Marriage, Divorce, and Children in ancient Rome

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This book is one in a publishing series established by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, Canberra. The OUP/HRC series includes single-author volumes by members of the HRC, past and present, and composite volumes deriving from HRC conferences. Volumes with a specifically Australian content are produced in Melbourne; other titles are handled through their Oxford headquarters. The General Editor of the series is Professor Ian Donaldson, Director of the HRC.

Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome EDITED BY BERYL RAWSON

HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE · CANBERRA CLARENDON PRESS

1991

•

OXFORD

Oxford UniveTSity Press, Walton Street, Oxford OXl. 6DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcuna Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York ©The Australian National University I99I All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmined, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Marriage, divorce, and children in ancient Rome. I. Roman Empire. Family life I. Rawson, Beryl J06.8J0937 ISBN O-I9-8I49I8-2 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Marriage, divorce, and children in ancient Rome edited by Beryl Rawson. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Family-Rome-History. 2. Marriage-Rome-History. 3· Divorce-Rome-History. 4· Children-Rome-History. I. Rawson, Beryl. 90-47265 J06.8'0937'6-dc2o HQ5II.M37 I99I ISBN o-I9-8I49I8-2 Photoset by Rowland Phototypesening Ltd Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn

Preface

IN an attempt to make this volume as accessible as possible to non-specialists, we have explained or translated most technical terms and quotations in Latin and Greek as they occur through the chapters. Some specific historical examples recur, e.g. Pompey's marriages, divorces, remarriages, and children; the Cat 1 27

Aeneid a. 4 3 5 -40, trans. H. R. Fairclough.

'A general custom with the Romans', thus Plutarch, 'because fathers were ashamed to expose their nakedness [as soon as their sons reached puberty]'. Cf. Plutarch, Roman Questions 40. 2. 7 4AB; Cicero, De officiis 1. 12.9, Pro Cluentio I 4 I , D e oratore 2. . 5 5 · 2.2.4; Valerius Maximus 2. . 1 . 7; Ambrose, D e officiis 1 . I S. 79 PL I 6 . 47; and Eyben I 9 8 5 : 4I I . 1 28 Plutarch, The Elder Cato 2.0. I-6, trans. B. Perrin. Cf. the way the emperor Augustus educated his grandsons Gaius and Lucius (and his daughter and grand­ daughters) as described by Suetonius, Augustus 64. 4- 5 . Plutarch's text on the elder Cato is discussed in every book on Roman education. Cf. e.g. Marrou I 9 6 5 : 342. ff.; Bonner I 977' IO ff; A. Wlosok ( I 978, n. I above) I 9-2.8.

138

Emiel Eyben

2.. 'Common' fathers Plutarch's picture of the elder Cato is somewhat idealized129 but certainly not unhistorical. Cato's ideal of education within the family was largely to disappear; indeed, it was already in his days somewhat anachronistic. Increasingly education was entrusted to (mostly Greek) 'specialists'. Thus Cato's contemporary Aemilius Paulius -according to Plutarch 'the most devoted of Roman fathers' -initiated his children not only personally in the traditional Roman discipline but entrusted them also to all kinds of Greek teachers-masters in grammar, logic, rhetoric, but also instructors in modelling, drawing, sports, and even hunting-and he did all he could to be with them during their studies.130 It is quite a step from the elder Cato and Aemilius Paullus to the-nevertheless contemporary-world of comedy. Whether or not, and to what extent, the comedies of Plautus and Terence reflect Roman mentality is difficult to say and cannot be argued in this chapter. Surely, however, these successful plays must have had something to do with reality-there must have been something recognizable for the public. 1 3 1 But even if Greek-inspired comedies were no mirror at all of the Roman society of those days, one cannot deny that these presentations left their mark on the audience as well as on later generations, and so helped to create a new portrayal of man, and of the father figure. In the comedies of Plautus the type of the stern (therefore not exemplary!) father comes especially to the fore. 1 32 When young Charinus, for example, fell in love with a greedy prostitute and squandered his father's money, his father Demipho was anything but happy and used all the stock criticisms of an old-fashioned parent. 'My father', as the youth tells us, denounced all this, night and day, picturing the perfidy and injustice of pimps. To think that his own estate should be absolutely mangled, and that fellow's multiplied ! All this at the top of his lungs; or now again he would mutter what he had to say-shake his head, and even insist that I was no one of his. All over the city he would go, bebawling and giving notice no one was : 2• 1 30

And could apply only to fathers wirh considerable leisure and culture. Plutarch, Aemilius Paul/us 6. 4- 5 ; cf. :1.7. 4 (moral lessons). 1 3 l Cf. Bonner 1 977: 1 8 : 'There are times when scenes in Roman Comedy depict father-son relationships very much as they must have been in real life.' 1 3 2 Cf. A. Oennerfors ( 1 97 5 , n. 1 above) 33 ff. Cf. H. W. Rissom, Vater- und Sohnmotive in der romischen Komodie, Diss. Kiel, 1 9 7 1 .

Fathers and Sons

1 39

to trust me when I looked for loans. Love had lured many a man into extravagance, he would tell me; but I was an intemperate, unrestrained, unprincipled waster, doing all I could to drain him dry . . . To think that he had supponed me all these years to be a scandal to him ! If I was not ashamed of such a life, I ought to end my life, and do it gladly . . . Work on the farm, diny work and plenty of it, that was his training [as a youth] . . 1 33 .

There are more 'humane' examples of fathers and sons in Terence. l34 A most remarkable creation is Demea, mentioned already as a conscientious but strict father. He had to conclude, however, that through his harshness he had lost the affection of his sons. As he wanted to be loved and admired by them he decided to adopt the indulgent approach which showed itself to be so successful in the case of his brother. But, as the last words of the play show, this 'convert' did not forget his sense of responsibility: If the reason my outlook on life is repellent to you boys is this, that I do not simply go along indiscriminately with anything you do, right or wrong, I wash my hands of you both. Pour money down the drain, buy what you like, do what you like. But if instead you want me to catch and correct things which you are unwary of because you are too young, want too intensely, and think over too little, and if you want me to back you up on occasion, here I am to do that for you. us

This quotation illustrates clearly in what tender and humane terms Terence sees the relationship between parents and children. A middle course must be followed in education; extreme austerity as well as extreme indulgence have to be avoided. For Terence education consists in understanding leadership and is based on mutual respect, affection, reasonableness, and trust. Let us return to 'historical' fathers. Cicero was a most devoted father. 136 He loved his daughter Tullia perhaps more than his son Marcus, but the latter too received all possible attention. From his letters we know how he loved and enjoyed his mellitus Cicero as a 1 33 Plaurus, Mercator 40 ff., trans. P. Nixon. Cf. id., Trinummus 1.79 ff., Curculio 2.7 ff. ; Terence, Heautontimorumenos 96 ff., Hecyra 1 1 4 ff., 6 7 1 ff., Adlephi 6 8 3 ff. 1 34 Cf. A. Oennerfors ( I 97 5 , n. I above) 33 ff. ; Toliver I 9 5o; A. Wlosok ( I 978, n. I above) 2.8-37; Fantham 1 97 I ; D. Bo, Genitori e fig/i nelle commedie di Terenzio, Turin, I 976. us Terence, Adelphi 989 ff., trans. A. S. Gratwick-a similar radical and sudden change in his attitude toward his son happens to Menedemus in Terence's Heautonti· morumenos.

1 36 Cf. esp. Seel I 9 5 3 = 2.70-S I (his son Marcus), :z.S I-92. (his nephew Quintus) . Cf. Bailleux 1 9 3 3 ; Eyben 1 968: 5 1 ff.

Emiel Eyben

1 40

little child, 137 how he supervised his son's (and nephew's) studies and sometimes acted himself as a teacher of rhetoric, how he investigated with anxious concern every sign of his son's progress when the latter was some time later a student at the 'university' of Athens, how he did not wish his son to have less money than the sons of other wealthier people, how, blinded by paternal love, he asked to be deceived, how he could not and would not believe that his son did not take his studies seriously, how he was gradually disabused of his illusions when he failed to get any report from his son's teachers or else when they did arrive presented a gloomy picture, and how he even contemplated a trip to Athens himself to learn about his son's progress at first hand. Circumstances conspired to prevent him from undertaking the journey, yet to inspire his son's conduct he wrote his De officiis 13 8 Although Cicero's son gave him many problems, it was his nephew Quintus who really caused him anguish at the end of his life. Cicero had largely educated Quintus himself, and the young man was an enormous disappointment to him. He was, however, of the opinion that he was not so much to blame for young Quintus' bad behaviour as were his nephew's nature and his brother's leniency: 'He has been spoiled, I suppose, by our indulgence (indulgentia nostra), and has gone to lengths that I dare not name . . . All my humouring (obse­ quium) of him has been accompanied by considerable strictness; and I have had to put my foot down not over one fault of his or a small one, but over many grave faults. But his father's kindness (lenitas) should surely have been repaid by affection rather than by such cruel disregard . . . But it is no fault of mine: it is his disposition (natura) which must cause us anxiety. That is what corrupted Curio and Hortensius' son, not their fathers' fault.'139 Again: 'His father is too kind (nimis indulgens). H I tighten the rein, he loosens it. H I could act without his father, I could manage the youngster.'140 One of the best known and-in spite of his rather narrow view of life-most sympathetic parents from Antiquity is Horace's father, 141 to whom the poet himself attributes his own relatively .

1 37 Cicero, Att. 1. I 8. I ; cf. Fam. I of. 3· 2. ('suauisssimi liberi'), Att. S· 9· 3 ('Cicero meus, modesrissimus et suauissimus puer'). 1 3 8 References in Eyben I 977' s 34-6. 1 39 Cicero, Att. I o. 4· s-6, trans. E. 0. Winstedt. 140 Cicero, Att. Io. 6. 2., trans. E. 0. Winstedt. Cf. Eyben I 977= S 3 s - 6, with other references. 1 4 1 Cf. Leach I 97 I ; A. Oennerfors ( I 97 S . n. I above) 88 ff.; Stenuit I 977·

Fathers and Sons

good character. Notwithstanding the fact that his father was of humble origin (a freedman and a poor countryman), he took his son from the little village of Venusia in Apulia to the capital to furnish him with the education of a high society boy. For his son he was a most honest guardian (custos incorruptissimus), a pater optimus who went with him to all his teachers142 and kept him !chaste, free not only from every deed of shame, but from all scandal' (Horace, Satires 1 . 6. 65-99). So his father was responsible for the moral education of his son. His method as described by the poet himself was simple and typically Roman: by giving concrete examples borrowed from immediate observation he made it clear to his son what virtues he should pursue, or what vices he should avoid to enjoy a good reputation. 143 So much for some 'historical' fathers who owe their name to their own-or to their sons' -fame. About more common fathers the literary sources offer scanty information, 144 but some letters on papyrus written by parents to-or about-children have survived. Originating from Egypt, they may not be representative of other parts of the Roman empire; but there is a universality in the following letter, written in the second century AD by Cornelius to 'his sweetest son' Hierax who was studying in Alexandria, which justifies quoting it at length: All our household warmly salutes you and all those with you. Regarding the man about whom you write to me so often, claim nothing until I come to you auspiciously in company with Vestinus and the donkeys. For if the gods will I shall arrive quickly after Mecheir is over, since at present I have urgent affairs on hand. Take care not to offend any of the persons at home, and give your undivided attention to your books, devoting yourself to learning, and then they will bring you profit. Receive by Onnophris the white robes which are to be worn with the purple cloaks, the others you should wear with the myrtle-coloured ( ?) ones. I shall send you by Anoubas both the money and the monthly supplies and the other pair of scarlet cloaks. You won me over by the dainties, and I will send you the price of these too by Anoubas; until however Anoubas arrives, you must pay for the provisions of yourself and your household out of your own money, until I send you some. For the month of Tubi there Is for yourself what you like, for Phronimus 1 6 1 42 For fathers at school, cf. Eyben 1 96 8 : 5 4 ff. 1 41 Satires 1 . 4· I 0 3 - 2.6. On the paterna praecepta (cf. Ps.-Piutarch,

De liberis educandis I 6. I 2.CD) as an important aspect of traditional Roman training, cf. Bonner I 977: I7 ff. 1 44 But see Petronius, Satyricon 46. 3-8.

Emiel Eyben drachmae, for Abascantus and his companions and Myron 9 drachmae, for Secundus 1 2. drachmae. Send Phronimus to Asclepiades in my name, and let him obtain from him an answer to the letter which I wrote to him, and send it. Let me know what you want. Good-bye, my son. Tubi 1 6. 145

CONCLU S I ON

There were, then, many models of father and son, in theory and in practice. It is clear, however, that the extreme stereotypes were rare and that Roman writers and practising fathers sought a balance between harsh discipline and indulgent permissiveness. Both ex­ tremes were recognized, and many shades in between, corresponding to the perception of the 'nature' of parents and children and to close observation of human behaviour. There can be no doubt that Romans had a clear recognition not only of 'childhood' but also of 'youth' as distinctive phases of development: youth too needed guidance, in a sense even more than childhood. That the views on parents and children recorded in our sources are largely the views of upper-class males on relationships with sons is partly a result of the fact that Roman society was a male society, partly also a reflection of the 'public' nature of our source-material and the preoccupation with developing the adult citizen, a public figure whose most fully developed form was male. The nature of the relationships between fathers and sons evolved of course throughout Roman history. Generally speaking we can say that they were marked by a growing warmth and tenderness, by a growing awareness of the fact that-as is stated explicitly by the younger Pliny-a child also is a fully fledged human being (homo). This evolution was the result of an evolving society, of the dimin­ ishing influence of the state on the individual. Turning-points can be situated c. :z.oo Be-the end of the second Punic War, when Rome won the absolute dominion of the world but at the same time was flooded with all sorts of Greek influences, and c. 30 BC, at the change from the Republic to the Empire: political life no longer sufficed to fulfil one's life and happiness was sought in other fields, e.g. in family life. In such circumstances the dangers of extreme indulgence were real. Christianity asked for more strictness but it never forgot that a father was not a slave-driver. t•s

P. Oxy. 3· 53 I .

Fathers and Sons

143

At the beginning of this chapter paternal love was connected with pietas. Not only the father but also the son asked for reverence. This typical Roman value characterized Roman fatherhood already early in history although the content of the concept was not always the same. The theme of patria potestas moderated by, and connected with, pietas is continued in the following chapter, where the focus is on corporal punishment as a discriminator of behaviour towards sons and slaves.

7 Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household R I C H A R D SALLER

A LAN WATs o N in his recent book, Roman Slave Law, remarks that 'in many regards the legal position of a .slave was very similar to that of a son-of whatever age-in paternal power. [Aside from the capacity to enter into a legal marriage] at private law their positions were very similar. Thus, neither could own property of any kind, the fund called peculium given for their use by the father or master operated in law irrespective of whether the holder was slave or free, their contracts benefited and bound the father or master to exactly the same extent in exactly the same way, the master acquired property or property rights through them in the same way, and the master was liable at private law for their wrongdoing in the same way [notably in the procedure of noxal surrender] . . . It goes without saying that in practice sons and slaves would be treated very differently' ( 1 987: 4 6 f.). Watson's final common-sense qualification does not in fact 'go without saying' to some of the most prominent Roman historians of our day. From Paul Veyne's contribution in A History ofPrivate Life emerges an image of the family very different from our conventional idea of the family today, a unit marked by a 'natural affection' between parents and children. For Veyne, the Roman family and household of the Republic and early Principate were units bounded not by affection, but by the limits of the father's power. In so characterizing the family, Veyne deliberately minimizes the distinc­ tion between filiusfamilias and slave. The language of affection and love appears in his discussion of parent-child relations only briefly in a passage dismissing 'the so-called maternal or paternal instinct' (Veyne 1987: 1 6 f.) . Treated virtually like chattels, 'children who were moved about like pawns on the chessboard of wealth and power were hardly cherished and coddled' (ibid. 1 8). Consequ�ntly, for children the father's death 'signaled the end of a kind of slavery' (ibid. 29).

Corporal Punishment, Authority, Obedience

145

By comparison with children, love for household slaves appears far more prominently in Veyne's description: 'The master com­ manded with love, and love knows no law' (ibid. 6 5 ) . Moreover, in comments on the punishment of slaves, reference is made to the exercise of paternal power or authoriry (ibid. 6 1 , 6 5 ) . Finally, the mentaliry of child and slave toward authoriry is presented as analo­ gous in the Roman mind: 'like the psychology of a child, the psychology of a slave was the result of the influences he had absorbed and the examples he had been set; his soul had no autonomy' (ibid. 62). Behind all of this seems to me to be the argument that because the paterfamilias' legal powers over his slaves and his children were virtually the same, the relationship of authoriry be­ tween father and child, and master and slave, must have been similar. Lest I appear to be setting up Veyne's exaggeration as a straw man, it is worth pointing out that elements of his views are held by other prominent scholars. To my effort to contain patria potestas in a demographic and social context, one reviewer replied with yet another recitation of the paterfamilias' legal powers, as if they were the essence of Roman family life rather than a legal construct. 1 The similariry in the positions of slave and filiusfamilias has been empha­ sized specifically with regard to corporal punishment by Ernst Badian. In his review of Moses Finley's Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, he took issue with Finley's insistence that the whip marked the condition of the slave as opposed to the free man.2 Badian asserted that the Roman slave was subject to the whip as a member of the familia, just like the filiusfamilias, under the coercive authoriry of the paterfamilias. In sum, Veyne and many others would have us conceive of the father-child relationship as completely asym­ metrical, with the father wielding all of the power and authoriry in the household (financial and coercive) over children whose role, like a slave's, was dutiful submission. Though potentially misleading, these arguments have the merit of forcing us to move beyond common sense, beyond Watson's 'it goes without saying'. If the paterfamilias did not wield power 1 Jasper Griffin, review of Garnsey and Saller 1 9 8 7 in London Review of Books, I 5 Oct. 1 987: I 5 f. 2 New York Review of Books, 2.1 Oct. 1 9 8 1 : 49· Badian, for reasons that he does not explain, does acknowledge that Finley's distinction 'gradually came to be true, for a few generations' in the Roman Empire, but he does not indicate which 'few generations' he is thinking of.

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Richard Saller

indiscriminately over all in his domus, how were the conditions of the son and the slave differentiated ? To answer this question, this chapter will focus on two themes: first, the Romans' conceptualiz­ ation of their core family virtue, pietas (Plate 2.b) ; and second, the use of corporal punishment (uerbera) in the household. There are many other respects in which slave and son were distinguished, but these two are central. 3 PI E TA S

Veyne in his representation o f the Roman family has practically nothing to say about pietas-not surprisingly, since this familial virtue does not suit his argument at all. Other historians have incorporated pietas into their portrayal of asymmetrical family relations by defining pietas as 'filial piety', an ideal emphasizing filial obedience and submission to the father as a virtue. After all, isn't this what the figure of pius Aeneas is all about? Or, to put the question in a more precise and positive way, does the image of the dutiful son submissive to his father adequately capture the semantic range and nuances of pietas in Roman culture? At first glance it might seem so. Cicero repeatedly refers to pietas before higher authorities: the gods, the patria, and parents. 4 Valerius Maximus includes in his collection of moral exempla a title ( s . 4 ) 'De pietate erga parentes et fratres et patriam'. A closer look at Cicero and Valerius Maximus as well as the Aeneid suggests, however, that an interpretation of pietas as submission to higher authority is so narrow as to be misleading. For both Cicero and Valerius Maximus, pietas is owed to parents, both father and mother, though the mother has no legal power or authority over her children. Furthermore, since Valerius Maximus includes brothers on his list, neither obedience nor a vertical social relationship can be inherent in the notion of pietas. Finally, pietas in the Aeneid is not just a filial virtue or a matter of obedience: Aeneas' pietas extended down to Ascanius as well as up to Anchises. 3 Since I have discussed pietas in a different context, I will not repeat the whole argument, but only what is relevant here, together with some additional material that I have uncovered since finishing the other essay (Saller 1 988). 4 De inuentione 2.. 6 5 f., Pro Plancio 90, De officiis 2.. 46, De re publica 6. 16. On Cicero's changing ideas about pietas, Wagenvoort 1 980: 1-2.0.

