, 184, 191nn48–9 pronuba, 156n81, 284 Propertius, 26, 49, 55, 57, 62n15, 69n66, 142–3, 193–5, 198–9, 201 prostitutes, 4–5, 25, 35–6, 41–2n16, 56, 101, 104, 111n35, 133n34, 156nn77– 8, 176, 188n12, 193–5, 197–201, 269–70n32, 288n4 provocator, 117, 126, 129 psimythion, 175 Ptolemy (king of Mauretania), 26
365 General Index puberty, 26, 49, 60–1n6, 61nn10–11, 69n65, 157n90, 230 Pudens, 49, 56–8, 62n13, 67–8n57, 69n67 Pudens Pomponius, P. Flavius, 251 Pudens, Tannonius, 239 Pudentilla, 49, 58, 69–70n69, 238, 253– 4 puella, 114, 152n26, 152n36, 153n46, 156n79, 156n81, 192–201 pumice, 177 purple, 7–8, 12–13, 26–9, 32–6, 44n49, 45–6n75, 50, 52–5, 57–8, 62n15, 66n43, 72, 83, 92n50, 94, 141, 143, 151n20, 162, 175, 182, 190n43, 193, 198–200, 207, 211–13, 219, 225–6, 228, 230, 241, 261–2, 272 purpura, 45nn64–5, 53–5, 62n15, 66nn39–40, 67n52, 69n68, 80, 141, 151n20, 162, 193, 200, 207, 211–12, 229, 235n2, 241 pyxides, 181, 183–4, 190n37 Quintilian, 23, 35, 53, 94, 117, 119, 123 141, 214n13, 244, 247–9, 251–2, 256n16 red, 32n14, 28, 53–4, 151n20, 183, 205, 207, 221, 225–6, 240, 272, 280, 286 redimicula, 155n64 reliefs, 9–10, 44n56, 72, 75–6, 84–7, 88n4, 116, 141, 144–8, 153–4n47, 154nn52–4, 155n65, 169n17, 274, 283, 290–1n32, figs. 3.1, 3.13, 3.15, 3.17, 3.22, figs. 6.1–6.4, 6.6, figs. 8.1– 8.4 – funerary, 84–5, 141, 144–5, 147, 153–4n47, 167, 171n36, 289n19, figs. 3.13, 3.17, fig. 6.4 – mundus muliebris, 9–10, 172–91, figs. 8.1–8.4
religion, 5, 7, 9, 11–12, 15n25, 37, 39, 49–55, 58–9, 63n19, 64n25, 66n45, 70n70, 77–9, 83, 85–7, 114, 130, 156n84, 158–71, 184–6, 252–3, 255n6, 256n21, 256n23, 260, 263, 269n27, 271–3, 275 Republic, 7, 11, 21–2, 32–4, 48, 55–6, 61n7, 71–3, 78–9, 85, 87–8, 88n6, 93n59, 93n67, 95, 109n11, 117, 131n10, 133n41, 144, 151n18, 177, 181, 183, 218–19, 221, 235n2, 250–1, 256n17, 258, 275, 282, 291–2n39, 292n41 retia, 113, 121–2. See also nets retiarius, 9, 113–35, fig. 5.1 ribbons, 12–13, 54, 145, 159–71, 276, 279–80, 284, 289n22 ricinium, 13, 27, 42n27 rings, 13, 27, 30, 94, 102, 144, 148, 163, 176, 274 rites de passage (rites of passage), 8, 27, 42n21, 42n24, 47–73, 142, 144, 148, 174. See also coming-of-age robes, 4–5, 10, 23, 36, 90n38, 195–6, 198, 205–37, 240–1 – consular, 10, 217–37 – dining, 23, 36 – figured, 205–16 Romanitas, 12, 25–6, 34, 39–40, 52, 71–112, 231, 260, 282–7 Romanization, 126, 252, 254, 256n21, 258 rouge, 176, 182–3, 188n19, 199 rudis, 119–20 ruffle, 24. See also instita sash, 240, 273, 275, 283 sacrifice, 23, 29, 34, 37, 42n26, 43n37, 50–1, 53–4, 64n25, 65n36, 70n70, 71, 159, 161, 163–6, 168–9n8, 169n10, 170n24, 291–2n39