Corporal Punishment, Authority, Obedience

1 47

A range of other, less familiar evidence permits an elaboration of the point that the Romans associated pietas in the context of the family not so much with submission to higher authority as with reciprocal affection and obligations shared by all family members ( Renier 19 4 2: 75). A temple to Pietas was built in Rome by the Acilii Glabriones and dedicated in I 8 I BC. The legend later repeated to explain the placement of the temple is reported by Valerius Maxim us and the elder Pliny. A humble woman, it was said, was condemned to death and imprisoned. The prison guard was reluctant to carry out the execution and decided to delay until the woman starved. The guard allowed the woman's daughter to visit on the condition that she bring no food. As time passed, the guard began to wonder how the woman continued to live. Peeking into the prison cell, he oversaw the daughter nursing her mother with her own breast. When he reported the extraordinary affair, the prisoner was released, and the temple to Pietas was later built on the site of the prison. Valerius Maximus concludes, 'one would think this deed against the nature of things, if it were not the first law of nature to esteem parents'.5 That this legend was a later invention is not so important as the fact that the Romans by the late Republic chose to repeat this story to explain the temple and not a tale about fathers and the exercise of patria potestas. This founding legend emphasizes compassion toward a helpless mother who has no authority and, it might be added, the daughter in supporting her mother acts against the authority of the patria. The story about the temple is the first of five pietatis exempla recounted by the elder Pliny (7. I 2I-2). The other four are about ( I ) Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus' decision to die in place of his beloved wife Cornelia, (2) Marcus Lepidus' heartsickness and death after divorcing Appuleia whom he still loved, (3 ) Publius Rutilius' death upon hearing the news of his brother's electoral defeat, and ( 4 ) Publius Catienus Philotimus' self-destruction on his patron's funeral pyre. In all of these exempla paternal authority and filial obedience are conspicuous by their complete absence. Furthermore, in the story of Lepidus pining away for his ex-wife, there is no question of duty involved, only caritas. In Pliny's mind, then, pietas evoked a deep, loving attachment, usually between family members, rather than ' Valerius Maximus 5· 4· 7; Pliny, Natural History 7· 1 2. 1 ; much later Festus ( 109) told the legend, but substituted for the mother Glabrio's father-a late attempt to reconcile with the legend rhe fact that the temple was built by the Glabriones.

Richard Saller

obedience. Nor can it be said that any of Valerius Maximus' exempla 'de pietate erga parentes' illustrate the vinue of filial submission to paternal authority. Moreover, Valerius points to the reciprocal quality of pietas within the family when he offers another title ( 5 . 7) on parents' love for children, 'de parentium amore et indulgentia in liberos', with examples about 'pius et placidus adfectus parentium erga liberos'. The legal sources might seem to offer contrary evidence against the reciprocal quality of pietas and in favour of its conventional associ­ ation with filial duty. In his Classical Roman Law Schulz, for instance, limits his comments to the three respects in which pietas bound children : children could not bring their parents into coun without the praetor's permission and could not bring infaming actions against them; nor could a child effect execution on the person of a parent ( I 9 5 I : I 6o). Schulz's stress here is not surprising in view of the Digest title (3 7. I s ) 'De obsequiis parentibus et patronis prae­ standis' ('On the duties due to parents and patrons') in which it is laid down that 'pietatis ratio' calls for obsequium toward parents. More concretely, this ratio meant that children were not to abuse their parents, but it did not impose unilateral, positive obligations of obedience. 6 The few positive legal obligations derived from pietas were recip­ rocal. In the Roman view officium pietatis obliged parents to be­ queath at least pan of their estate to their children, and this was given legal sanction by the beginning of the Principate in the querela inofficiosi testamenti ('complaint against an undutiful will') (Renier I 942: 3 9-76). Those children who accumulated propeny had a similar duty: 'For although the estate of children is not owed to parents on account of parents' desire and natural concern for children: yet if the order of death is upset, it is owed pie no less to parents than to children (D. S · l.. I S pr., Papinian). Before death pietas obliged parents and children to provide maintenance for one another in case of need, a reciprocal duty sanctioned in law at least as early as the reign of Antoninus Pius (Voci I 98o: 87-8). Beyond legally sanctioned duties, the jurists recognized that con­ siderations of pietas could modify the usual legal rules where family members were involved. For example, if relatives provided suppon (alimenta) for a minor (pupillus) out of a sense of pietas, they could 6 Rabel 1 9 3 0 : 196- 8 ; Voci 1 980: 78.

Corporal Punishment, Authority, Obedience

1 49

not recover the costs from the pupil/us' estate under the rules for unauthorized administration, as an outsider could. 7 Or if a woman paid a dowry under the false belief that she was so obliged, she could not recover, as could others who paid under false belief: 'for after the false belief is set aside, there remains the motive of pietas from which release cannot be sought' (D. 1 2.. 6. 3 2.. 2., julian). Considerations of pietas also affected the rules about fraud. In general, debtors and freedmen could not give away their property to defraud creditors or patrons, but the fulfilment of an obligation imposed on a father by pietas was not interpreted as fraud. For this reason, an indebted father could turn over the whole hereditas left to him by his wife with a fideicommissum to restore it to their son; the immediate emancipa­ tion of his son, restoration of the full hereditas, and his refusal to keep the Falcidian quarter for himself was accepted as a reasonable show of pietas, and so not interpreted as fraud on his creditors (D. 42.. 8. 1 9, Papinian). Similarly, 'if a freedman provided a dowry for his daughter, by this act he does not seem to defraud his patron, since a father's pietas ought not be criticized' (D. 3 8 . 5. 1 . r o, Ulpian). Finally, the limitations on women bringing legal cases were eased in situations where they were motivated by pietas: though in general women could not bring charges against unworthy tutores, mothers, grandmothers, and nurses (nutrices) were allowed to do so if 'pietate necessitudinis ductae'.8 A survey of all uses of pietas in the Digest permits several conclusions about how the jurists conceived of this virtue. First, the great majority of references concern relations within the nuclear family. Secondly, the reciprocal quality is clear from the fact that there are as many references to parental pietas toward children as filial pietas.9 Thirdly, the jurists regarded pietas as natural (as opposed to a creation of civil law) . Not only did emancipation not sever the bonds of pietas, but slave families, though not recognized as 7 D. 3· 5· 2.6. I (Modestinus) for an uncle (auunculus) ; 3 · 5· 33 pr. (Paulus) for mother and grandmother, with Paulus stressing the importance of the intent of the grandmother. 8 D. 2.6. ro. r. 7 (Uipian) ; cf. 49· 5· r. 1 (Uipian) for the mother's right to appeal against a decision bringing ruin on her son-'a concession to pietas'. 9 By my count, there are actually more references to pietas paterna and materna ( r 6) than to filial pietas ( n) ; conjugal pietas appears much less frequently (2.). I do not mean to argue that th� jurists believed in equality of duties among family members: for instance, Daube ( I 9 5 3 ) shows that in the classical period a father could undertake actions against a son's peculium, but the son did not enjoy the same capacity against his father.

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such in law, were regarded as bound by pietas. Consequently, pietas was due from son to mother who were fellow freedmen. 10 It has been argued that the reciprocal quality implied by 'paterna pietas' must have been a late or post-classical development, because it does not fit comfortably with the image of the severe, all-powerful father of classical law (Robeni 1 9 3 5 : 2 5 9-63). But the pietas of a father for his children goes as far back as Latin literature. Plautus refers to a father's pietas in rescuing his daughters. 1 1 The reciprocal aspect could not be expressed more clearly than in the early first­ century BC rhetorical treatise Ad Herennium: 'There is a natural law, observed cognationis aut pietatis causa, by which parents are esteemed by children and children by parents.' 12 If pietas is understood not simply as filial duty and submission, but as reciprocal, dutiful affection, then the positions of the Roman son and slave no longer appear so similar. The principal obligation on a slave was obedience to his master. The demands of pietas on a son or daughter were far more complex. Loving devotion was owed not just to the father, but to other family members in such a way that the demands of pietas might actually come into conflict with obedience to paternal authority. Several of the elder Seneca's Controuersiae revolve around this conflict. In one debate, a son was disinherited by his father for helping his uncle, then later adopted by the uncle who ordered him not to offer suppon to his natural father; nevenheless he did help his natural father and suffered disinheritance for disobedi­ ence of his paterfamilias' command; the son justified his conduct on the grounds that natura and pietas motivated him ( 1 . 1. 16; cf. the similar story in 7 · 1 ) . In another case, a son was disinherited for disobedience of his father's order to kill his mother who had been caught in adultery-an act of pietas toward the mother ( 1 . 4 · 5 ) . Of course, these stories are imaginary and highly contrived, but that is not imponant for this argument. Their imponance lies in the fact that the rhetors, who were expens at the manipulation of Roman values, invoked pietas to justify acts of familial compassion carried out at the expense of obedience to the paterfamilias. In sum, the Romans did not construct a moral universe with sons 1 0 D . 37· 1 5 . I. I (Uipian ) ; l. I . I. 3 5 (Ulpian) , the awkwardgrammar of which may adminedly indicate compression or interpolation; see also 3 6 . I . So. 1 (Scaevola) for a father's pietas toward his filius natura/is who is a slave. 1 1 Poenulus I I 3 7; Stichus 7a for wives' pietas towards husbands. 1 2 1. I 9 ; Renier's ascription of this reciprocity to Stoic influence ( 1 94 1 : 54-6 5 ) does not seem to me to be provable o r necessary.

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and slaves as virtually indistinguishable members of a household obliga,ted above all to obey its head. Regarded as having greater moral autonomy than slaves, children were caught up in a web of mutual obligations based on pietas, of which submission to the will of the paterfamilias was only one aspect. On the other side, the father was considered bound by pietas to his children and his wife, but not to his slaves. The currently fashionable notion (e.g. in Herlihy 1 9 8 5 ) that i t took the Stoics o r the Christian Church to define the family as a unit of moral obligations is plainly insupportable. VER B E R A

The controuersiae summarized above point to another significant difference between the positions of the (iliusfamilias and the slave: in the controuersiae, moral exempla, and literary topoi, adult sons are threatened with, or punished by, disinheritance. Of course, the condition of the slave was marked by the constant threat of the whip. Because I believe that whipping was a particularly potent form of symbolic behaviour in the Roman world, this distinction in the treatment of sons and slaves is worth pursuing. My argument about corporal punishment will follow these lines: ( I ) the Romans attached symbolic meaning to whippings, (2) the whip was used to make distinctions in the public sphere between free and subject, and (3 ) the distinction between free and subject carried over into the household in the administration of corporal punishment. 1 . The meaning of whippings

In reading about the instruments of corporal punishment that were part of a Roman's ordinary experience-spiked whips, clubs, racks, hot irons-we may well react initially with revulsion. 1 3 Romans regularly and legitimately inflicted on their fellow men corporal punishments that maimed and even killed. It is important to move beyond shock at the cruelry of Roman civilization and not to lose sight of the fact that more was at stake than physical pain: to the Romans the anguish was in significant measure social and psycho­ logical, the insult to dignitas. 1 3 Wiseman ( 1 9 8 5 : 5 - 1 0) stresses the foreignness of the ditional references to the torturer's instruments.

cruel ry

and gives ad­

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The notions of honour and insult are central to much of the legal writing about corporal punishment. Official exemption from beating is explicitly associated with honour by the jurists: 'all who are exempted from beating with rods ought to have the same honoris reuerentiam as decurions have' (D. 4 8 . 1 9. 28. 5, Callistratus). The rules regarding the actio iniuriarum (actions for injuries) illustrate how illegal beatings had to be considered in terms of both the physical harm done and the infringement of honour. So the lex Cornelia de iniuriis gave an action in three cases : uerberatio , pulsatio, and entry into another's domus by force. According to Ofilius, the difference between uerberatio and pulsatio was one of pain or actual bodily harm: the former was 'cum dol ore' and the latter 'sine dolore' (D. 47· 1 0. 5 · pr.- 1 ). Pulsatio, though causing no serious harm, nevertheless required compensation for the insult. Since the law clearly demonstrates that beatings inflicted both physical pain and dishonour, the philosophers were arguing in vain against conven­ tional belief when they claimed that, as unpleasant as beatings and mutilations were, they did not constitute insults ('iniuriae') . 14 Why did the Romans regard beatings with such gravity ? The answer lies, I think, partly in general considerations of social psychology and partly in the particular social milieu of the Roman Empire. The sociologist Erving Goffman, in writing about deference some years ago, stressed 'rituals of avoidance', by which he meant 'those forms of deference which lead the actor to keep at a distance from the recipient and not violate what Simmel has called the "ideal sphere" that lies around the recipient' ( 1 967: 62). It was Simmel's view ( 1 9 50: 3 2 1 ) that 'although differing in size in various directions and differing according to the person with whom one entertains relations, this sphere cannot be penetrated, unless the personality value of the individual is thereby destroyed. A sphere of this sort is placed around man by his honor. Language poignantly designates an insult to one's honor as "coming too close" ; the radius of this sphere marks, as it were, the distance whose trespassing by another person insults one's honor.' Goffman's analysis of various kinds of everyday behaviour suggests that the relative status of two parties in an interaction is asserted by the differential liberties they take in invad1 4 Seneca, De constantia 16. 1-2, where Epicurus' view is also cited. See also Seneca, Letters 8 5. :t 7. Musonius Rufus in arguing the philosopher's case explicidy recognized that beatings (frag. 1 0, Hense) were generally believed to be the worst

iniuria.

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ing each other's private sphere, the party of higher status deserving a greater distance. Goffman traces this phenomenon to a fundamental feeling 'that the self is in part a ceremonial thing, a sacred object which must be treated with proper ritual care and in turn must be presented in a proper light to others' ( 1 967: 9 1 ). Considered in terms of violation of person, the Romans' attitude toward corporal punishment becomes easily intelligible: it was the grossest form of invasion and hence a deep humiliation. Further­ more, aspects of the ritual of infliction were designed to exacerbate the degree of invasion and degradation. Aulus Gellius ( 1 0. 3 · 2.-1 7) offers three comparable accounts of beatings from speeches by the elder Cato, Gaius Gracchus, and Cicero, in order to contrast the rhetorical power of three of the greatest Republican orators. All three condemn the arrogance of Roman magistrates in the strongest possible terms, employing certain common motifs. In each account, a Roman official ordered local notables to be led into a public place, to be stripped, and then to be beaten. It is difficult to imagine a greater violation of the private sphere than to be exposed naked in front of peers and dependants and then to be reduced by the uirgae to cry out in pain. Indeed, Cato emphasized not so much the physical pain as the humiliation : 'uidere multi mortales. Quis hanc contumeliam, quis hoc imperium, quis hanc seruitutem ferre potest?' ('There were many onlookers. Who can bear such insult, such power, such slavery ?') It was Cato's view that the uerbera exposed honourable men to 'dedecus atque maximam contumeliam, inspectantibus popularibus suis atque multis mortalibus' ('disgrace and the greatest insult, when their own fellow-countrymen and many men looked on') . The very fact that Gellius chose passages about whipping to illustrate highly emotive oratory is in itself suggestive about the importance attached to it as a form of symbolic behaviour. Cato's use of the loaded language of seruitus ('slavery') suggests that the special potency of the symbolic act of beating for Romans hinged on its association with slavery. One of the primary distinc­ tions between the condition of a free man and a slave in the Roman mind was the vulnerability of the latter to corporal punishment, in particular lashings at another man's private whim. Roman comedies portray the slave's mind as constantly preoccupied with corporal punishment through repeated references to past beatings and to the anticipation of future beatings. Much of the humour derives from the threat of infliction of pain on slaves (Segal 1 968: 1 3 7-69). They are

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addressed by vanattons on the word uerber, with uerbero or 'whipping post' being common, and a slave might be regarded as 'eminently heatable' (uerberabilissime) . 1 5 Indeed, the distinguishing marks of slaves in these plays are the scars on their backs from past whippings; conversely, the slave's metaphor for staying out of trouble was 'to protect one's back' from the whip. A free man, on the other hand, when threatened with a beating, could protest that he was not to be abused like a slave. 1 6 Since uerbera were fit for slaves, to suffer uerbera symbolically put a free man in the servile category and so degraded him. Though the basic distinction between slave and free with regard to corporal punishment declined in the second and third centuries, the classical jurists still used it in their arguments. Ulpian wrote that in some noxal actions, especially for capital cases and iniuriae, it was import­ ant that a slave be produced in the same legal condition that he committed the wrong and not be manumitted, because after manu­ mission the culprit as a free man would be subject to one set of punishments, such as a fine, whereas a slave would give satisfaction uerberibus (D. 2. . 9· s ) . More grimly, Callistratus wrote that those condemned to work in the mines must lose their freedom and become penal slaves (serui poenae) because they were disciplined with servile whippings (uerberibus seruilibus) (D. 49· 14. 12.). Callistratus' logic rested on the premiss that 'servile whippings' were not fit for free men. In sum, whipping can be interpreted from several angles as a form of symbolic behaviour in Roman culture. From the standpoint of the law, certain categories of men were legally subject to certain types of uerbera from those with authority over them. To those who suffered other, illegal beatings legal recourse was offered. But the legal interpretation does not exhaust the social significance of beatings, as the jurists themselves recognized. The act of being whipped affected a Roman's status by detracting from his honour through public humiliation and association with the lowest human form in the Roman world, the slave. The seriousness of the matter was expressed by the jurist Macer in his statement that 'a single blow of the cudgels is more serious than a monetary penalty'. 1 7

IS e.g. Plaurus, Amphitruo x 8o, 184, s 6 s , Asinaria 4 1 6, 66�. Casina 3 80, Curculio 1 �6, Mostellaria I I 3 1, Mercator 1 8�, Pseudo/us 1047; for 'uerberabilissime', Aulularia 6 3 3 . 1 6 Plaurus, Amphitruo 446, Asinaria 4 8 5, Menaechmi �74, Mostellaria 86�. 1 7 D. 48. x�. 10. 1: 'solus fustium ictus grauior est quam pecuniaris damnatio.'

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2. Verbera by public authorities

Having explored the special significance attached to beatings in the Roman world, we may now ask how that symbolic act was used to make fundamental distinctions of rank and status in the public domain. The free, civilian population of the Empire was divided into citizens and subjects, a distinction marked, respectively, by exemp­ tion from and subjection to magisterial beatings. The issue of the magistrate's authority to inflict beatings had, of course, long been a very sensitive one for the Romans. As a symbol of authority, on the one side, the magistrates with imperium paraded their uirgae. On the other, a perennial issue for humble citizens was protection from them. It was not just a matter of exemption from painful punishment for the plebs, but could be expressed iconographically and rhetorically as an antithesis between libertas and subjection. The plebs symboli­ cally established their libertas with the lex Valeria and the leges Porciae which gave citizens rights of protection from the magistrate's arbitrary use of the rods (Lintott 1 972: 249 ff.). The achievement of the Porcian laws was celebrated by the sponsor's descendants on the reverses of two late second-century BC coins, the first depicting the figure of Libertas crowned and the second showing a Roman citizen being protected by the cry of PROVOCO ('I appeal') from a governor's lictor wielding the rods (Crawford 1 974 : 29 3 , 3 1 3 f.) . Later Cicero i n his speech o n behalf o f Rabirius ( 1 2 ) could claim that the infliction of flagella and death on a citizen amounted to the loss of libertas. Later still, Tacitus pointed as a sign of the Germans' libertas to the fact that !heir kings and generals could not inflict uerbera ( Germania 7). Historians of the Republic are so familiar with prouocatio that it is easy to take for granted the connection between the freedom of citizens and the exemption from arbitrary corporal punishment. But it was not at all inevitable that the connection should have been formulated in this way. In other societies other issues-taxation or freedom to speak-rather than protection from corporal punishment have been central to the rhetoric about freedom. Without the citizen's protection of prouocatio, provincials were subject to coercion (coercitio) at the hands of Roman officials, and this meant that they could be arbitrarily beaten. M. Marcellus chose precisely the flogging of a leading citizen of Transpadane Gaul as a

Richard Saller

dramatic symbol of his contempt for Caesar's extension of political rights in the region. 1 8 Conversely, St Paul was prepared as an ordinary provincial for a flogging in Caesarea until he protested his citizenship. Tacitus more than once employed the rhetoric of servit­ ude and beatings in the words that he placed in the mouths of rebelling provincial subjects. For example, Calgacus' speech points to the violation of women and the uerbera and other contumeliae suffered by the Britons at the hands of Roman officials as evidence of Britain's servitude: 'Britannia seruitutem suam cotidie emit' (Agri­ cola 3 1 ). By a process that cannot be clearly documented, this ciuislperegrinus (citizen/foreigner) distinction ceased to be the divid­ ing line between those exempt from and those subject to corporal punishment. The late second- and early third-century jurists, though they still referred to the citizen's right to prouocatio, more often distinguished between the honestiores, who were exempt from beatings because of their honourable station, and the humble (humi­ liores or tenuiores), who 'are accustomed to be beaten with rods' ('fustibus caedi solent').19 As Finley noted ( 1 980: 9 5 ), 'it was an important symbol of the changing social structure and accompany­ ing social psychology which set in by the second century AD that so-called humiliores were transferred by law to the "slave category" in this particular respect'. Because of its symbolic potency, Roman authors and orators could assume that illicit beatings would provoke the outrage of their audiences. Cicero repeatedly drew attention to Verres' abuse of flogging, and Marcellus outraged even Caesar's opponents by his treatment of the Transpadane notable. A generation later Livy wrote that the first plebeian secession was prompted by the sight of an old man's back 'deformed by the fresh marks of whippings' ('foedum recentibus uestigiis uerberum', 2.. 2.3. 7). The historicity of the inci­ dent is open to doubt; what is important for the argument here is that Livy expected his Augustan readers to find it plausible that one of the major events in Republican history started from uerbera. Another generation later Tiberius horrified senators, according to Tacitus, by publicizing the fact that his grandson Drusus at the end of his life suffered physical punishment: 'sub uerbere centurionis, inter 1 8 Cicero, Att. 5· 1 1 . 1.; Plutarch, Caesar 2.9. 1.; Appian, Civil Wars 2.. 1.6. 1 9 D. 4 8 . 1 9 . 1.8. 1-5, Callistratus; for prouocatio, D. 4 8 . 6. 7, Ulpian, but the right

of prouocatio is not in evidence in the Callistratus passage, nor in 50. I 3· 5. 1., also by Callistrarus. On the difficulty of tracing the development, Garnsey I 970: ch. 5 .

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seruorum ictus' (Annals 6 . 2. 4 ). In his treatment of the civil wars Tacitus used role reversal to evoke the horror of the scene: after the Flavian army broke into Cremona, the soldiers greedily collected booty; some were not satisfied with what they could see and tried to discover the location of buried fortunes 'uerberibus tormentisque dominorum' (Histories 3· 3 3 ). The Romans accepted the whipping and torture of slaves as an ordinary part of life, but to have uerbera and tormenta turned against the masters must have aroused night­ mares among the master class. Much more could be said about uerbera in the public domain, but enough material has been presented to show that corporal punish­ ment carried powerful connotations for the Romans, symbolically marking those who were subject in contrast to those who were free. 3 . Verbera and authority in the household Within the household it was the paterfamilias who wielded author­ ity, including the legal right to inflict corporal punishment on his children and slaves, as Badian rightly pointed out. In work on the ante bellum American South, it has been argued that slavery tended to exaggerate patriarchal features of family life. The master of the Southern plantation expected submission from his children and wife just as from his slaves. As Anne Firor Scott put it: 'Any tendency on the part of any of the members of the system to assert themselves against the master threatened the whole, and therefore slavery itsel£.'2° Consequently, challenges and disobedience from children and slaves alike might be punished with severe beatings.21 In short, the master's need to maintain control required an atmosphere of repression over slaves and children whose positions were, to a certain extent, assimilated. Roman law might appear to suggest an analogous assimilation in imperial society. But the law in such matters set the boundaries to legitimate behaviour and should not be read as a description of everyday norms and behaviour, any more than the legal rights of parents today should be taken as a direct reflection of how they typically treat, or believe they ought to treat, their children. As an alternative to the 2 0 A. F. Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, I8 3 o-1 9 3 o, Chicago,

1 9 70: 1 7.

2 1 E. Genovese,

73

f.

Roll, jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, New York,

1 97 4 :

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assimilation hypothesis, another, contrary possibility should be explored: that is, because beating was such a potent symbol in the antithesis between /ibertas and servility, its infliction on free children was discouraged. Of course, it is impossible to determine how often corporal punishment was applied to slaves, on the one hand, and children, on the other. But we can ask whether the Romans regarded uerbera as an inextricable feature of the condition of the fi/ius­ familias in the same way that they regarded it as part of the slave's lot. . Evidence has already been offered to make the point that subjec­ tion to the whip was associated with servitude. Additional evidence indicates how routine a feature of the slave's existence it was. 22 In his famous letter about the treatment of slaves Seneca remarks on how even an involuntary sound such as a cough from a slave will draw a beating for disturbing the master's dinner (Letters 47· 3 ) . Elsewhere Seneca criticizes the short temper of a master who has slaves whipped for talking during dinner or for giving the master an insolent look ( On Anger 3· 2.4-5 ) . Juvenal envisages a master of a household motivating his slaves to clean the house in preparation for a guest with uirga in hand ( 14. 6 3 ). The cook who fails to prepare a meal to the master's satisfaction might be given a whipping; Trimalchio's cook finds himself surrounded on both sides by tortores ready to inflict punishment (Martial 3· 94; Petronius, Satyricon 49). A slave need not commit any fault, however slight, to receive uerbera from an irritable master taking out his or her frustrations on 'whipping boys', in the literal sense. In Plautus' Poenulus the young man Agorastocles repeatedly beats his slave, with the excuse that he is frustrated in pursuing his love and so not in control of himself (Poenulus 4 1 0, 8 1 9). Juvenal (6. 4 8 1 ) portrays a slighted wife as a much more vicious character who has her slaves savagely whipped as she transfers the target of her anger from her husband to her helpless servants. Most of the above material comes from moralists, and con­ sequently is open to the charge of exaggeration. Enough supporting evidence exists, however, to demonstrate that the moralists were not setting up a straw man for criticism. Tacitus used his account of the Germans to illustrate various oppositions between German and Roman mores. One of the contrasts concerned the punishment of 22

For more detail, see Finley 1 980: 9 3 - 5 ; Bradley 1 98 4 : n 8- z. 3 .

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slaves: the Germans were notable for flogging their slaves only rarely and not in routine matters of discipline (Germania 2.5). Tacitus later wrote of the suicide of C. Petronius after he incurred the wrath of Nero. In his typically frivolous way, Petronius treated it as an ordinary event by repeating his usual behaviour after he had slit his wrists. Instead of heavy discussions about the immortality of the soul, he invited his friends to offer light verse. To his good slaves he gave rewards; his bad slaves received uerbera. After a meal he retired for sleep and died (Annals 1 6. I 9 ). The significance of the passage lies in Petronius' effort to maintain his routine, which included a beating of misbehaving slaves. Seneca's allusion to the sound of flagella at night as the master goes over his accounts for the day is the sort of routine we should imagine (Letters I l.l.. I 5). Neither sex nor age protected slaves from corporal punishment. When Plautus included in his comedy the Truculentus a scene in which an old master strung up two old slave women for a beating and commented on the effectiveness of similar punishment in the past, he expected his audience to be amused rather than repelled (775-82.). The Aulularia opens with a scene in which an old man is abusing his old slave woman verbally and with his fists in order to hurry her along, and threatens a beating with a fustis. Apuleius' Golden Ass, which offers such vivid scenes of imperial life, includes a young slave girl who lives in fear of the savage whippings that her mistress was accustomed to giving her.23 Indeed, because house servants, in particular female slaves, lived in such intimacy with their masters, they were especially visible targets for punishment. When their mistress was suspected of adultery, they were the most obvious candidates to be put to the torture in order to force them to reveal their mistress's secrets. 24 Because torture of slaves is usually treated in the context of legal procedures, it should be stressed that torturers (tortores) were also available for private hire to masters-a striking indication of the routine severity of the punishments inflicted on slaves. After all, administering a brutal beating could be an exhausting job better left to professionals.25 So Trimalchio is depicted as having two tortores on staff ready to punish the inept cook. For Juvenal, a humorous way 2 3 3· I 6 : 'me 2 4 Juvenal 6.

uerberare saeuissime consueuit'. o. 2.9 ; Seneca, Controuersiae 6. 6, 8 . 3; Tacitus, Annals I 4· 6o. For the motif of wearing out the torturer, Cicero, Pro Cluentio I 77 ; Seneca, Leners 66. I 8 . zs

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of evoking a mistress's special cruelty was to allude to her keeping a tortor on annual retainer (6. 480). Just like other artisans, the tortor had his place of business, where the variety of the tools of his trade could be counted on to chill his prospective victim to the bone. 26 The business of the tortor, one of the least attractive among many unattractive features of Roman civilization, cannot be discounted as a figment of literary imagination: the jurists discuss the torturer's liability for exceeding the orders of the master (additional evidence that they were available for private hire), and we have the inscription from Puteoli listing prices for a torturer's services.27 There could hardly be more graphic evidence of the routineness of brutal punishment of slaves than the fact that some Romans made a business of it. This torture was often crippling and sometimes fatal. 28 Though masters came to be banned from intentionally executing slaves without involving a magistrate, they could still have their slaves whipped 'within an inch of their lives'. The Christian emperor Constantine ruled that in the case of a slave dying of a whipping, the presumption was that the master did not intend to kill on account of his use of flagella or fustes rather than a sword or other deadly weapon (C.Th. 9· 1 2. 1 ; Watson 1 987: 1 24-6). Since the lot of bad slaves was to be beaten and that of good slaves was to internalize the constant threat of a beating (Plautus, Mostel­ laria 869), it is hardly surprising that manumission was conceptual­ ized as freedom from fear of punishment-from fear of the cross and uerberibus (Cicero, Pro Rabirio perdito 1 6). To represent the punishment of slaves as the exercise of loving, paternal authority, as Veyne does, is either to gloss over its brutality, or to exaggerate the brutality to children. Roman lawyers were no more ready to interfere with a father's right to punish his children than a master's right to punish his slaves (D. 48. 1 9 . 1 6 . 2, Claudius Saturninus) . But was subjection to beat­ ings perceived by Romans to be a fundamental element in the 2 6 Juvenal 6. o. 2.9 refers to the pergula tortoris summoning the female slaves (ancillae); for the fear evoked see Seneca's comment in Letters 1 4 . 6. 2 7 D. 47. 10. I S · 4 :t,. Ulpian citing Labeo; AE 1 9 7 1 , 88 and 89, with 4 sesterces

listed as the fee for a whipping. Additional evidence can be found in Cicero's account in the Pro Cluentio ( 1 77) of Sassia having her slaves put to the torture before town notables. 21 D. 48. 1 9. 8. 3, Ulpian: although governors were not to execute wrongdoers by torture intentionally, still 'many usually die while they are being tortured' ( plerique

dum torquentur deficere solent ).

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condition of the {iliusfamilias ? Did existence as a child in potestate include constant fear of corporal punishment, as it evidently did for slaves? Was the exercise of paternal authority captured in the image of a flogging, as was the master's authority over his slaves ? The evidence for corporal punishment of children would suggest negative answers. To be sure, children in the Roman world were hit by their parents and kin. A grandfather in one of the elder Seneca's Controuersiae points out that no one would question the propriety of his striking his grandson if he were naughty or behaving wildly 'inter pueriles iocos' ('playing boys' pranks': 9 · 5 · 7). According to Cicero, if boys misbehave, they can expect to be corrected by their mothers and teachers 'not only with words but also uerberibus' (Tusculan Dis­ putations 3 · 64). These and other references to corporal punishment of children suggest several points. First, punishment of a child for bad conduct was not the role solely of the father and did not require legal justification in the form of potestas. Mothers and grandfathers might also strike a child for purposes of discipline. Second, although ages are not given, the passages attesting to physical punishment appear to be about young children, not adult {iliifamilias. Seneca explicitly argues that the punishment of children is justified on the grounds that they do not yet understand reason-a justification that would usually apply to the young (De constantia 1 2. 3 ). If a parent felt that an adult son was failing to show proper respect, his recourse might be to take his complaint to a Roman magistrate. Ulpian advises governors that in such cases they should give the son a warning and a scare; on the other hand, if a patronus brings a similar complaint against his ex-slave, the governor is to have the culprit flogged with fustes (D. r . r 6 . 9 · 3 ). 1f it is true that corporal punish­ ment of children in potestate was reserved mainly for the young, then that fact makes their situation entirely different from slaves but perhaps not so different from that of children in many other cultures. 29 The third point is the obvious difference in severity between servile punishments and those administered to children. The trademark of slaves was a back scarred from whippings, and they lived in fear of 2 9 Siner the spanking of children and the explanation for it offered by Seneca are so widespread, they do not seem to me to be particularly significant in an attempt to characterize the Roman family. (Much the same thing has been written, e.g., about the !Kung in southern Africa by M. Shostak in Nisa (Cambridge, Mass., 1 98 1 ).)

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worse from the tortor. There is no evidence to suggest that children normally suffered anything remotely comparable. The good parent administered a beating occasionally; only the bad parent resorted to corporal punishment for light offences.30 When Tricho had his son beaten to death with flagella (normally reserved for slaves), he so outraged people in Rome that he was very nearly lynched by a crowd (Seneca, De dementia I . I 5 . I ) . That corporal punishment served to differentiate the conditions of the slave and the adult son seems evident in several genres of Roman literature. The Controuersiae have already been referred to in this regard. Comedies also often present plots based on conflicts between fathers and grown sons. In these plays, like the controuersiae, slaves are commonly found suffering physical punishment, sons never, as far as I can discover. There is much talk in them about demanding fathers, but the punishment for sons, when specified, always seems to be disinheritance and occasionally also exclusion from the house. Another genre in which we repeatedly road of beatings and cruelty to slaves but not to children is satire. juvenal's Fourteenth Satire deserves special comment. Its topic is the bad example that parents so often set for children. Parents are criticized for preaching chastity to their children but setting an example by adultery. For our purposes, it is very interesting that Juvenal takes a father to task for preaching tolerance and gentleness, and then openly taking pleasure, in his son's presence, from the groans of slaves under the whip ( 1 4 . I 52.4)· In modem debates over corporal punishment a similar argument against spanking children has been made by those who claim that it sets an example of violence for the child. But Juvenal's worry is rather different-that the son will be brutalized, not by his own suffering, but by watching his father inflict pain on slaves.31 In contrast to the American historians' hypothesis of attraction between the conditions of children and of slaves under the authority of the patriarch, I would suggest for the Roman world a certain repulsion: that is, what was appropriate punishment for a slave was therefore not appropriate for a freeborn man, at least not after childhood. This thought is explicitly formulated in the moral tract on 3 0 Seneca, De clementia 1. 1 4- 1 6 . This passage needs to be interpreted with care, since it is really about the Princeps. Having argued that the Princeps should act like a good father, Seneca could hardly recommend that the state abandon corporal punishment altogether. 3 1 In contrast to the abundant evidence for masters' sadism toward slaves, I know of little comparable evidence for parents' sadistic treatment of children.

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raising children, the D e liberis educandis (On Raising Children) ascribed to Plutarch. According to the tract, philosophy teaches men proper conduct: 'that one ought to reverence the gods, to honour one's parents, to respect one's elders. to be obedient to the laws, to yield to those in authority, to love one's friends, to be chaste with women, to be affectionate with children, and not to be overbearing with slaves' ( 10). Children and slaves are to be treated differently, as is apparent in the advice against corporal punishment. Children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encourage­ ment and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows nor by ill treatment;

for it is surely agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the freeborn; for so they grow numb and shudder at their tasks, partly from the pain of blows, partly also on account of the hybris. Praise and reproof are more helpful for the freeborn than any sort of ill-usage, since the praise incites them toward what is honourable, and reproof keeps them from what is disgraceful ( 12.). 32

For some Romans, then, it was important to avoid inculcating a. servile mentality in their children by treating them in a servile way; that is, by inflicting corporal punishment. This passage also shows that a Roman could advocate authoritarian relationships based on reverence for elders and still eschew physical punishment. St Augustine's vivid description of episodes from his childhood illustrates that Roman boys from well-to-do families might very well experience painful beatings. Augustine lived in dread of the whip of his teacher (magister), the regular punishment for poor performance ( Confessions 1 . 1 4 ) . Like the master beating his slaves, the magister whipping his students is a recurrent motif in Latin literature. In addition to Cicero's mention of it in the passage cited above (Tus­ culan Disputations 3 · 64}, Martial jokes about the complaints of neighbours living next to a schoolroom: the sounds of students being beaten awakens them annoyingly early in the morning. Juvenal represents even the greatest ancient warrior, Achilles, as afraid of the uirga magistri (7. 2. 1 0). In a lengthy discussion of the habit of student-beating in the schools, Quintilian argues against its ped­ agogical value: 'I disapprove of flogging, although it is the received

1 2 Seneca, On Anger 2. 2 1 , also recommended against encouraging the 'servile' in child-raising, but was far more concerned about spoiling a child 'whose tears a constantly solicitous mother wipes away, who gets his way with his paedagogus'. Seneca advised against giving the child all he wanted and in favour of reproof for wrongdoing ('exprobrentur'), but nothing is said in this passage of corporal punishment.