366 General Index sagum, 6, 25, 263, 268–9n24 salutatio, morning, 7, 23–4, 37, 41n6, 97, 100–2, 104, 109n11, 110n24, 110n26, 110n28, 111n34 salves, 181 Samnis, 117, 132n19, 134–5n52 sandalia, 181, 186, 189n27, 189n32, 277–8, fig. 14.3 sandals, 35, 82, 181, 186, 191n56, 240 sarcophagus, 60n4, 75–6, 89n15, 140, 154n54, 181, 183, 189n29, 191n47, 283–7, 293n49, fig. 14.8 Sardinia, 25 satin, 235–6n11 satire, 9, 39, 45–6n75, 69n66, 94–114, 121–2, 124, 134n43, 141, 176–7, 182 Saturnalia, 24, 41n8, 110n22, 219 scarves, 142, 158, 278, 284 scarlet, 12, 32, 53, 66n40, 163, 207, 272 Scribonia, 26 scutum, 116–17, 131n10 secutor, 9, 115–24, 126, 128–9, 131nn9–10, 131–2n11, 132n17, 134– 5n52, fig. 5.1 segmenta, 219, 229–31 self-fashioning, 2–3, 10–11, 15n23, 37– 8, 40, 58–9, 71–94, 172–201, 238–56, 265, 274–9, 282–7 sella – castrensis, 81, 91n40 – curulis, 38, 81, 83, 91n40, 91n46, 110nn28–9, 277 senate, 7, 25, 29–31, 37, 42n25, 77, 83, 86, 90n38, 93n67, 124, 161, 200, 261 senatus consulta, 32–4, 124 seni crines (‘six braids’), 27 Septimius Severus (Roman emperor), 24 Servius, 13, 51, 64nn24–5, 66n40, 163, 169n10, 170n20, 262
Severus Alexander (Roman emperor), 27, 50, 262 shawl, 13, 27, 142, 176 shield, 66n42, 115–17, 119, 121, 126, 128, 130, 174, 208–10, 212–13, 215nn29–30, 215n32, 215n42, 230, 232, 236n21, 262. See also clipeus, parmula, scutum shoes, 6, 13, 27, 35–6, 43n31, 45–6n75, 110n27, 156n78, 242, 245, 291n33 shuttle, 182 Sicily, 35, 59 Sidonius, 230–1 silk, 32–3, 194–5, 222–3, 225–6, 229– 30, 249 silver, 85, 91n40, 128, 174, 176, 184, 225–6, 274, 276–9, 290–1n32, 291n33, fig. 3.19 sinus, 66n42, 154n53, 193, 196, 242, 283–6 sisters, 24, 29, 167, 195, 229–30 sisters-in-law, 201n7, 228 skincare, 175, 265, 276 slaves, 7, 9–10, 15n15, 17n48, 23, 27, 30, 32, 44n53, 50–1, 54, 64nn22–3, 95, 97, 99, 102–7, 111nn33–4, 111– 12n40, 112n41, 122, 145, 148, 153n44, 167–8, 175–6, 185–6, 191n52, 222–3, 240–3, 248–50, 252, 261–2, 264, 268n21, 278 slippers, 27, 35, 173, 175, 178–81, 186, 241 socci, lutei, 27 social control, 5, 7, 9, 14n3, 21–46, 55, 68n61, 94–112, 147, 163 socks, 290n29 soldiers, 4, 25, 116–17, 119–20, 124, 165, 174, 187n6, 217, 232, 234, 247, 264, fig. 3.4 soleae, 35, 45n65, 179, 181, 189n32 sons, 31, 42n25, 47–70, 82, 84, 130,