Richard Saller

practice and meets with the acquiescence of Chrysippus, because in the first place it is a disgraceful form of punishment and fit only for slaves, and is in any case an insult, as you will realize if you imagine its infliction at a later age. Secondly, if a boy is so insensible to instruction that reproof is useless, he will, like the worst type of slave, merely become hardened to blows. Finally there will be absolutely no need of such punishment if the magister is a thorough disciplinar­ ian . . .' ( 1 . 3· 1 3 ). Quintilian here echoes the view found in the De /iberis educandis, that servile punishments are inappropriate for free children and make them servile. In the reference to imagining the insult at a later age, Quintilian also implicitly corroborates the suggestion that physical punishment of offspring was reserved for childhood. Finally, the comments about magistri should be con­ trasted with Quintilian's views about parenting: for parents, he believed ( 1 . 2. 6-8), the danger in his day was excessive indulgence of their children rather than undue severity, a view repeated by Seneca (On Anger 2. 2 1 ) and Tacitus (Dialogue on Orators 29). In general, it seems that the Romans closely associated the conditions of the slave and the student with beatings in a way that was not true of the condition of the filiusfamilias.

C O N C LU S I O N The two themes of this chapter should now be drawn together. The paterfamilias enjoyed potestas over filiusfamilias and slave alike, but authority can take very different forms. The relationship between master and slave was inherently one of exploitation. The loyalty of a slave was welcome and restraint on the part of the master was recommended, but the ultimate requirement of a slave was obedi­ ence, and it was widely believed that a slave's obedience rested finally on fear of punishment. Because the relationship was basically ex­ ploitative, the slave was believed to be naturally recalcitrant-hence the need to be goaded by the whip, which was a (and perhaps the) principal feature of the slave's condition. In recommending men 'to be affectionate with children and not to be overbearing with slaves', the author of the De liberis educandis is obviously assuming a very different relationship between father and child. That this bond was not fundamentally exploitative is em­ bodied in the cardinal familial virtue, pietas. That virtue encom-

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passed affection, compassion, and duty, qualities that were mutually obligatory among family members, including the paterfamilias, but not to masters of slaves, as the De liberis educandis shows. The pius paterfamilias was obliged to support his children during the early years of their life, and they were obliged to support their father and mother in their old age. Since the obligations, though asymmetrical, were reciprocal and not exploitative, recalcitrance was not assumed to be a primary characteristic of {iliifamilias as it was of slaves (and students) ; consequently, paternal authority was not fundamentally coercive in the way that the master's (and magister's) was. Cicero said as much, when he wrote in the De republica ( 3 . 3 7) that 'different kinds of domination and subjection (et imperandi et seruiendi ) must be distinguished'. A father governs his children who obey readily ( propter oboediendi facilitatem), but a master must 'coerce and break (coercet et frangit ) his slave'. And, of course, because of this fundamental distinction in the Roman mind between coercive and non-coercive authority, emperors in later centuries were usually anxious to present themselves through the metaphor of the pater and not the dominus.33 The servile spirit was one that had to be goaded by the lash; the servile back was one marked with scars from past whippings. Precisely because uerbera were fit for slaves and encouraged a servile mentality of grudging fear, such punish­ ment was considered inappropriate and insulting for freeborn adult {iliifamilias. They were not to be degraded with the symbolic be­ haviour that placed others on the inferior side of the dividing line between libertas and subjection. The whip was not the symbol of the Roman father's authority, as it was of the master's authority. For the Roman san, the end of potestas at the death of his father meant the opportunity to inherit the patrimony; for the slave, the end of potestas upon manumission meant escape from the fear of the whip. 3 3 If the father had been the severe and repressive figure in Roman culture that Veyne suggests, it would have been odd that emperors were so concerned to represent themselves as pater in contrast to dominus (the contrast is explicit in, e.g., Dio of Prusa 1. u and Pliny, Panegyric 2. 3 ) . The rationale for this image was surely precisely the fact that fathers exercised a benign authority.

8 Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen) P. R. C. WEA VER

T H E C A S E O F ' T H E WO M A N W H O C A L L S H ER S E L F P E T R O N I A J U STA ' WE begin at the 'House of the Bicentenary' -in Herculaneum, at the grandest 'casa' in town. There, some half a century ago, emerged a file, or rather chest, of eighteen documents, dating from AD 74 and 7 5, on the case of 'the woman who calls herself Petronia lusta' .1 That she was the child of a freedwoman was not disputed: her mother, Petronia Vitalis, was indeed the former slave of Petroni us Stephanus and Calatoria Themis, a couple who had jointly (it appears) manumitted her.2 What was at issue was when Vitalis' child was born. lusta was claiming that she was freeborn (i.e. that she was born after the manumission of her mother), despite the fact that she could not produce a birth certificate to prove it and that she was admittedly illegitimate-she called herself in fact 'Petronia Sp(urii) f(ilia) lusta' ( Tab. Here. XIV. 5· 5 )-that is, her father was either not in a formal marriage ('in conubio') with Vitalis or unknown. Calatoria Themis, on the other hand, was claiming that Iusta was her freedwoman (i.e. that Iusta had been born before the manumission of her mother while her mother was still a slave and was thus herself slave-born), despite the fact that she did not, any more than lusta, have documents to back that claim-certainly not evidence of formal manumission. The uncertainty principle could not go much further. What motives lay behind this not inexpensive suit, involving more than one bail of I ,ooo sesterces and, seemingly, more than one t Edirio princeps: G. Pugliese Carrarelli, La Parola del Passato 3 ( 1 948), 1 6 5-84; revised rexr: V. Arangio-Ruiz, Bulletino de/1'/stituto di diritto romano' 1 ( 1 9 5 9), 2.13-4 5 . Cf. Boye 1959: 2.9 ff. ; Crook 1 967a: 48 ff. ; Rawson 1 986a: 1 7 2- f. ; Gardner 1 9 86a: 1 40, 2.2.4 f.; 1 986b: I f., 1 2. f. 2 Herculaneum tablets: Tab. Here. XVII. 5· 1 1-1 2.: 'qua[m nos m]anumissuri I sumus', cf. XVlll. 5· 1 0. The conclusive wording of rhe ed.pr. at XVIII. 5· 5-6, 'pa]r[ro]nis Vi[tallis]', is, however, now read as 'Pe]r[ro]n [i�� Yitalis]' by Arangio· Ruiz in our revised rexr.

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journey by the parties from Herculaneum to Rome and back ?3 Justa's forthcoming marriage with a Roman citizen, perhaps? Or patronal rights, involving property, claimed by Themis ? There may have been more to it than that. And, in any case, it raises several interesting, important questions about children and status. Clearly some aggravating cause lay behind the case. At one stage domestic emotions seem to run high : 'quid inuides filiae, cum earn nos filiae loco faciamus' ('Why do you begrudge your daughter, since we are treating her like a daughter?'), Petronius Stephanus is quoted as saying to Justa's mother, Vitalis.4 This is evidently in response to a request from Vitalis to have her daughter back, while at the same time offering to pay for the child's maintenance (alimenta). 5 Clearly, as Gardner says ( 1 986a: 1 40), Justa and her mother had been separated. But on what terms ? Voluntarily or by compulsion ? Even if we concede the verdict to Themis, that Justa was indeed her freed­ woman, and therefore had been her slave, this is not the kind of forced separation of a slave child from its mother, at the whim of a master for purposes of sale and profit, dwelt on by realist scholars of Roman slavery and its malign influence on family life. It is more a foster-relationship, short of adoption, whereby the child lusta was taken into the family of her mother's patrons as an alumna and there treated as a daughter ('filiae loco').6 This does not imply that Stephanus and Themis had no children of their own: Tab. XXX, found elsewhere in Herculaneum, reveals two C. Petronii Stephani, father and son. Whatever the original basis of the arrangement, Vitalis, as mother, argued with her reluctant patrons-or at least with one of them, Petronius Stephanus-for the return of her daughter to her own care in exchange for a financial settlement to cover the cost of maintenance. Not exactly a surrogate motherhood case, but a source of friction within the household. A foster rela­ tionship in itself carries no firm indication of status-it is quite compatible with slave status for the child-as also is the child's J The sworn statements relate to events at Herculaneum, where the household of Petronius Stephanus and Calatoria Themis was located, and where the documents were found, presumably having been in the latter's possession. Cf. XVIII. 5. 6.; cf. XVIII. 5 ; XIX. 5; XX. 2., 3, 5; XXIII. 2.-3 . For appearances in Rome: XIV. 2.. 5 (3 Dec. 74); XV. 2.. 5 ( u Mar. 7 5 ) . 4 XIX. 5 ; X X . 2.-3 , 5 · 5 XVI. 2.: ' . . . cum Petronio Stephan o e t Calatoria Them ide exsegisse uti ali menta reciper(e)t et ei filiam suam restitueret'. 6 Cf. Arangio-Ruiz 1 9 5 9 : 2.2.5 ; Boye 1 9 5 9 : 44 ff.; Rawson 1 986a: 1 72. f.

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natural mother paying to have her daughter returned to her custody. But here C. Petronius Telesphorus, an active fellow freedman of Vitalis in the whole business, who claims (Tab. XVI) to have arranged the financial settlement for the return of Iusta to her mother, and who became subsequently the tutor of Calatoria Themis (i.e. after the death of her husband) and one of the parties giving bail (as defendant?) (Tabs. XIII and XIV), actually claims the opposite in his own deposition (Tab. XVI)-that the above settlement shows that Iusta was freeborn (ingenua) ! There must be more to it. Who was the father of the illegitimate Petronia Sp. f. Iusta ? The tempting speculation and not uncharitable assumption is that Iusta was in fact the child of Petronius Stephanus himself and Vitalis.7 But if so, of Vitalis as slave or Vitalis as freedwoman ? Of Stephan us as master or Stephanus as joint-patron ? This raises the question of age data. At what age were Vitalis and Iusta (if she was an ex-slave) manumitted and at what age could they be legally set free ? First, Iusta. She is variously referred to in the documents as 'puella' and 'mulier', half a dozen times each.8 Sometimes both in the same document.9 Although 'mulier', 'muliebris', etc. normally refer to adult women, at least women over the age of puberty, that is twelve years, 10 in legal texts that is not a necessary inference: females of any age, condition, or status from infancy onwards can be referred to as 'mulieres'. 1 1 But not normally. The impression gained from the tablets is that by the year 74/5 Iusta is an adult: 'puella' is mostly used in reference to past events, as by the witnesses to the discussion between Stephanus, Themis, and Vita lis over the return of the latter's child (XVI, XIX, XX) and in the testimony about Iusta's alleged manumission (XXIII, XXIV. 2.), which was thought of as taking place some time in the past, rather than quite recently. Where the present legal proceedings are referred to, e.g. by the words 'd(e) q(ua) a(gitur)', the word 'mulier' is generally used (six times), except 7 Crook 1 967a: 4 8 ; Gardner 1 9 86a: 1 40. But to call her 'Petronia Justa', as do Gardner (e.g. 1 986b, throughout) and others, goes beyond the evidence and prejudges the outcome of the case in her favour. See further below. 8 'Puella': XVI. :z.. 4; XIX. S · s; XX. :z.. 6; XXIII. 3 · 3; XXIV. :z.. 8-9; 3· 1 . 'Mulier': XVI. :z.. 1 4 ; XVII. 5 · 1 4 ; XVIII. 5· n(?); XIX. 5· 9; XX. 3 · :z.-3 ; 5· 1 0. 9 XVI, XIX, XX. to Justinian, Institutes 1 . 10 pr. 'uiripotentes'. 11 D. 3 4 · :z.. :z. s . 9 (Uipian): 'muliebri uesre legara et infantilem contineri et puel­ larum et uirginum Pomponius libro uicesimo serundo ad Sabinum recte scribit:

mulieres enim omnes dici, quaecumque se%us feminini sunt.'

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for XVI. 2. 4-5 ; d. XXIV. 3 · Note also the fact that in the bail documents (but nowhere else in the dossier) lusta appears in her own right as 'ea quae se Petroniam Sp. f. Iustam esse dicat', whereas Themis gives bail on the authority of her tutor, the freedman C. Petronius TelesphorusY It also appears from the surviving file that bail is given by Calatoria Themis and Petronius Telesphorus, not by lusta. This should mean that the two former are the defendants, 13 Telesphorus being involved, presumably, as the tutor of Themis. In this scenario Iusta was forced to go to court to claim her freeborn status, to change her existing situation where she was being treated by Themis as her freedwoman.14 If so, there must have been some risk for lusta, if she lost her case, as it was unlawful for an ex-slave to claim to be freeborn; it was also unlawful to summon one's patron or patroness to court without the praetor's leave, and there was a penalty for disobeying the rules.15 The wealthy Themis also was not to be trifled with: she ran a formidable household, including, it seems, a nomenclator (XXIII. 3· 2). Let us assume that Justa was aged at least twelve, more likely nearer twenty, and was conducting the case on her own behalf. From Iusta's point of view the crucial period for deciding the case, her precise date of birth, was then long in the past. So long in fact that both her mother (Vitalis) and her foster-parent and possible father (Stephan us) have died in the meantime. They were both last heard of arguing over the maintenance of 'Justa puella'. If they had been available, either could easily have settled the question, and even made the present case superfluous. Neither did so. With no birth certificate, the point was difficult to establish. 1 2 e.g. XIII. 5: 'spopondit Calatoria Themis rutore au(c)tore C. Petronio T(h)elesphoro'; d. XIV. 1, 5 · u Crook ( I 967a: 48 f.) states that w e d o not know who was plaintiff and who was defendant-over-cautiously, I believe. On uadimonia, Gaius 4· I 84-7. In the formul­ ary process, bail was normally given to secure the reappearance in court of the defendant. The implication is that the case would not be completed at the first hearing. Vadimonia could also be used to initiate proceedings; d. Buckland I 96 3: 6 3 I , quoting Cicero, Pro Quinctio 6 I , but not i n the extant legal texts. O n the {compli­ cated) juristic development of uadimonia, see Arangio-Ruiz I9 5 9 : 2. 30 ff. ; Boye I 9 5 9 : 3 3 ff. ; and, most recently, Wolf I 9 8 5 . • • Cf. D. 2.2.. 3 · I 4 {Ulpian): 'si quidem i n possessionem libertinitatis fuit, sine dubio ipsum oportebit ingenuitatis causam agere docereque se ingenuum esse'. I S C. 9· 2. r. I : 'qui autem libertinus se dicit ingenuum, tam de operis ciuiliter quam etiam lege Visellia {AD 2.4) criminal iter poterit perurgueri.' Gaius 4· I 8 3: 'quasdam personas sine permissu praetoris in ius uocare non licet, ueluti parentes patronos . . . et in eum qui aduersus ea egerit poena constiruirur.'

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Themis' case should have been easier to establish. From her point of view the crucial date must have been much closer-perhaps quite recent-when she herself claimed to have manumitted Justa. That would have to be after the death of husband Stephanus, if lusta was born a slave with the same status and master(s) as her mother, who was jointly owned by Petronius Stephanus and Calatoria Themis, or possibly by Stephanus alone. Justa had certainly not been owned by Calatoria alone: if she had been, she should have taken the nomen 'Calatoria', as did the illiterate M. Calatorius Marullus who gave evidence (XXIV. 2) that Themis (alone) had manumitted Justa as well as himself. But how, in what form, and where were the documents to prove it? What if lusta were the freedwoman of Calatoria Themis ? Would she have had to wait till the age of thirty for formal manumission ? That would have the praetor's court order under Vespasian enquir­ ing into an undocumented birth early in the reign of Claudius. Inconvenient, not impossible, but on balance unlikely. Formal joint manumission at an earlier age by Stephanus and Themis on grounds of blood relationship would also be unlikely, unless Justa was acknowledged by Themis as the child of Stephanus before a con­ silium (at Rome ?), as prescribed by the lex Aelia Sentia.16 Formal manumission on grounds of foster relationship would be quite possible, but again unlikely, unless it had already taken place before the return of lusta to her mother; testamentary manumission (by Petronius Stephanus) is seemingly impossible, if she were under thirty and jointly owned by Themis. But why claim formal manumis­ sion for lusta at all ? Informal manumission is more plausible and would have better suited the interests of Themis as patron. It would fit better the age of Justa, if she were still in her teens in AD 74 · It would help to explain the absence of documentation and, above all, it would give a convincing reason for Themis' defence of the case as she would, if successful, retain complete control over any property lusta might have acquired, in particular any given to her by Petronius Stephan us. It is true that Justa is mentioned in the documents as the 'woman who calls herself Petronia (Sp.f.) Justa'. But the nomen 'Petronia' occurs only in the three bail documents, not in the sworn statements of witnesses where she is sometimes referred to as the 1 6 Gaius 1. 1 8- 1 9 : 'quam si uindicta, apud consilium iusta causa manumissionis adprobata, Iiberati fuerint. ( 19) iusta autern causa manumissionis est ueluri si quis filium filiamue aut frattem sororemue naturalem aut alumnum . . . manumittat'.

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'girl' or 'woman' Iusta, and more often simply as the 'puella' or 'mulier' 'd(e) q(ua) a(gitur)'. If Iusta had in fact been informally manumitted, and were thus in status a Junian Latin ( Latina Iuniana), the question arises as to what form of nomenclature it would have been proper for her to use -with or without nomen. These documents might presuppose the latter. Where she claims for herself freeborn status, she naturally calls herself 'Petronia (Sp.f.) lusta'. But where the documents leave it open whether she is freeborn or freed, she is always referred to simply as 'Iusta', not as 'Petronia Iusta' or 'Calatoria Iusta'. Did Junian Latins use the tria nomina before they acquired Roman citizenship ? Can we identify them at all in the inscriptions ? This question is left for later discussion (see Weaver 1 990) . Lastly, the cognomina of those involved in the case. Apart from several witnesses who are certainly or probably freeborn, and many of the signatories to their testimonia, 1 7 all the main participants in the action have cognomina of Greek derivation, except-Iusta herself, Vitalis her mother, and the illiterate Calatorius Marullus, a key witness for Calatoria Themis (Tab. XXIV), whose personal names are all Latin. Vitalis is certainly an ex-slave, Iusta is claimed to be, and Marullus is a self-proclaimed freedman. Yet the two patrons of Vitalis, Petronius Stephanus and Calatoria Themis, the latter's tutor Petroni us Telesphorus, and Calatorius Speudon, the remaining person giving bail (Tab. XV), all have Greek personal names. Names were used by Garnsey in an attempt to establish more positive criteria for establishing the origin (rather than status) of descendants of freedmen in local politics in Italy. 1 8 He enunciated the proposition that: 'A Greek or oriental name borne by a resident of a western city points to descent from either a free immigrant of the Eastern Mediterranean region or a slave.' This is further refined by an analysis of the categories of Latin nomina with which Greek names are associated ( 1 9 7 5 : 1 7 5 ) . While neither 'Petronius' nor 'Calatorius' is an imperial nomen, 'Petronius' has good senatorial credentials, and is not especially widespread in the east. On these criteria the case for freedman descent for Petronius Stephanus of Herculaneum is quite plausible, even although no 'Palatina' tribal­ indication is there to make it more likely. More convincingly so with 1 7 e.g. M. Vinicius M.f. Proculus (XVII. 4, s ) ; [P. Ar]rius P.f. M[ . . . ] (XIX. s); M: Sdaccius M.f. Sabinus (XXI. 4). 1 8 1 97 5 : I 67- 8o, esp. 1 72. ff. ; cf. 1 974 : 2.46 f.

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Calatoria Themis. Outside Campania, and indeed outside Hercu­ laneum itself, 'Calatorius' is a very uncommon gentilicium, and is seemingly unknown outside Italy. It is not registered among senators or equestrians or even decurions of ltaly. 1� The name derives from the occupational title 'calator' = priest's attendant, which has a clear and distinct ex-slave connotation.20 Why this gentilicium should be vittually restricted to Herculaneum is unclear . It falls squarely within the group of non-senatorial nomina largely or entirely restricted to the west, which, Garnsey suggests, when associated with Greek cognomina were in large part borne by men of servile origin. We do not know the result in the case of 'the woman who calls herself Petronia Iusta'. Her Latin cognomen is by no means evidence, in itself, for freeborn status. The irony, however, is that both patrons of Iusta's mother could easily have been of freedman descent them­ selves and it is at least conceivable that the chief defendant in the action, Calatoria Themis, wealth and all, may even have been herself an ex-slave.

T HE I NTERGEN ERAT I O N A L PR OB LEM The case of Petronia lusta concerned the status of the daughter of a freedwoman-whether she was freeborn or slave-born. Much more attention has been given to the sons of freedmen. They could have careers, especially in municipal politics, when there was no doubt about their freeborn status. The question is, how many or what proportion of children of freedmen (or freedwomen) were freeborn ? There i s no doubting the social and even political importance of this topic. Even the consular Tacitus, consistently scathing on the 1 9 Outside Herculaneum inscriptions reveal only CIL 6. 1 03 44, 1 1 00 1 , 1 5 8 3 0, 3 47 3 2.; 1 0. 5 6 8 (Salemum), cf. AE I 900, t o t ; 4 - 5 5 3 3 (Pompeii): Calatorius lanuarius could be identified with M. Calatorius :l.I. Ianuarius from Herculaneum ( t o. 1 40 3 . g. 3· 42.). Apart from the Herculaneum Tablets themselves, at least a dozen other 'Calatorii/ae' are found in Herculaneum, most of whom are from the list of so-called Augustales ( t o. 1 403 ; AE 1 978, I t �). Although half of these have the freed indication, including three whose patron is a woman, not all are of freed status-we have one freeborn citizen: M. Calatorius M.f. Men. Acceptus. All the Calatorii, from Hercu· laneum and elsewhere, have the same praenomen: M(arcus), except A. Calatorius Longinus (6. 1 5 8 3 0). 20 See Mommsen 1 8 87- 8 : t. 3 59 with nn. The recurring phrase in the acta of the Arval Brethren, '(piaculum factum) per calatorem et publicos eius sacerdoti', is especially suggestive. For the derivation of 'Calatorius', Schulze ( 1 904 : 1 o8a, 3 3 2.) compares 'Sacratorius' from 'sacrator'; 'Fictorius' from 'fictor'.

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subject of freedmen to the point of paranoia, reports that 'most equestrians and many senators traced their origin to this very source' (Annals 1 3 . 27)-a rhetorical statement mouthed in the heat of a senatorial debate on freedmen in AD 5 6, a statement by its nature not susceptible of proof or contradiction, but nevertheless voicing what was evidently viewed as neither ridiculous nor unthinkable, that is, if we discount first generation offspring of freedmen. More practically serious is the role of descendants, including sons, of freedmen in municipal politics; in particular the penetration of this status group in formidable numbers into the ranks of municipal elites in Italy and the western provinces as full members of the local ordo. This despite the fact that their ex-slave fathers or grandfathers had been formally excluded from the decurionate, save for the exceptional compen­ sation of honorary rank (the ornamenta decurionatus or even ornamenta duumuiratus, the honorary rank of the most senior magistracy). This process is well documented for first-generation descendants, and has often been studied. 21 Guesstimates of the proportion of decurions and municipal officials of Italy who are of servile/freedman descent range from 3 3 per cent (for Ostia, Puteoli, Capua) to less than ro per cent, with a 'cautious estimate' that overall about one in five of the whole local aristocracy of Italy was descended from slaves.22 The present inquiry, however, concerns not the descendants but the children of freedmen (and freedwomen) in the first generation. These determine the rate at which families of freeborn status can emerge from the ranks of the slave-born. As with (Petronia) Iusta, the same problem arises: how can we determine the status of individuals amid the minefield of personal nomenclature-are they slave-born or freeborn in each particular case ?-and, more generally, how do freeborn children arrive in the numbers required to sustain the pressure for their upward mobility into the ranks of the municipal elites ? The evidence of the tombstone inscriptions and the analysis of 2 1 e.g. CIL 1 0 . 4760 (Suessa, AD 1 9 3 ) : Titius Chresimus, awarded 'honorem decurionatus gratuitum' for the services of his freedman father C. Titius Chresimus, 'Augustalis iterum'; 10. 63 1 8 (Tarracina, mid· I St cent. AD): Ti. Julius Ti.f. Fab. Optatus, II vir, son of Ti. Julius Aug. I. Optatus, an imperial freedman procurator and prefect of the fleet at Misenum; I I. 3 9 3 2 (Capena, early 2nd cent. AD): T. Flauius T.f. Quir. Flauianus, aedile, quaestor designate, son of T. Flauius Aug. lib. Mythus (and Flauia Diogis), who rendered benefactions; 1 4 . 4 1 2 (Ostia): Cn. Sergius Cn. f. Vot. Priscus, 'praetor sacris Volcani', adlected aedile, son of Cn. Sergius Cn. I. Anthus, Augustalis (ILS numbers 6296, 28 1 5, 5 770, 6 1 42). 22 Gordon 1 9 3 1 : 70; cf. Garnsey 1 97 5 : 178.

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the personal nomenclature contained thereon and elsewhere is not precise enough for this purpose. The names of those involved in the case of Iusta, discussed above, illustrate the difficulty. (For clearly specified status, see Plate 2a.) In relation to all children of freedmen (and freedwomen) we need to know the status of the mother at the time each child was born. Unless both parents were full Roman citizens enjoying the rights of formal Roman marriage (ius conubii) and linked in such a marriage (iustum matrimonium), the child would follow the status of the mother. If a freedwoman, the mother could have been either slave (serua) or informally manumitted (Latina Iuniana) or formally manumitted (ciuis Romana liberta) at any particular childbearing. If freeborn she might be either a Roman citizen (ciuis Romana ingenua) or a Junian Latin born to a junian Latin mother (Latina Iuniana) or a non-citizen (peregrina). In order to trace any intergenerational change in status, therefore, we need to know ( 1 ) the marriage pattern, i.e. where one parent is ex-slave, was the status of the other: slave, ex-slave or freeborn ? (2) if the mother is ex-slave, were her children born before or after her manumission? Both raise further difficult questions.23 Firstly, if the normal marriage pattern between ex-slaves before manumission was slave with slave, how prevalent was remarriage after (and even because of) manumission, and what was the usual pattern then-with ex-slave or freeborn partner? Secondly, if the normal period of childbearing was between, say, the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, how many ex-slave women were manumitted before the age of thirty, the standard minimum prescribed by the lex Aelia Sentia, and what proportion of these would have been informally manumitted with the status of Junian Latins ? It is largely a question of method. Personal nomenclature cannot help much. Status-indicators, including filiation and tribal­ indication, could help greatly; but from the late first century use of the freed-indication in particular, other than for members of the familia Caesaris, rapidly dwindles and disappears (Plate 5 ).24 In the absence of status-indicators, Greek cognomina, even in conjunction with particular nomina, cannot reliably distinguish between those of slave and those of freeborn eastern origin. Approaches of a different >J In the following discussion the terms 'marriage', 'married', etc. are used without quotation marks to include non-formal marital unions. 24 Taylor 1 96 1 : 1 1 3 f. ; Weaver 1 972.: 4 3 , 8o ff.

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order have to be made. These involve age data and other demo­ graphic factors dealing with typical aggregations of persons from which probable or possible conclusions may be drawn. A good deal of work has been done on age at marriage for various groups within Roman society. This is important for the question of household size. There is general agreement that for first marriages men married later than women, in fact considerably later. This conforms to what has been called the typical 'Mediterranean' pat­ tern, that is late male and early female marriage. 25 The average age at marriage and the age gap between partners can vary over time (e.g. between the late Republic and the early Empire, as a result of the Augustan marriage legislation encouraging earlier marriage for senatorial men), between different regions (e.g. northern and south­ em Italy, Spain, Gaul, and the African provinces), and between classes. For the senatorial order under the early Empire the average gap was most probably less than for the population as a whole. The size of the gap depends on the separate calculations of the age of Roman girls and of men at first marriage. Here less unanimity prevails. The trend, in scholarship at least, seems to be away from very early marriage for girls (Shaw 1 9 8 7 : 3 3 ff., 4 3 ££.)-other than in aristocratic families for political reasons (Hopkins 1 9 8 3 : 94) -and towards even later marriages for men than previously sup­ posed (Saller 1 9 87a: 3 3 f.) . Quantifying such maners risks giving an impression of unwarranted precision, but is justified if the results are used with sufficient caution.26 The usual method of calculating age at marriage has been depend­ ent on the relatively small number of funerary inscriptions that record both age at death (a) and length of marriage (b) ; (a) - (b) then gives the age at marriage to within a year. This is precise, in that we obtain a range of specific ages, but provides too small a sample to be statistically useful. Until recently, it has been used faute de mieux. Saller and Shaw have applied a new method which relates the age at death, in five-yearly groups, to the kinship relation of the com­ memorator, i.e. parents, siblings, spouse, children, other kin. The key indicator of marriage age is the cohort in which spouses first zs

Cf. Saller 1 9 87a: 1 1 , 3 0, 3 4 ; Laslett 1 9 8 3 : 5 16 f.

2 6 As demonstrated by Saller ( T 987a: 3 0 ff.), it is possible to check, in a far more

sophisticated manner than has been available hitherto, the influence on results of particular assumptions by computer manipulation of the variables contained in them.

P. R. C. Weaver

appear as commemorators in significant numbers. 27 This increases the size of the sample tenfold, but produces a fivefold reduction in specificity. The gains are worth it. Included is the whole freeborn population, except soldiers (and Christians) on the grounds that they did not conform to 'the normal patterns of (Roman) family life'. Excluded on the same grounds are 'those suspected to be of servile origins'-although the precise criteria for such suspicion are not spelled out; this could be crucial, if a significant divergence from the freeborn pattern is found amongst those of slave origin, as the number of the incerti (tria nomina without status-indication) who could be included with either group is potentially very large. Age at first marriage for women is critical for fertility rates -together with other imponderables such as rate of remarriage. Age at first marriage for men carries with it important implications for the generation gap between heads of families (patresfamilias) and their children, as it does for the age gap between husband and wife. Whether we accept the figure fifteen or twenty years for women, and twenty-five or thirty years for men, the average age gap between first husband and first wife is at least ten years, probably more. Except for the aristocratic elite, where politics and property are factors influencing younger marriages, the twenty-thirty framework seems overall the most plausible for the freeborn population. For freeborn women this implies a lower fertility rate and a higher probability of widowhood (and of remarriage).

T H E MARRIAGE PATTERN

OF

EX-S LAVES

How does all this relate to those of slave origin? There is no simple transfer. Slave origin comprises both those born as slaves (including uernae, born in the familia) and those who were born free but subsequently enslaved (from whatever cause or source). There are no means available of determining even approximately what propor­ tion fell into each category. lt is commonly argued that the enslaved predominated over the slave-born during the late Republic, as a result of the wars of expansion and the civil wars, and that under the early Empire, due to the 'Augustan peace', external sources of slaves dwindled in importance and were outnumbered, in Rome and Italy 2 7 Saller 1 987a: 2. 3 ff. Cf. Saller and Shaw 1 984: 1 30 ff. ; Shaw 1 987: 32. ff., 36 ff.

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at least, by the home-bred slave-born. This may be true but is mere assumption.28 For the present purpose we are concerned primarily with the slave-born and with the influence of the mores of the slave familia on their 'family' life, before and after manumission. We can also include those enslaved before the age of puberty. But those first enslaved in adult life cannot be easily identified, nor their marriage pattern treated separately. As far as children born after the manumission of their parents are concerned, it makes little difference. We are not concerned, at present, with the children of imperial freedmen. The marriage pattern of the familia Caesaris, as of public slaves (serui publici) (Plate 6), is demonstrably abnormal for slave­ born society in general. That frees us from arguing about the extent of imperial slaves 'marrying' freeborn women-unions that evid­ ently persisted after manumission-and from yet another discussion about the purpose(s) and effect(s) of the senatus consultum Claudianum of AD 5 2.29 There are enough anomalies in the status of this elite group to warrant reserving them for special treatment. Perceptive studies of children of the lower classes in Roman society are not lacking. 30 The effects of slavery on family life at those levels cannot be overemphasized-slave breeding, sale of children, forced separation of families, the general imputation of moral inferiority to slaves of all ages. These effects persisted to a considerable degree past the barrier of manumission and left their stigma on the next genera­ tion as well, even those fortunate enough to be freeborn. They did not all by any means have the luck and talent of a Horace to rise above their inherited inferiority. Freed and freeborn at this point become in the mass indistinguishable. 3 1 There is profit in attempting to separate them out again. What criteria are necessary and sufficient for this purpose ? Not personal nomenclature on its own, as already mentioned. Status-indication is the only sure guide, together with 2 8 This doubt was expressed before I had read Bradley I 987b. He argues convinc­ ingly for a model which, under both Republic and early Empire, 'explains the maintenance of the servile population through a combination of complementary sources, warfare, trade and breeding' ( 5 9 ) . 29 Weaver I972: 97 ff. ; I 98 6 : I 4 5 ff. 3o See esp. Rawson I 9 6 6 : 7I ff. ; I 9 8 6a : I 7o ff. 31 Cf. Saller and Shaw I 9 8 4 : I J I ; Taylor I 96 I : I I J ff. In the general absence of status-indication, it is easier to separate out slave from freed and freeborn, with some measure of confidence, if we accept that, in the absence of other evidence to the contrary, the use of a single personal name, especially of Greek derivation, creates a presumption in favour of servile status.

P. R. C. Weaver

terms equivalent in this context to the freed-indication such as 'collibertus', 'patronus'. This can also be extended to the terms 'contubernalis', 'contubernium', 3 2 and, with caution, to titles such as 'Augustalis ', 'seuir' ; and, with even greater caution in combination with other criteria, to some tribal-indications. Such an approach might be regarded as too restrictive and in danger of reducing the sample below the level that is useful for valid comparison with the freeborn population. Outside Rome this is probably true. Hence the reliance on CIL 6 and supplements. That body of inscriptions at least can produce a critical mass of material to make an adequate beginning. Some years ago I did a study of the marriage pattern of 700 couples from Rome (excluding those from the familia Caesaris) where the slave or ex-slave status of one of the partners was specifically indicated or could be confidently inferred according to the criteria mentioned above (Weaver 1 972.: 1 79 ff.). The focus there was not on children, but on the status relationships between husband-wife couples. The study did, however, provide some material for deter­ mining the age at marriage and age at manumission in ex-slave society in Rome. The first question is more easily dealt with than the second. Such limited figures as are available as well as probability point to early marriage, or at least early childbearing, for female slaves in the domestic familia (Weaver 1 972.: 1 8 3 ) . Young female slaves would always have been prey to the sexual attentions of their master or other freeborn males in the household. Adultery was not possible with a slave woman and attracted no legal penalty or consequences (Buckland 1 908: 76 f.). Also, given the likely preponderance of male over female slaves and a natural preference for a master to have slave unions take place within his own familia, nubile slave women would be in a shortage rather than a surplus situation, quite apart from any deliberate exploitation of them for slave-breeding purposes (Flory 1 9 7 8 : 87 ff.) . There is no reason to think that slave women began childbearing and marriage any later than freeborn women, and good reason to think that it was earlier than the age of twenty, perhaps by as much as five years. For male slaves, on the other hand, the above considerations do not apply, although it is unlikely that they delayed forming stable alliances till after manumission. An age gap of five 3 2 Treggi ari 1 9 8 1 ; Rawson 1 974: 2.93 n. so; Weaver 1 986: 1 4 5

f.

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years or more on average between the first marriage of male and female slaves can be reasonably predicted, but not proved. (See Plate 1 for a freed couple where the husband is considerably older.) More difficult and controversial is the age at manumission. Some pointers may be found in marriage patterns. In the above group these were found to vary significantly between husbands and wives after manumission. Slaves and ex-slaves of both sexes in general married to an overwhelming extent with partners of their own origin and status. The study produced minimum figures of 95 per cent for seruus = serualliberta and 94 per cent for serua seruusllibertus.33 This figure is arrived at after the distribution of the incerti and incertae (i.e. those with nomen and cognomen but no clear indication of status) between libertilingenui and libertaelingenuae. But when the combined figure for slave/ex-slave spouses is separated out, we arrive at a 5 0/4 5 distribution for serui and 6812.6 for seruae; that is, in the world of epitaphs from Rome, at the time these were erected, a male slave was nearly twice as likely to be married to a freedwoman, as a female slave to a freedman whether from the same familia or not (45 : 2.6). On the other hand, a female slave prior to manumission was somewhat more likely to be married to a fellow slave than was a male slave ( 6 8 : 50 : : 4 : 3 ) . 34 Both these figures point to the likelihood that, in the context of slave unions in the city of Rome at least, female slaves were on average manumitted earlier than their male slave partners. This becomes more significant if we accept that female slaves in any case married at an age on average at least five years younger than their spouses. One further disparity between husbands and wives in Roman slave =

33 This contrasts strongly with the pattern in the familia Caesaris where, after the Julian period, a maximum of just over one-third ( 3 6 per cent) can fall into the same categories. On the basis for the distribution of incerti and incertae, see Weaver 1 972.: I 89-92.. 34 Such first marriages need not have occurred regularly berween members of the same familia except in the case of large households above a certain minimum, say I oo slaves. ln small familiae, comprising, say, up to a dozen slaves, in practice perhaps the great majority of all domestic households, although not represented proportionately in the surviving epitaphs which are biased numerically towards the monumenta and columbaria of the wealthy aristocracy, unions must have occurred regularly with slaves from other households. For an estimate of about one in three, see Weaver I 97 :z.: I 9 I f. What degree of interchange took place berween city and country households (the familia urbana and the familia rustica) of a given owner it is impossible to say. But as the sepulchral inscriptions are so largely the records of urban population groups it is reasonable to assume that they largely reflect intercourse berween urban domestic households.