367 General Index 153n44, 160, 162, 226, 228, 230, 252–3, 256n22, 271 sons-in-law, 220, 226 sophists, 74, 88–9n9, 188n17, 244–6, 250, 255nn9–10, 256n13, 260, 267 Soranus, 143, 173–4 Spain, 25, 29, 35, 40, 40–1n3, 44n51, 45–6n75, 98, 103, 118, 182 Spaniards, 25, 258 spatula, 181–2 spectacle, 9, 29, 38–9, 47–70, 113–35, 231, 244, 271–3, 288nn3–4, 288n7 spindle, 182, 186 sportula, 52, 65n27, 69–70n69, 97–8, 101, 109n11, 109n14, 110n25, 110n27 statues, 8, 23–4, 38, 40–1n3, 43n30, 44n56, 45n73, 50, 70n70, 71–94, 98, 141, 144–6, 149, 151n18, 154n49, 155n65, 156n84, 161–2, 166–7, 168n5, 171nn34–5, 184, 235n2, 243, 245–6, 255n6, 274–5, 280–3, 289n16, 289n22, 290n31, 291n33, 291–2n39, 293n50, 293n53, figs. 1.1– 1.3, 1.5, figs. 3.2–3.5, 3.8–3.9, 3.11– 3.12, 3.20–3.21, 3.23–3.24, 3.26, figs. 7.4–7.5 – auguralis, 83, 91n46 – bronze, 38, 76, 78, 80, 83, 90n38, 91n46, 290n31, fig. 3.8 – capite velato, 23, 40–1n3, 44n56, 85, 93n62, 161–2, fig. 1.1, fig. 3.20, fig. 7.1 – consularis, 83, 91n46, 91–2n47 – cuirassed, 8–9, 77–9, 81, 89n20, 90– 1n39, figs. 3.7, 3.9, 3.21 – cult, 85–7, 184, figs. 3.20, 3.23 – equestrian, 38, 75, 77, 79–81, 83, 89n14, 89n20, 90–1n39, 91n46, 92n48, 151n18, fig. 3.10
– funerary, 82–5, 141, 147, 149, 157n85, figs. 3.12, 3.16 – gilded, 75, 89n14 – Greek, 74, 84 – loricatus, 77–9, 81, 89n20 – marble, 38, 80, 83, 91n46, 289n22, 290n31, figs. 3.3–3.5, 3.9–3.12, 3.16, 3.21, 3.23–3.24, 3.26 – paludatus, 77, 81, figs. 3.4–3.5, 3.7, 3.9 – pedestris, 90–1n39, 92nn48–9 – sedens, 83, 91n40, 91n46 – stolate, 24, 38 – togate, 8–9, 23, 38, 70n70, 74–5, 77, 81, 83, 85, 90n38, 90–1n39, 94, 108– 9n8, 144, 149, 293n53, figs. 1.1, 1.38, figs. 3.3, 3.20 – triumphalis, 38, 83, 91n46, 92n49, 98, 109n14 stepsons, 49, 56 Stilicho, 220–1, 226–37 stola, 6–8, 13, 16n33, 16n36, 22–6, 32, 34, 36–42, 45n67, 94, 108n1, 146–7, 154n53, 155n66, 168, 169n14, 284, figs. 1.2–1.3 strophium, 141, 143, 149, 152n29, 153n38 subligaculum, 115–16, 282, 292n43 subucula, 143, 152n36 Suetonius, 13, 22, 32–3, 36–7, 45n71, 62n15, 81, 96, 109n11, 115–16, 123 suffibulum, 54 Sulla, L. Cornelius, 61n7, 160 Sulpicia, 10–11, 150n9, 192–201 supparus, 141–3, 149, 152nn34–6, 153n37 sword, 74, 114–17, 119, 128, 174. See also falx, gladius, rudis synthesis, 23 – synthesina, 36, 45n70 Syphax (king of Numidia), 25
368 General Index tapestry, 208 Tertullian, 10–11, 51, 59n1, 114, 150n11, 177, 188n18, 257–70, 276, 280–1, 288n6, 291–2n39, 293n52 textile production, 3–4, 12–13, 16n39, 236n20. See also weaving theatre, 7, 23, 32–4, 36–9, 83, 96–7, 102, 108–9n8, 126, 134n50, 265, 280, 289n22 – Theatre of Pompey, 34, 37–8, 83, 91n46 Theoderic (Gothic king), 39 Theodosius the Great (Roman emperor), 211, 221, 226, 228–30, 236n20 Thracian, gladiators, 117, 126, 128 Thraex, 114, 121, 