P. R .

1 80

C. Weaver

unions (contubernia) points to a lower age of manumission for female than for male slaves. The figure for libertus serualliberta is 8 5 per cent, for liberta seruusllibertus 62 per cent (Weaver I972: I 9 3 f.), again after distribution of the incertilincertae. That means that the maximum proportion of freedwomen found married to freeborn men is 3 8 per cent compared with I 5 per cent for freedmen married to freeborn women, i.e. more than 2 : I. In both groups marriage almost always must have taken place after manumission, not before. One reason for this asymmetry was the fact that unions between slave men and freeborn women were severely penalized by the senatus consultum Claudianum, so that in many of the cases of libertus ingenua we are dealing with remarriage of freedmen after manumission.35 Another prime reason is the frequency (at least as revealed in the epitaphs) with which patroni married their own libertae but not the other way round. There was a distinct prejudice against a freeborn patrona marrying her own libertus. This is explicit in the legal sources as well. A constitution of Septimius Severus describes such unions as 'repellent' (odiosas), and at the same period even a patrona who was herself an ex-slave was not encouraged to marry her freedman. 36 That such discrimination existed from at least the beginning of the Principate can also be inferred from the pro­ vision of the lex Aelia Sentia for early manumission of a female slave for marriage ('matrimonii causa') but not for the reverse case of a woman manumitting a male slave for the same purpose.37 For the present purpose the main effect of this sexual asymmetry in the marriage pattern is to lower the age of manumission for female slaves further below that for male slaves. As to the hard data on age at manumission, mostly deduced from the age-at-death figures combined with personal nomenclature on epitaphs, with a sprinkling from literary sources, we have problems of interpretation and, inevitably, controversy-outside the familia Caesaris, that is. The most striking problem is that, despite the clear =

=

=

35 Unions between slave men and freeborn women in practice were largely restricted to imperial slaves (Caesaris sen.i ) ; women slaves in the imperial familia did not have any corresponding advantage: their social status was not comparable. 36 C. S · 4 · 3 (AD I 96); D. 40. 2.. I 4. I (Marcianus). 3? Gaius t. 1 8 ; d. D. 40. 2.. 2.0. 2. (Uipian): 'matrimonii causa manumittere si quis uelit et is sit qui non indigne huiusmodi condicionis uxorem sortiturus sit, ei erit concedendum' (inclusive language?). A woman 'in tutela' could not manumit a slave without her tutor's authority (Uipian, Tit. 1. I 7 ; Frag. Dosith. I s ; cf. lex lrnitarra ch. 2.8); in cases of intended marriage this may well have been an impediment.

Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen)

I8I

and explicit statement of the lex Aelia Sentia of AD 4 that slaves manumitted below the age of thirty should not become Roman citizens. except if formally freed (uindicta) by a magistrate after proof of adequate motive for the manumission before a council (consilium),38 the age data on the epitaphs reveal manumissions on a massive scale below the age of thirty, or even below twenty and even ten. On the basis of age data collected from Rome, Italy, and the western and the Danube provinces, Alfoldy reckoned that two out of three freedmen and freedwomen in Rome and Italy had been manu­ mitted under the age of thirty and one in three under the age of twenty ( I 972.: I 07 ff., especially 1 I I ff. ) . In the provinces the pro­ portions were lower, but even there as many as 40 per cent were freed under the age of thirty. Even these figures understate the proportion actually freed under thirty etc. as age at manumission must be lower than age at death-by how much it is impossible to say. Alfoldy's method and the sweeping conclusions he drew from these data about the status of freedmen in general have been roundly criticized, especially by Garnsey.39 While it is obvious that slaves who are commemorated on tombstones are not a random sample and typical of all slaves, in the case of ex-slaves, who had cause for commemora­ tion, and who were predominantly an urban phenomenon, the epitaphs are probably more representative than is often allowed, although biased towards the households of the wealthy (cf. Saller and Shaw I984 : I 2.7 f.) . In any case it is clear that, for many groups of urban slaves, early or very early manumission was quite common. It is not necessary to document this in detail. Even the personal slaves of imperial freedmen enjoyed a high rate of manumission before the age of thirty, which imperial slaves themselves did not enjoy (Weaver I 972.: 99 ff.). It is significant that within the familia Caesaris itself early manumission was much commoner for women than for men. Also among the group from Rome outside the imperial familia early manumission for serui was not particularly common compared with that for seruae. The bias in favour of earlier manumission for women than for men cannot be fully explained by the nature of the exemptions provided 38 Gaius 1. 1 8- 2. 1 ; Ulpian, Tit. 1 . I:Z.-1.4. Such a consilium was not taken lightly: in Rome, it was composed of five senators and five equestrians plus presiding praetor and sat on fixed days; in the provinces, of rwenty Roman citizen assessors (recupera· tores) with presiding proconsul, sirting on the last day of the assizes and thus presumably once a year in towns outside the capital. What happened in Italy outside Rome is not dear. 39 1 9 8 1 : 3 6 1 ff. ; cf. Hopkins 1 97 8 : I I 5 n. 30, I :L 7 n. 6 3 .

P. R . C. Weaver

under the lex Aelia Sentia, although intended marriage, as already noted, appears to have been for the benefit of female slaves only.40 The net effect is to reduce the average period between first marriage and manumission for slave women. As male slaves married later than slave women, the age gap between first marriage and manumission was thus about the same for both sexes. Any assessment of the absolute size of such a gap, however, given the nature of the prevailing data, would have to be largely guesswork. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conclude that for both sexes first marriage did precede manumission. As a working hypothesis I suggest that it was at least five years. M A N U M I S S I O N A N D S T AT U S

But the question then arises: what kind o f manumission ? Formal or informal? This has consequences for the status of the children. Formal manumission41 conferred both freedom (libertas) and Ro­ man citizenship (ciuitas). lf both parents had satisfied the conditions, the subsequent children were freeborn citizens (ciues Romani in­ genui) under the potestas of the father; if only one parent was a citizen, the children followed the status of the mother at the time of their birth and, if citizens, were sui iuris (free from potestas). Informal manumission, on the other hand,42 gave libertas and Latinitas but not ciuitas,43 contrary to the previous strongly held view that the two were closely linked.44 The children born subsequently were Latini/ Latinae, if mother or both parents were informally manumined.45 This must have been so in a large number of cases where one or both 40 It may be worth noting that the list of valid reasons (iustae causae) given by Gaius ( r. I 9 ) , while not necessarily exhaustive, appears to pick its way carefully between the sexes: ' . . . ueluti si quis filium filiamue aut fratrem sororemue naruralem, aut alumnum aut paedagogum, aut seruum procuratoris habendi gratia, aut ancillam matrimonii causa apud consilium manumittat'. Paedagogi and procuratores were no doubt always male, but what happened to alumnae? Cf. r . 39: 'ueluti si quis pattern aut matrem aut paedagogum aut conlactaneum manumirrat'. Elsewhere it is speci­ fically noted where the male includes the female, e.g. I . 72.; cf. r . 3 2.a. 4 1 i.e. uindicta, censu, or testamento, or 'iusta causa manumissionis apud consilium adprobata' under the lex Aelia Sentia. 4 2 i.e. inter amicos, per epistulam, or, after the lex lunia, under the age of thirty. 43 Gaius 3. s 6. Although informally manumitted, as Latini luniani they had recognized patrons, cf. 3 · 5 7 ff., 72.. 44 Treggiari 1 969: 2. 3 7, quoting Cicero, Pro Caecina 96, De domo sua 77, etc. 45 Gaius I . So. Up till Hadrian there was some doubt whether the child of a junian Latin husband and Roman citizen wife was born a Roman citizen or Latin; after Hadrian in all such cases the child was born a Roman citizen. Cf. I. 30.

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183

parents were manumitted early. The evidence is so widespread and applying to ex-slaves of all ages under thirty, that formal manumis­ sion under the lex Aelia Sentia is extremely unlikely in all or even a majority of cases, bearing in mind the cumbersome nature of that process. The procedure for taking out Australian citizenship, ignored by such a wide spectrum of those eligible, is quite straightforward in comparison. It is true that by the procedure known as anniculi probatio ('producing as evidence a year-old child') a Junian Latin marrying a Latin or citizen woman before seven adult Roman citizen witnesses, expressly for the purpose of begetting such children, might later go before the praetor or provincial governor with a child one year old, prove his case, and thus acquire citizenship for himself and, where necessary, wife and child.46 These twin formal ceremonies may not have been as regular as is often supposed; their least effect was to delay citizenship by at least two years for the parents; for the child it would not matter; from early childhood he/she would be a ciuis. Such an avenue to citizenship, together with others listed in Ulpian 3· 3 ,47 applied mostly to individual Latins one or two at a time and were not automatic. They required sometimes lengthy qualifying periods, investment of capital, and official approval. It should not be assumed that all or most Latini, whether under or over thirty, easily passed along this route in minimum time. By far the commonest method of formal manumission was by will (testamento), restricted as to number by the lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC, but still capable of producing 1 00 new citizens at a time (Gaius 1. 42 ff.). Pace Garnsey, this route was not available to slaves under thirty, except in the comparatively rare case where it was to provide a necessarius heres for an insolvent testator to avoid intestacy.48 ••

Gaius 1 . 2.9; Ulpian, Tit. 3 · 3 · 47 'beneficio principali, liberis, iteratione, militia, naue, aedificio, pistrino . . . quae sit ter enixa.' Cf. Gaius 1. 3 2.b- 3 5 . 'lteratione', i.e. repetition of manumission by the quiritary owner without the original defect, would-in the case of those who were Junian Latins due to having been originally manumitted under thirty-be restricted to those who had now reached the age of thirty (Ulpian, Tit. 3. 4 ; Gaius 1 . 3 5 ). Hence they do not concern us here. •• Garnsey ( 1 98 1 : 362.) misreads the texts. Gaius ( 1 . 2. 1 ) states: 'minor triginta annorum seruus manumissus potest ciuis Romanus fieri si ab eo domino qui soluendo non erat testamento eum liberum et heredem relictum . . .' Cf. Ulpian, Tit. 1. 1 4 . Even this case was restricted in application to the provisions of the lex Aelia Sentia, not to any other starute or decree. D. 2.8. 5 · 84 pr. (Scaevola): 'si non lex Aelia Sentia, sed alia lex uel senarus consulrum aut etiam constirutio serui libertatem impediat, is necessar· ius fieri non potest, etiamsi non sit soluendo testator'. See Buckland 1 908: 546.

P. R. C. Weaver

The main effect of informal manumission and junian Latin status, apart from possible avoidance of the s-per-cent manumission tax, was on inheritance. The estates of Junian Latins were on a par with slaves' property (peculium) and went to their manuminers as if by right. 49 That is, although during their lifetime Junian Latins enjoyed libertas and commercium (and thus had access to the Roman courts) but not conubium (reserved for ciues), after death they were treated as if they had been slaves and their whole estate went to their patron, not to the deceased's children who were totally excluded. The children of Junian Latin parents were thus the principal losers. This would have produced two different sets of financial incentives: one for Junian Latins to convert their status to citizenship as soon as possible, if only to gain the right to make and take under a will; the other for patrons not to press forward with citizenship, at least till the age of thirty, when most slaves could be formally manumitted in any case. Children of Latins born after the informal manumission of their parents and still themselves of Latin status, would be illegitimate 'Spurii filii'. In the absence of any form of personal nomenclature belonging peculiarly to Latins, it is difficult to identify them in the inscriptions, much less to be able even to guess at their number, either absolutely or in relation to formally manumitted ex-slaves. Some useful evi­ dence, however, is provided in Pliny's Letters. Several among his relatives and friends were quite ready to manumit informally: Cal­ purnius Fabatus (7. 1 6. 4), Antonia Maximilla ( 1 0. 5· 2.), Valerius Paulinus ( 1 0. 1 04). Even Pliny himself is not completely hostile to the idea : 8. 1 6 is at best ambiguous50 and in 1 0. 104 he does not ask Trajan's benefaction for all the Latins he has inherited from Valerius Paulinus, contenting himself with naming only three. By good fortune we are given their full names: C. Valerius Astraeus, C. Valerius Dionysius, C. Valerius Aper. That is telling-as Junian Latins they already have the tria nomina, for Pliny would not have 49 Gaius 3· 56: 'iure quodammodo peculii bona Latinorum ad manumissores ea lege peninent'. 5 0 Letters 8. 1 6. 1 : 'facilitas manumittendi (uideor enim non omnino immaruros perdidisse, quos iam liberos perdidi)' clearly refers to slaves under tbe age of tbirty {immaturos) and mentions only freedom {liberos) which need not imply ciuitas. Reference to 'ius Quiritium' is not appropriate here. In tbe absence of any obvious 'iusta causa' for early formal manumission, despite Sherwin-White ( 1 966 : 467), I suggest that here Pliny has informal manumission in mind. Probably in most cases of 'patbctic' manumission that was tbe only option available at shon notice.

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I

85

been so tactless as to anticipate Trajan's answer or take it for granted by giving their future names as citizens, if these were different from the ones they already had. As Latini Iuniani they take the praenomen and nomen of their patron as do formally manumitted Iiberti ciues Romani. The same usage emerges from Letters I o. I I . 2, where Pliny asks Trajan for the ius Quiritium for L. Satrius Abascantus, P. Caesius Phosphorus, and (P?) Ancharia Soteris, and, less clearly, from I O. 5 · 2: Antonia Harmeris ( ? ) as the informally manumitted freedwoman of Antonia Maximilla. 5 1 These examples confirm for freedmen what is conjectured with increasing confidence for Latini and also peregrini in the fleets, the auxilia and even the provincial municipia in Spain and elsewhere, that use of the tria nomina without tribal-indication does not necessarily imply Roman citizenship.52 Tribal-indication certainly does indicate Roman citizenship; filiation only indicates free birth (ingenuitas), whether of citizen or peregrine parents. As Iiberti of their patrons, Latini luniani could use the freed-indication if they wished. But that in itself does not, any more than tria nomina, identify the bearer as a formally manumitted ex-slave and Roman citizen. The procedure for converting] unian Latin to Roman citizen status was formal and required the presence of a Roman magistrate with imperium, i.e. praetor or consul or a provincial governor.53 The opportunities for such conversion were evidently far greater in the city of Rome than in the rest of Italy and in the provinces where only 51 1 0. 5· 2.: 'rogo des ius Quiritium libertis Antoniae Maximillae, ornatissimae feminae, Hediae et Antoniae Harmeridi'. Sherwin-White ( 1 966: 568) assumes that the nomen 'Antoniae' must have dropped out before the cognomen 'Hediae', and that the obscure 'Harmeridi' conceals a cognomen derived from the common 'Hermeros' (Hermeris ?). Mommsen's conjecture 'Agathermeridi' for 'Antoniae Harmeridi' is rather desperate and designed to eliminate the nomen 'Antoniae'. 5 2 See, most recently and convincingly, Mocsy 1 986: 446, 4 5 9, 462.£. Cf. Forni 1 979: 2.09, 2.2.8; not so clearly, Holder 1 980: 5 1 ff. The particular form of the tria nomina varied from one kind of unit to another and depended on the administrative practice favoured for enrolment of recruits. Especially telling is the use of signa of the type 'P. Antonius Leo q(ui) et Neon Zoili f.' CIL 10. 3492. = ILS 2.887. Cf. Forni 1 979: 2.08 n. 1 6 . This is not the place to take up the hypothesis of Millar ( 1 977: 406, 486, 6 3 0- 5 ) that in the sources 'Latins' everywhere refer to Junian Latins and that in the municipal communities freeborn citizens were either Roman citizens or peregrini, there being no such category as ciues Latini, except to observe that, if this were the case, there must have been in these communities, in addition to Junian Latins, vast numbers of peregrini who also used the tria nomina to name themselves and each other. S J Gaius and Ulpian mention only 'praetor'/'praeses'/'pro consule' for this pur­ pose: Gaius 1. 2.0, 2.9; Ulpian, Tit. 3· 3 ·

1 86

P. R. C. Weaver

one day of the conuentus was set aside for such applications. For those resident in Italy the services of a governor on his way to his province could sometimes be called upon as a favour. See Pliny, Letters 7· 1 6. 3 -4, where he hopes to be able to persuade his long-time friend Calestrius Tiro on his way to Baetica as proconsul to diverge from his route at Ticinum in order to manumit formally (uindicta) freedmen recently manumitted inter amicos ('amongst friends') by Pliny's wife's grandfather Calpurnius Fabatus. Such manumissions came within the voluntary but uncontentious exercise of imperium permitted to a proconsul outside and on his way to his province (cf. D. 1 . 1 6. 2 pr., Marcianus). But the same jurisdiction was not allowed even to the proconsul's legate, although with delegated imperium, outside his province.54 Residents in Italy, however, who wished to manumit their slaves formally but could not have them presented to the praetor in Rome had the inconvenient alternative of themselves attending the court of a provincial governor and going through the formal procedure there, involving a consilium of, presumably, twenty assessors (recuperatores) (D. 40. 2. 1 5 . s , Paulus). I t i s also to b e remarked that among th e 'many methods' available to Junian Latins to acquire Roman citizenship during the lifetime of their patron, all, other than the personal intervention (beneficium) of the emperor, including anniculi probatio and iter­ atio, require presence at the court of a praetor, consul, or provincial governor-obviously much easier for those in Rome than elsewhere -and those avenues added subsequent to the period of Augustus are all for services, financial or otherwise, to the city of Rome and at least imply residence there.55 In Egypt the prefect was specifically em­ powered to grant formal manumission (uindicta) by a constitution dating back to Augustus. 56 The Gnomon of the Idios Logos also makes it clear that the provisions of the lex Aelia Sentia and the lex Junia were alive and well in that province; as part of its concern to distinguish the various status groups in the population for taxa­ tion purposes, the Gnomon is alert to the importance of Uunian) Latins (22-6) and the need carefully to define formal (VOJ.LLJ.LTJ) manumission emphasizing the minimum age of thirty.57 H D. 1. 1 6 . 2.. 1: 'apud legarum uero proconsulis nemo manumirtere potest, quia non habet iuris dictionem talem'. 55 Gaius 1 . 2.8, 3 2b ff. ; Ulpian, Tit. 3 · 3 · 56 D. 40. 2. . 2. 1 (Modesrinus); Gnomon 2. 1 . 5 7 Gnomon 1 9, 1.1 ; cf. 2.0, 2.2.; cf. Duff 1 9 2. 8 : 2. 3 3 ff.

Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen)

1 87

All in all, it cannot be assumed, at least from the legal sources, that those informally freed in the Italian municipia could easily acquire full citizenship (the ius Quiritium) as a matter of routine. 58 It is obvious that a large number of Junian Latins must lurk uniden­ tified among the sepulchral inscriptions, that favourite ground for the study of status, nomenclature, and the Roman family. Is it possible to seek them out with some degree of probability or must they be abandoned as necessarily unidentifiable? Despite the intract­ able nature of the material and the obvious methodological hazards, I have thought it worth while at least to make the attempt, however inconclusive the results might turn out to be. The question at issue is important. The most convenient quarry is the collection of funerary inscrip­ tions (the sepulcrales) from Rome which do at least provide enough examples on which to base some general conclusions. The Roman inscriptions are also the most suitable for the present discussion, as they emanate from a social setting that is the most favourable for the granting of formal manumission, especially at an early age, given the greater accessibility of the emperor, and the magistrates required by law to grant it. If informal manumission was at all widespread in Rome itself, it would not be difficult to argue that it was practised proportionately on an even greater scale throughout municipal Italy, not to mention the provinces. In a separate detailed study (Weaver 1 990), 300 families were selected from Rome: at least one parent must be an ex-slave and at least one child is recorded. They are taken in sequence from the sepulcrales of CJL 6, supplemented from the more recent volumes of Annie epigraphique, especially 1 966-1 9 8 5 . The number 300 is chosen simply as a round figure of sufficient size to carry conviction. The conclusions may be briefly anticipated here. The most signi­ ficant data are the age-at-death figures for children of freed (ex-slave) parents. Although thirty years is legally a crucial age for formal manumission, hardly any such children are recorded as having reached that age, and only a comparatively small proportion as having reached the age of twenty. Given the age structure of the population, that is not surprising when children predeceased parents 5 8 It is even surmised by Sherwin-White ( 1 9 7 3 : no) that outside Rome manu­ mission procedures of any sort were not readily available and that hence Junian Latiniry would be the prevalent status of those freed both under and over thirty years.

188

P. R . C. Weaver

who themselves would in many cases not have been thirty years old. These age data, when combined with the names of the children, provide the best means of determining their status at the time of dedication. The questions can become complex : i.e. they can involve determining whether the children were still slaves or free; if free, whether they were freed or freeborn; if freed, whether they were formally (citizens) or informally freed Uunian Latins); if freeborn, whether they were Roman citizens or Junian Latins; if Junian Latins, whether they were informally freed ex-slaves or born to Junian parents; if Roman citizens, whether they were born to citizen parents, or formally freed ex-slaves, or Junian Latins whose status had been formally converted to Roman citizenship. For whatever motives, it is clear that during the first two centuries of the Empire dedicators of tombstones, whether themselves parents or children, did not use the status-indicators available to them to make clear to which of the above status categories they belonged, with one sig­ nificant exception-the use of filiation (with or without tribe) to indicate, I believe, Roman citizen status. In summary form, of 3 6 3 children recorded ( 6 2. per cent male, 3 8 per cent female) only 64 (or 1 8 per cent) are certainly freeborn, i.e. with filiation (and sometimes tribe) . Most of these are Roman citizens. Almost as many- 6 1 ( 1 7 per cent)-are still slaves. But for the remaining 2. 3 8 ( 6 5 per cent) the age data when combined with an analysis of their nomenclature suggest that of those who are freed (i.e. with freed-indication or its equivalent)- 1 05 ( 2.9 per cent) -few are likely to have been formally freed. The rest- 1 3 3 ( 3 6 per cent)-are children who have tria nomina (or equivalent) without any status-indication and thus could be either freed or freeborn. They have an almost precisely similar pattern of age data : only one out of 34 recorded ages shows a child who died aged over 2.5 years. Given that at least one parent in each case was slave-born but now ex-slave, it is most likely that those children born as slaves and subsequently freed (but not using the freed-indication) were in­ formally manumitted, i.e. were Junian Latins. The status of the remainder, those children born free (i.e. after their parents ceased to be slaves), would depend on the status of their parents, i.e. whether these were formally or informally freed. If the manumission pattern of these parents (which we cannot document), and indeed of all ex-slave parents, was at all comparable to that of their children, then here too we should allow initially for a high proportion of Junian

Children ofFreedmen (and Freedwomen)

1 89

Latin parents and of Junian Latin children. Only about one in six of all children used filiation (with or without tribe) to give an impres­ sion of Roman citizenship. The conclusion is that this is the right impression. Despite the avenues for converting Junian Latin status into Roman citizenship, it is probable that in this group of 3 6 3 children overall there were a t least a s many Junian Latins a s there were Roman citizens, and probably more. C O N C LU S I O N S

The consequences of all this for the children o f freed parents may be briefly put together. The picture that emerges from the sepulcrales of Rome is not to be taken as typical of the Italian municipia and is of even less relevance to the provincial communities, which need to be examined region by region to isolate the distinguishing variant features of each.59 The Roman picture, if anything, is distorted in the direction of overrepre­ senting the numbers of freedmen, freedwomen, and their offspring. Moreover, the proportion of informally manumirted slaves who subsequently had the opportunity to proceed to full formal manu­ mission and citizenship is almost certainly higher, even much higher, in Rome than elsewhere. Thus if we are primarily concerned with the proportion of freeborn citizen children of freed parents who have the status and wealth to penetrate upwards into the ranks of the local elites generally in the Italian municipia and elsewhere outside Rome, we must-at least provisionally, until sufficient detailed studies of these are available-discount to a considerable degree figures based solely on the capital. The familia Caesaris, which is substantially based on the Roman material, is itself a major distorting factor. If we consider only slaves formally manumitted over the age of thirty, freeborn citizen children born to such parents would have to be a minority of all children born, accepting that childbearing for female slaves began about age fifteen, and that male slaves first 'married' about age twenty or slightly later. But not necessarily a small minority, if formal manumission through patronus liberta marriage was commonly available before the age of thirty. lt seems, however, unlikely that a stable lifelong contubernium that began =

59 Cf., for regional variation within North Africa, Saller and Shaw

1 984: 1 2.8 ff.

P. R. C. Weaver

during slavery would have produced anything like the replacement rate of freeborn children, even given a total of children ever born to such couples as high as six. Certainly, in the inscriptions there is little sign of nuclear families with more than two or three children of any status. The position regarding freeborn children is different for male ex-slaves and for female ex-slaves, if one accepts an age at manu­ mission close to thirty for the former. Remarriage with freeborn women of much younger age, in particular women of citizen status, would create the possibility of whole families of freeborn citizen children. This would enable the taint of servile blood to be mini­ mized and enhance the social mobility of their descendants. But, in the absence of conspicuous wealth, this would not necessarily be achieved in the first generation, and not easily in sufficient numbers to produce a social invasion from below. Treggiari observed of the Republican period that most of the children of freedmen known to us were ingenui and that it is likely that any children born in slavery rarely formed part of a freedman's effective family ( 1 969: 2. 1 2.£.). It is hard to be as confident that this is the picture presented by the epitaphs of the early imperial period. In most cases outside the familia Caesaris wives who are incertae cannot be assumed to be freeborn. Many could easily be informally manumitted Junian Latins, especially those under thirty, and many of the�e-and I suggest most of those outside Rome-would be unlikely to proceed to formal manumission and Roman citizenship. If this is true, the same should hold good for their children as well. Whether born as slaves and set free under age as Junian Latins, or born into Junian Latinity and, although boasting free birth, never­ theless facing the same barriers as their parents in progressing to citizenship, they were as likely to remain Junian Latins as to become Roman citizens, especially if their patrons maintained a financial vested interest in their status quo. Given the seemingly grasping attitude of Calatoria Themis, it would be wise to ·rate the Herculanean woman (Petronia) Iusta's chances of proving Roman citizenship as worse than evens.

9 Houses and Households: Sampling Pompeii and Herculaneum AN D REW WALLA CE- H A D R I LL

What do we mean by a big house? Something very different from the meaning we would give today to the same expression. A house today is said to be big in relation to the density of its population. A big house is always a house with few people in it . . . In the seventeenth century, and also in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a big house was always crowded, with more people in it than in little houses . . . In these big houses, neither palaces, nor yet mansions, we find the cultural setting of the concept of childhood and the family . . . The big house fulfilled a public function. In that society . . . it was the only place where friends, clients, relatives and proteges could meet and talk. To the servants, clerics and clerks who lived there permanently, one must add the constant flow of visitors . . . It is easy to imagine the promiscuity which reigned in these rooms where nobody could be alone, which one had to cross to reach any of the communicating rooms, where several couples and several groups of boys or girls slept together (not to speak of the servants, of whom at least some must have slept beside their masters . . . ), in which people forgathered to have their meals, to receive their friends or clients, and sometimes to give alms to beggars. One can understand why, whenever a census was taken, the houses of notabilities were always more crowded than the little one-room or two-room apartments of ordinary folk. One has to regard these families, for all that they were giving birth to the modern concept of the family, not as refuges This paper has benefited greatly from the constructive discussion it received at the Canberra conference, and in particular from the searching critique of Dr Jean-Paul Descaudres of the University of Sydney. I have also learnt much, particularly about the difficulties of use of the finds, from Ms Penelope Allison of the University of Sydney. Roger Ling has given valuable guidance. For access to the archaeological material, I am obliged to Professor Baldassare Conticello, Soprintendente at Pompeii; for financial support to the research boards of Leicester and Reading Universities, the British Academy, and the British School at Rome.

Andrew Wa/lace-Hadrill from the invasion of the world but as centres of a populous society, the focal points of a crowded social life.

Aries 1 973 : 3 78-8 2.. THE reconstruction of past families in the late medieval and early modern periods has been made possible by an abundance of documentary material, both precise and extensive. Only by careful statistical analysis of such documents, pioneered by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Laslett I 972.a etc.), has it been possible to break from Le Play's simplistic hypothesis of a general historical development from the extended to the nuclear family (Flandrin I 979: 50 ff.) . The quality of documenta­ tion varies considerably: but, at their best, census records may cast a bright shaft of light on a local society at a particular moment in time. Such is the Florentine Catasto of I 42.7 from which David Herlihy has reconstructed Tuscan families in such vivid detail (Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber I 98 5) or the I 5 2.3 survey of Coventry froIt which Charles Phythian-Adams drew his picture of the desolation of a late medieval English town ( 1 979). The ancient historian is unlikely (outside Egypt, I add cautiously) to hit upon documentation of this quality; yet without statistical study we have the greatest difficulty in rising above the level of the anecdotal, and consequently in constructing hypotheses any more convincing than Le Play's. We have, let us admit, too little evidence to say just how typical or atypical of what social groups at what period in what areas was the multinuclear family attested for the Aelii Tuberones. Saller and Shaw have made exemplary use of statistical analysis of funerary commemorations ( I 984). But valu­ able though this sudy is, it can only build up the balance of probability against the widespread occurrence of the extended family: it can give no accurate picture of its distribution. One source of evidence which is available to us in abundance (indeed much more so than for the modernist) is the archaeological. It has not been exploited in this context. Whatever the difficulties in using it (and they are legion), there is a strong prima-facie case for " predicting that it should have a direct bearing on the question of the family. 'Family' is a concept of elusive definition, and indeed we may doubt that the modern concept finds an exact match in either the early modern world (Flandrin I 979: I 1 ff.), or the medieval (Herlihy 1 9 8 5 : 1 ff.), or the Roman (Saller 1 984). Nevertheless, the object

Houses and Households

193

o f investigation both o f census-takers and o f modem researchers is normally defined in physical terms: those who live 'under the same roof', 'all those who stay and sleep together in one and the same residence and who survive together on the same bread and wine' (Tuscan village scribe, quoted by Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber). Taxman and historian focus on the household in its house (though what the house holds may prove a 'houseful' rather than a 'house­ hold' in Laslett's terminology) : the symbol of its unity is the place of common food-preparation, the fuoco, just as the Lares above the hearth symbolize the unity of the Roman household. The aim of this chapter is to make a preliminary incursion into the archaeological evidence through a case-study of Pompeii and Her­ culaneum. I do not pretend to esta blish solid results, but rather to explore methodology: what can and cannot this evidence be used to discover? (Incidentally, the reader is warned against any attempt to put weight on the provisional data offered for this purpose or to reapply it in other contexts.) To illustrate, I shall look at two separate aspects of the problem: first by an attempt to reconstruct the distribution of households of different sizes in Pompeii, and to consider its implications, second by asking about the composition of the 'houseful' represented by the living unit. The scope of the chapter is considerably wider than the 'marriage and children' theme of the volume, but this is dictated by the nature of the evidence; and the very factors which make it so hard to detect 'marriage, divorce, and children' archaeologically are revealing for the make-up of the Roman household. H O U S E S AND H O U S EH O LD S

The prevalence o f 'extended' families in Europe in the past may have been shown up as a myth, except indeed, on Hajnal's distinction ( 1 9 8 3 ), across a north-west/south-eastern divide. It is notable too with what consistency average household size, even within com­ munities where multinuclear households were a standard pattern, proves to have been as low as 4- 5 : thus Laslett's average of 4'73 persons for a hundred English parishes between 1 5 74 and 1 8 2 1 (Laslett 1 97 :z.a: 1 3 0 ff.) compares to a n average o f 4 · 42. i n Tuscany in 1 4 2.7 (Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber 198 5 : 2.80 ff.). Nevertheless, what such averages conceal is the importance of the 'big house',

1 94

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

which Aries (cited above) so powerfully evokes. In sharp contrast to contemporary circumstances (which do much to form our image of 'the family'), households vary sharply in size. There is a close correla­ tion between wealth of household and size; whether because they produce more children, because they favour extended households, or because they have more servants, the wealthy live in above-average­ sized 'families'. Thus the population of a Kent village in 1 676 may range from the family of the lord of the manor, including six children and fifteen servants, through substantial yeomen with 8-xo persons per household, to labourers and poor without servants and only 1 ·2 and o · 9 children per family respectively (Laslett 1 9 6 5 : 64}. A further point must be emphasized. In a society which favours the 'big house', small households of 1 , 2, or 3 persons may be common enough, yet even so may contain only a small part of the total population. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber calculate separately the distribution of household sizes in Tuscany as a percentage of the total of households and as a percentage of the total of persons. The Florentine Catasto shows up the smallest households, of 1 or 2, as the commonest, at least in the towns (Fig. xb). But, for obvious math­ ematical reasons, this is very far from saying that the majority (even the majority of the poor) lived in small households. In fact (Fig. xa) they account for a mere 1 4 per cent of the population; more people lived in households of 5 than any other size, and over half the population lived in houses of 5 or more, and this despite an average household of 4 · 4 2. The Tuscan evidence offers a graphic illustration of the demo­ graphic importance of variation in density of population between households. In one crucial respect, however, it is positively unhelpful to the historian of classical Italy. The census deliberately excluded servants from a famiglia, preferring to register them with their own families of birth, and correspondingly includes children within the famiglia even when resident abroad (Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber 1 9 8 s : 1 2 f., underplaying, so it seems to me, the significance of this point). That deliberate choice of course reflects the Tuscan concep­ tion of a famiglia. Although the basic definition is by residence ('those sharing the same bread and wine'), absent children are seen as exceptions to be discounted. Presumably the perceived norm of the large household was one with an extended family rather than one with numerous servants. Doubtless the large households, particularly in the town, also had more servants.

Houses and Households

� �

�

Ci ?/!.

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

195 E'ZJ Countryside l.!]ll Town

2

3

4

5

6

7

Size of households

8

9

10

I I to 25

10

I I to 2S

(a) % of persons

20 .. ...,

0 ..c � ::1 0 ..c

Ci �

5 Size of households

8

(b) % of households

FIG.

1.

Tuscan households in 1.42.7 (after Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber)

For an example where servants, not extended family, are the vital factor in building larger families, it is better to turn to sixteenth­ century Coventry. Here too there is a strong correlation between wealth and size of household (Phythian-Adams 1 979). Whether measured by rental categories or by assessments of total value of goods in the household (Table 9. 1 ), the wealthier houses are consist­ ently more populous, both in servants and children. But though the wealthiest houses are more likely to have children (78 · 6 per cent) and more of them {2· 8) than the poorest (42·9 per cent with

No. of households

I . Nil assessments

488

65 2. 5 I4

7 2. 3 2.

2.68 2I8 I 2.0

9 " 2. 5"5 2" 5 5 ·o 1 "9 1"1 37"5

2.0·6 I67

7"3 1 1 ·8 2.·6

8 7• 5 9 2. " 3 1 00"0 1 00·0 1 8 ·4

I 7 " 2. 4 5 "4 73"3 86· I

2.·8 3 "9 4"8 5 "4 5 "7 6·6

-

3 "4 4 "0 7•6 1 ·8

2." 4 2.·6

I "3 I"5 2." I

3 7" 5

7 1 "9 67"7 76·o 78•6

66·7 70•8

42"9 6 1 ·5

--

% of households with children

--- -- � -- ·

servants groups

Mean sizes of

2." 3 1 "95 2. · 8 1 •7

I ·8 2"06 2. • 0 2. • 0 2. • 2.

- - - -- -

groups

Mean sizes of 'sibling'

World Copyright: The Past and Present Society, 1 7 5 Banbury Road, Oxford, England. This Table is reprinted, with the permission of the Society and the author, from Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Past and Present Publications, Cambridge University Press, 1 979), p. 2.4 1 .

7 · £ s o- 9 9 8. £ x oo + 9· Rest of city

3 · £3- 5 4• £6- 1 0 5 · £ 1 1-1 6 6. £2.0-49

2.. £o- 2.

with servants

households - ----- -

% of households

Mean sizes of

- -- -- - - - -- ---- -

% of all households

Household size in Coventry, I 5 2 3 : Sizes and composition of households by categories of goods

---- - -- - ------

Categories

T A B L E 9. I

Houses and Households

197

average 1 · 8), the contrast i n servants i s much more marked: 1 00 per cent of the richest with 7 · 6 servants each as against 1 7 · 2. per cent of the poorest with I · 3 servants each. These figures represent a city in a period of steep demographic and economic decline. The average household size was a mere 3 '7: in periods of prosperity an English town would have had a far larger proportion of prosperous and densely populated households. A century apart, Tuscany and Coventry produce similar patterns of household densities by different routes. Though servants were familiar enough in Italy, and extended families quite possible in England, there is a clear cultural contrast. Italian visitors to England remarked with surprise on the way the children were sent out to live and serve (and of course learn) in other households. Service and extension of the family operated to some extent as alternative strategies for increasing labour and hence wealth. These patterns have an obvious bearing on Antiquity. About sizes of family groupings in our sense, whether the average number of children or the frequency of non-nuclear families, we have quite inadequate evidence. But the abundant evidence for a massive presence of slaves in Italy of the first centuries BC and AD makes it clear enough that, in a society in which production was based on the household, there must have been a similar correlation between wealth and size of household. That the wealthy Roman had a vast familia, with as many as 400 slaves under a single roof, we know. But can we learn a little more about the distribution across society of different sizes of familia, slave and free ? The archaeological evidence should permit at least a few basic first steps. It is clear to every casual visitor to Pompeii or Herculaneum that their jigsaw of houses, large and small, magnificent and squalid, reflects social contrasts between the now invisible inhabitants. One has only to compare the site plan of these Roman towns to those of Greek cities like fourth-century Olynthos or third-century Priene, with their regular blocks of equal house plots laid out in neat grid pattern, to realize how remarkable and interesting the Vesuvian evidence is. If the classical Greek evidence points to democratic societies with oikoi of regular and predictable size (Hoepfner and Schwandner 1 986, esp. 2 5 6 ff., for an excellent survey), Pompeii and Herculaneum surely suggest a society with very unequal distributions, whether of wealth or of family or household size. Much of the excavation and (selective) preservation of the sites in