126, 134n50 tiara, 289n22 Tiberius (Roman emperor), 32–4, 36, 49, 81–2, 87, 108n1, fig. 3.24 Tibullus, 198–9, 201 tirocinium fori, 56, 65n31, 67n54 toga, 6–13, 15–16n31, 16n33, 16n36, 16n41, 21–112, 123, 141–2, 144–7, 149–54, 157n90, 159, 161–3, 166, 197–8, 201n7, 217–37, 243, 249, 251, 254, 255n6, 258–60, 262–6, 268– 9n24, 274, 278, 282–7, 293n49, 293n53, figs. 3.1, 3.3, fig. 6.1 – banded, 283, 286 – candida, 8, 27, 42n25, 94 – contabulata, 80, fig. 3.3 – exigua, 72 – libera, 8, 54–5, 59n1, 62n13, 62n15 – muliebris, 36, 45n67, 151n18, 157n90, 197, 201n7 – palmata, 217–20 – perversa, 44n43 – picta, 8, 25, 29, 35, 43n40, 80, 83, 94, 219–20, 224–5, 233, 235n5, 237n23 – praetexta, 7–8, 13, 25–31, 33–4, 36–
7, 43n32, 43n34, 43n37, 44n41, 45n67, 47–8, 50, 53–5, 58, 60n3, 62n14, 65n36, 66n37, 67n52, 67n54, 68n64, 72, 90–1n39, 91n42, 94, 141– 2, 145, 147, 149, 150n5, 151n18, 151n20, 151–2n22, 152nn23–5, 153n41, 153n44, 154n53, 157n90, 219, 243, 283, 286 – pulla, 23, 27, 30–1, 33, 41n4, 42n26, 82, 91n42, 94 – pura, 8, 26–7, 54, 59n1, 61–2n12, 64n26, 66n45, 69n68 – purpurea, 80 – virilis, 26–7, 35–6, 45n67, 47–70, 142, 151n18, 264 – in the sense of ‘peace,’ 39–40, 46n80, 94, 108n3, 218, 220, 231 – see also cinctus Gabinus, trabea togatulus (‘little guy in a toga’), 98, 100, 108 togatus (pl. togati), 8, 10, 23–4, 38–40, 46n78, 48, 52, 55, 57–8, 65n31, 65n35, 66n42, 66n48, 67n56, 68n61, 70n70, 72, 74–5, 77, 81, 83, 85, 90n38, 90–1n39, 93n62, 94, 97, 100– 4, 109n10, 109–10n15, 110n25, 110nn, 111n31, 243, 257–9, 262–3, 266–71, 282–7, 293n53, fig. 3.3 togula, 100–1, 110n24, 110nn28–9, 152n26 toiletries, 9, 172–201, 278, 291n33 trabea, 13, 27, 32, 42–3n28, 217–37 Trajan (Roman emperor), 23, 33, 51, 90n37, 232, 283 tribades, 265, 269–70n32 Tribigild, 222 trident, 9, 113, 115–16, 121–3 tribon, 287 trousers, 39, 46n76 tunic, 12, 25, 27, 29–30, 34–6, 39, 44n56, 45n60, 46n76, 55, 63n18,
369 General Index 67n53, 77, 81–2, 84, 95–6, 103, 108– 9n8, 111n31, 113, 115, 121–5, 141–5, 150, 157n90, 174–5, 219, 234, 240–2, 249, 264, 271–3, 276–80, 280, 284–6, 296, 299 – child’s, 8, 50, 63n18, 141–5, 150, 151n17, 174, 280 – men’s, 6, 25, 27, 34–6, 39, 42–3n28, 43n29, 44n56, 45n60, 45n64, 55, 61n8, 77, 81, 84–5, 95–6, 103, 108– 9n8, 113, 115, 121–5, 133nn39–40, 133–4n42, 141, 174, 199, 219, 234, 241, 249, 264, 269n29, 272, 278, 285–6 – slave’s, 240, 242, 268n21 – women’s, 6, 24, 27, 35–6, 45n65, 63n18, 141–2, 144, 150, 151n17, 157n90, 175, 195, 240, 271–3, 276– 80, 284, 291–2n39 tunica – palmata, 25, 29, 45n61, 92n49 – pulla, 81–2 – recta, 27, 50, 63n18, 284 – recincta, 195 – soluta, 45n60 – talaris, 35, 45nn64–5 – turpis, 122–5 turbans, 241–2, 272, 277 ‘Turia,’ 187n3 tutuli, 167, 170n32 Twelve Tables. See XII Tables umbo, 54, 59n1, 66n42, 154n53, 282–6 uncle, 49, 50, 56–7, 62n13, 64n21, 69n66, 228 undertunic, 142 underwear, 6, 13, 16n32, 142–3, 152nn34–6, 153nn37–8, 175 undress, 113–35, 192–201, 272–3, 276 unguentaria, 182
unguents, 173, 177, 182 uxor, 147, 168n5 Varro, M. Terentius, 12, 27, 42n19, 142–3, 151n18, 160–1, 177, 181, 197, 251 veil, veiling, 7, 16n42, 27, 44n56, 54, 93n62, 114, 147, 154n53, 156n74, 158–62, 164, 169n10, 171n39, 195, 230, 232, 284. See also capite velato, flammeum, suffibulum veles, 115, 131n7 Venus, 21, 47, 111n35, 184, 191n49, 196, 212, 229–30, 243, 274–81, 283– 4, 286, 289n18, 289n22, 290n28, 290n31, 291–2n39, fig. 3.22, figs. 14.1, 14.4 Vergil, 13, 21, 23, 33, 36, 40, 94, 103, 108, 123, 161, 163–5, 170n21, 206, 208, 211, 247, 262, 286, 293n55, fig. 14.9 Verres, C., 35, 142 Verrius Flaccus, M., 12, 161 Vestal Virgins, 12, 27, 42n23, 54, 155n65, 163, 166–7, 169n17, 170n27, 171n33, fig. 7.3 vestipicus, 99 vestis, 26–7, 29, 43n32, 44n53, 111n32, 169n14, 208, 217–19, 262 – forensis, 44n53 – triumphalis, 29, 43n32, 80, 92n49 Vettius Crispinus, 57, 62n13, 69n66 Vibia Perpetua, 271–3, 281, 285–7, 289n10, 292n44 villa, 23, 76, 81–2, 103, 111n31, 243, 276–9 virtus, 8–9, 38, 74, 77, 79, 88, 119–20, 130, 140, 166, 173, 260 vittae, 9, 13, 24, 26, 41n9, 41nn11–12, 54, 66n41, 143–6, 149, 153nn41–3, 158–71, 284
370 General Index warp, 205, 208 weaving, 10, 12–13, 15n16, 27, 50, 141, 151n20, 187n3, 205–16, 218, 225–6, 228–31, 240, 249 weddings, 9, 13, 50–1, 65n27, 114, 159, 163, 166, 174, 183, 208, 231, 236n21, 284 white, 8, 23, 26–7, 33, 37, 47, 50, 52–4, 57–8, 59n1, 66n43, 66n46, 70n70, 80, 94, 99, 108–9n8, 110n20, 163, 165, 175, 185, 198, 207, 211, 219, 232, 234, 241–2, 245, 272–3, 280, 287 wickerwork, 182 widows, 13, 27, 101, 238–56 wife, wives, 8, 28, 41n11, 49, 114, 128, 130, 147, 154n53, 158–91, 226, 228, 238, 242–3, fig. 8.1. See also matron, matrona, uxor
wigs, 158, 175, 188n19 womanhood, 148, 187n3 women’s toilette, 9, 139–57, 172–91, 278, 291n33 wood, 41n4, 71, 181, 183, 190n37, 190– 1n45 woof, 205 wool, woollen, 1, 9, 27, 30, 54, 99, 110n20, 141, 145, 159, 161–3, 167, 169n9, 169n12, 182, 185–6, 189n33, 197–8, 287 wool-basket, 182, 197 wrap, 157n90, 291–2n39. See also mantle wreaths, 70n70, 166, 228–9, 232. See also corona, crown XII Tables, 32–3
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