Andrew Wa/lace-Hadrill

the present century has been conducted with the express purpose of exposing these social contrasts-Maiuri's publication of Hercu­ laneum being the most explicit example of this interest. But what has been lacking has been any attempt to quantify. How many houses of what size were there in the towns ? What was the distribu­ tion of population among them ? Some progress at least can be made towards answering such questions. Unfortunately, the state of publication of Pompeii is such that no reliable figures of any sort are available. Only the most notable houses have been published in any but the most cursory fashion. There is now widespread awareness of this disastrous situation, and gradual attempts are being made to rescue what information remains after centuries of unscientific stirring up of the site. For statistical purposes there are some useful, though far from reliable, working tools. Eschebach 's map and listing of houses ( 1 970) has done service for two decades as an overall guide to the site. But in point of detail, both his plans and listings were unreliable. These can now be corrected from the very superior cartography of the RICA map and plans of individual blocks in volume iii of the Corpus Topographi­ cum Pompeianum ( 1 9 8 1 , 1 986). Also useful, though presented in an almost impenetrable format, is the room-by-room recording cam­ paign of decorated floors and ceilings (Pitture e Pavimenti ) by Bragantini, de Vos, and others ( 1 9 8 1 , 1 98 3 , 1 986). More recently, there has appeared what may be taken to be an 'official' publication on behalf of the archaeological superintendency of Pompeii, offering a new listing of all buildings in Pompeii, together with new maps, and a great deal of preliminary analysis of the material by computer: Pompei. L 'informatica a/ servizio di una citta antica. But this in turn, though a marked advance on Eschebach, is still fraught with difficul­ ties; for though the maps are based on new work, they are not always reliable, while the identification of the usage of space incorporates traditional assignations, however dubious, and still fails to offer the most basic measurements, particularly of the area of the units analysed. The promised establishment of a computer database with large-scale plans may open the way to more accurate research; meanwhile few dependable figures are available. A total survey would be a colossal labour, and moreover in large areas of the site would merely run into the sands of tincertainty in face of the physical disintegration of the remains. For statistical purposes, a sample should be adequate, and I therefore set about

Houses and Households

1 99

drawing up a data base of a couple of hundred houses, with a view to correlating information on size, number of rooms, state of decora­ tion, usage (residential, commercial, horticultural, etc.), and so on. In the event, the choice of areas for sampling proved very restricted: though some progress could be made in the older excavations in Region VI, the neglect of the more modest houses at the expense of the show houses (e.g. Casa dei Vettii) and the literal disintegration of their walls limits the value of this evidence. Only the excavations conducted, particularly by Amedeo Maiuri, in the first pan of this century, with conscious attention to their value as evidence for social and economic conditions, are at all well preserved. Even here, a large portion of the excavations are still unpublished. My survey covered 7 blocks of 78 houses in Region I (6-1 2). Maiuri also excavated much of Herculaneum, which in some crucial respects was differently and better preserved (second floors and wooden fittings often survive), and published his results in a fashion he omitted to do for Pompeii. Both for the vital additional information and, no less important, as a control on the sort of presumptions about the nature of Roman social, economic, and family life which Maiuri was importing into his interpretation (and hence excavation) of the evidence, I added 4 blocks of 5 1. houses (i.e. the core) of Herculaneum to the survey. There is a risk of confusing evidence from two different towns; but it emerges that the patterns are closely comparable, and the dissimilar­ ities interesting. To avoid a concentration on one single area in Pompeii (and consequent distortions) I have also included a sample of 8 blocks with 104 houses in Region VI (9-1 6), though here the survey is only partial. (The survey is described in fuller detail in Wallace-Hadrill forthcoming.) What then can the archaeological evidence of houses of different sizes tell us about the distribution of their inhabitants ? Attention must be drawn at once to the extraordinarily precarious nature of attempts to reconstruct the population of Pompeii and the assump­ tions which such attempts have incorporated. Discussion has always focused on the problem of the total population of the city. Current estimates vary from 6,4oo-6,7oo (Russell 1 9 8 5 : 1 ff.) to the still repeated figure of z.o,ooo (for a conspectus of the literature, Jongman 1 9 8 8 : 108 ff.). Various indicators have been deployed, from the (manifestly irrelevant) seating capacity of the amphitheatre, to extra­ polations based on the number of skeletons discovered (the figure of z.,ooo is offered, but this proves to be either itself an extrapolation

200

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

from the number excavated in one sample area, or a bold guess at the numbers currently stored in the repositories, lying as they do in jumbled heaps, dismembered, uncatalogued, and uncounted). One method of arriving at an overall figure, which has been employed from Beloch to Russell, is to use an average figure of population per hectare derived from comparative statistics of the population of medieval cities. But this method incorporates assump­ tions which undermine the whole interest of the inquiry. Russell suggests an average of I oo-uo per hectare, with a maximum of 200. The figures derive from his own earlier tables of populations of European cities in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries (Russell I 9 5 8 : 6 o ff. ) But not only may we question the assumption that a medieval city can be a reliable model for the population density of a Roman city; we may ask whether a figure for the average population density of a medieval city is itself meaningful. Russell's tables show a wide range of variation, from 40 to 289 per hectare. It is surely in itself an interesting fact about medieval cities that their population densities could vary so widely (cf. Duncan-Jones I 9 8 2 : 2 5 9 ff.) . By reducing the figures to an average, we rule out inquiry into the circumstances that made one city more crowded than another, and the inferences we can draw from these variations. The same issue has provoked considerable controversy among archaeologists concerned with prehistoric settlement. There is a tradition of attempts to extrapolate from comparative ethnograph­ ical evidence a cross-culturally valid figure for population density. Narroll ( I 962) offered I om2 roofed space per person, Kolb ( I 9 8 5 ) refined this t o 6. I 2 m2 o f inhabitable roofed space per person. But these attempts miss the force of Roland Fletcher's objection ( I 98 I, cf. I 986): perceptions of 'overcrowding', which underlie the expansion of inhabited space, are themselves the result of attitudes which vary widely from society to society. Or, as Ian Hodder put it ( 1 982: I 9 3 f.), hypotheses that assume constant density neglect the symbolic meanings of the use of space which are a vital feature of a society. Spatial organization is not simply a neutral reflection of social organization, but is an independent variable which is complementary to social organization. All this has direct bearing on the question of Roman households. If it were true that population density in pre-industrial cities could be treated as a constant, inquiry into the population of Pompeii would not be of great value: the supposed population figure would merely

Houses and Households

2.0 1

b e another way o f expressing the figure for the area o f the city. But it is the variations of density, variations over time, between different societies, different areas, even different social categories within the same city at the same period, which are most interesting: we want to know how Pompeii differed from fourth-century Olynthos or fifteenth-century Florence and what that tells us, rather than generat­ ing apparent facts about Pompeii on the assumption that all were, on average, the same. The alternative approach is to work from the bottom up: instead of basing calculations on an assumed overall average, to look in detail at the evidence of the houses themselves and see what they imply about the density and distribution of population within the city . In a sense, this has been the basis of traditional calculations from Fiorelli onwards. Fiorelli ( I 87 J ) took as a sample the portion of the city excavated to I 872, and dividing houses into categories on the basis of the number of their rooms, extrapolated a total of I 2,ooo for the total population. All subsequent estimates have taken the form of modifications of Fiorelli's initial calculations. Nissen (I 877) thought that Fiorelli had failed to allow adequately for the number of upper rooms which were not preserved archaeologically, and doubled his calculation of I ,8oo houses to 3 ,6oo houses and upper flats, so arriving at a population of 2o,ooo. Beloch ( I 889) felt that Nissen had gone too far, and recalculated, still on the basis of the houses excavated before I 872, a population of I 7,000-I 8 ,ooo which he arbitrarily reduced to I 5 ,ooo because he felt that the (implied) average of IO slaves per house was too high. Eschebach ( I 970: 6o) further reduced the total to 8,ooo in the light of the excavations of Jashemski which had revealed that as much as a third of the city was only thinly inhabited, with substantial areas under cultivation (cf. Jashemski I 979: 24 and n. 56). It is strange that for over a century, despite a massive extension of the available archaeological evidence, nobody has returned to the house as the basic unit of calculation. Moreover, obsession with the figure of the total population has distracted attention from the vital point implicit in Fiorelli's first calculations, that the houses come in a wide range of sizes, and that the variation in house size implies a variation in household size. Unlike Olynthos, where one might reasonably attempt to calculate an 'average' family size, it is evident that Pompeian households will have ranged from single-person units to palace-like units with dozens of slaves.

202

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

Careful attention to the archaeological evidence now available ought to allow considerable refinement of Fiorelli's calculations. The evidence is better in significant respects. In Herculaneum in particu­ lar, but also to some extent in Region I of Pompeii, it is possible to reconstruct upper storeys in detail. There is also abundant evidence of beds, whether from bed-niches in the masonry, or from the wooden frames themselves found in lower and upper floors at Herculaneum. This evidence has its own difficulties of interpreta­ tion : how many sleepers should we allow per bed ? how many beds were not slept in on a regular basis ? how many slept elsewhere than in beds, e.g. on mattresses on the floor ? Nevertheless, they constitute good prima-facie evidence of habitation, and, by extrapolating from those areas where the evidence is well preserved, it should be possible to build up a convincing overall picture. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make such a detailed study without considerable further research. Investigation is beset by at least two substantial problems. The first is the wholly inadequate state of reporting of the archaeological finds. Without the sort of record of precise distribution of artefacts normal in modem archaeology, it is difficult to pronounce with any confidence on room-use. It is frequently impossible to tell, for instance, whether a room designated by the excavators as a cubiculum in fact contained any evidence of sleeping. Only thorough study of the distribution pattern of artefacts can reveal what the tell-tale criteria of sleeping should be. The second major problem is that of change over time. Popu­ lations are not constant over time. Nor are families, or the usage of houses. Children are born and die, slaves are bought and sold or liberated, wives are married and divorced, tenants come and go. A site like Pompeii does not reveal a population in a constant state, but freezes it in one moment of a process of constant change. As human life changes, so does the surrounding environment of houses: yet the rhythms of change are not necessarily the same, and buildings may lag behind, not always at a constant interval. A once-crowded house may lie empty, though leaving evidence of its previous crowding; conversely, a house once shaped for a small family group may have become overcrowded, and not yet reflect in its structures its new population. What the archaeological evidence attests beyond doubt is the process of change itself, in constant adaptation of properties, joining neighbouring properties into one, or splitting single units into

Houses and Households

20 3

new separate ones, opening and closing connecting doors, adapting spaces for radically different uses, and so on (Ling 1 9 8 3 ) . This raises the question which exact moment any global pop­ ulation figure for Pompeii would refer to. Even the destruction of Pompeii was a process, lasting over time: the fact that an incalculable proportion of the population fled during this process means that the count of skeletons in Pompeii can never give more than a minimum figure for the population immediately preceding the eruption. But, on a longer time-scale, the destruction of Pompeii starts with the earthquake of AD 62. Comparative evidence makes it clear that the earthquake will have had a major impact on the population (Andreau 1973), and archaeologists have frequently commented on the slowness of the process of reconstruction. Hence it becomes ambiguous whether figures refer to the actual population in AD 79, or to an ideal for the early Empire, ignoring the effects of the earth­ quake. Again, it may be argued that, instead of trying to reconstruct ultimately unprovable figures that imply a mythical constant population, it is precisely the variations over time we ought to be studying. In view of these major difficulties, I do not intend to indulge any further the pursuit of chimerical absolute figures. Instead, it may be worth using the existing evidence, inadequate though it is, to explore what consequences the assumptions we make on the macro-level about the total population of the city have on the micro-level for the population of the household. Let us suppose, purely for the sake of hypothesis, that the figure of 1o,ooo, to which scholarly consensus seems now to tend, is more or less right for the total population within the walls of Pompeii before the eruption in AD 79· What implications follow for the size of individual households? Fiorelli extrapolated a figure of 1,8oo for the total of houses, including shops, in the city. Nissen wanted to double the figure to allow for independent upper flats (this, as will emerge, is a wild overestimate). But even Fiorelli's figure, after more than a century of active excavation, can now be seen as over-optimistic. Initially, indeed, the computer-analysed material in the new Pompei. L'infor­ matica volume seems to support a generous estimate of the number of units in Pompeii, recording in the excavated or partially excavated portions of the city some 8 1 8 residential habitations, 890 commer­ cial premises, 2.07 workshops, 47 public buildings, 17 temples, 27 horticultural plots, and 26 3 miscellaneous or unidentifiable units

204

Andrew Wa/lace-Hadri/1

(63 ff.) . These figures, however, though amassed and reduced to percentages as if each unit counted were a separate entity, prove to result from extensive double-counting (a flaw which renders virtu­ ally all the graphically presented material worthless). The listings of individual units, which carefully distinguish the principal entry to a unit from subsidiary entries to other parts of an integral complex, reveal a different picture. 1 ,4 3 5 is the total given for units excavated to date; and when 1 74 tombs or suburban villas outside the walls and 64 public buildings and temples within the walls are subtracted, 1 , 1 97 remains as the maximum for houses, shops, workshops, horticultural plots, and 'other' miscellaneous usage. To extrapolate a figure for the whole site including unexcavated portions, we must exclude the numerous partially excavated blocks, often with only one frontage exposed. We are left with scarcely I ,ooo units in 7 2 blocks. For the 40-odd unexcavated o r partially excavated blocks we may add a maximum of 5 50 further units; but since the unexcavated areas lie largely on the outskirts of the town, which were evidently less densely built up than the centre, and since we must allow for some proportion of horticultural plots and other miscellaneous non-habitable units, it is not easy to imagine a total of habitable units in excess of I , 2oo- I , 3 00. This estimate would in tum suggest an average household size, if we want to imagine a population of I o,ooo within the walls, of 7"7- 8 · 3 (or, even allowing for a maximum of 1 , 5 00 units, of 6"7). If (but only if ) each house represents a separate family, we are dealing with an average notably higher than the early modern European one of 4 - 5 . However, in a slave-owning society, this may be precisely the sort of way in which a Roman town differed from medieval and early modern conditions. How plausible that might be we cannot judge until we consider the distribution of the average figure among units of different sizes. One of the most striking features of the housing of Pompeii and Herculaneum is the diversity of shapes and sizes of houses within any given area of the towns. The interlocking jigsaw of large, medium, and small houses repeats itself constantly: and though there may be some areas with more large houses, and others, particularly those fronting on busy roads, with a higher proportion of small shops, in general the admixture is surprisingly even. This emerges if we compare the range of house sizes in the three sample areas of Pompeii Regions I and VI and Herculaneum (Fig. 2). Dividing houses on the

Houses and Households 45 40 35 30

20 5

. Reg. I 0 Reg. VI 0 Here.

% 25 20 15 10 0

< l Oll

2.

FIG.

Distribution of house sizes: Comparison of samples

35 30

25 20

15

10 5

o L-�-+--� ���--�4=�--�4=�� < 1 00 < 200 < l OO 16, 2.9, } 1, n . }6, 3 9. 5 1, 54· 77. r r s , ' 44. 1 4 8, ' 49 . 1 67, 1 1 8 provinces: governors r oo, 1 0 1 , 1 8 5 , r 86 posrings 7 5 , 1 00, 1 0 1 Ps-Plurarch: D e liberis educandis 1 1 5-6, 1 18-9, 1 6 } , r 64, r 6 s Publilia 4 3 , 84 Pudenrilla 5 6 puella, usage r 68-9 puellae Faustinianae 14 pupil/us 1 48-9

querela inofficiosi testamenti 54, 1 4 8 Quinrilian ( M . Fabius Quinrilianus) 10, u o, q o, t 6}-4 Quinrus, brorher of Cicero, see under Tullius Quinrus, nephew of Cicero, see under Tullius Regulus, see Aquilius Regulus, M. remarriage 4, 5 , 4 1 , 48, so, 5 4- 6 , 5 8 , 6 1 , 6 3 , 67, 7 7 , Ch. 4 passim, r r r , I I } , 1 76, 1 90 reuerentia 1 3 6, 1 3 7, 1 4 3

Index rites of passage 8 Romanus, L. Licinius Marinus Voconius 72. rooms: numbers 1 99, z.o 1 , z.o8, 209- t z., 2.2.5 ratio of persons 2.06-7, 2.08 recording 1 98 Rutilius, P. 1 4 7 Sallust the historian (Sallustius Crispus, C.) 70 Sallustius Crispus, C., junior 70 Sallustius Passienus Crispus, C. 6 t , 7 2. salutatio t t , 2. t Saturnalia 1 9 Scaurus, M. Aemilius 6o, t l. t - 2. Scaurus, M. Aemilius, junior 5 9, 92., 94 schools 1 30, 1 3 1 -2. Scribonia 3 8, 43, 49, 5 9 Sejanus (l. Aelius Seianus) 56, 6 2. Sempronia 4 3 , 82. senators 2.9, 4 5 , 5 8 , 59, 64, 7 5 , 87, 8 8 , 1 56 senatus consultum Claudianum 1 7 7, t 8o senatus consultum Or{itianum 2.6, 5 3 , 54 senatus consultum Tertullianum 2. 6 Seneca (Annaeus Seneca, l.) 4 2., s o- t , 1 08, 1 2.2.1 l l. J , 1 18, I J O, 1 3 3 Seneca (Annaeus Seneca, l.) the Elder 67, 7 3 , 1 2.8, • s o, t 6 t SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, l. 7 5 sepulcrales, see funerary inscriptions servants z. I -2, 89, 1 94, 1 9 5 , 1 97, 2 2 5 Servilia, wife o f D . lunius Silanus 4 3 , 83, 84 Servilia, wife o f L . Licinius Lucullus 8 3 Settefinestre Villa 2.2. 1 , 2.2. 3 shops l.OJ , 2.04, 1.09 - 1 a, 1. 1 1, 2 1 5 , 1. 1 8, l.l.O, 2.26 Silanus, D. Junius 8 3 , 84 skeletons 1 99, 2.0 3 slave unions (contubernia) 4, 1 09, 1 7 8, 1 79-80, 1 89-90 slaves 4, 7, 1 7, 2. 1 , 88-9, 1 1 1 , 1 1 6, 1 49, 1 97, 2.0 1 , 1.08, 1 1 2, l. I J , 2. 1 4, 2. 2. 5 , 2.2.7 American South t 57 breeding 1 77, 1 7 8

commemoration t 8 t exploitation 1 64 living quarters 2.2.2., 2 .2. 3 marriage patterns 1 7 4, 1 76-8 2. origins 1 76-7 punishment I 44-6, 1 5 1 - 6 5 passim sale 8 son-in-law (gener) 7 1 , 77 sons Ch. 6 passim punishment I 3 2.-6, Ch. 7 passim space, usage 2.00, 2.06, 2.07 staircases 1 1 9, 1.10, 2.1.2 Statius t o6, t o8 status 3. 2.9, s 6, 6 3 free t 5 4, I 5 5 , 1 6 2. freeborn Ch. 8. passim freed Ch. 8. passim slave Ch. 8. passim status-indicators 1 74, I 77, 1 8 5 , t 8 8 stepdaughters 6o stepfather (uitricus) 54, 6o, 7 1 , 7 2., 73 stepmother (nouerca) 72.-3 step-parents 83, 84, 85, 96 step-siblings 84, 96 stepson (priuignus) 7 1 , 7 2., 74 steriliry 63, 67 Strindberg, August 48, 65, 77 succession 5 J , 54, 6 3 , 66, 68, 75, 76 see also disinheritance; inheritance sui iuris 2.6, 2.8, 49, 6 t , 1 1 5 , 1 8 2. Sulla, see Cornelius Sulla Felix, L. Tacitus, Cornelius 5 1 , 1 07, I 08, 1 3 0, IJI teachers 2.0, 1 3 1 - 2., 1 3 8, 1 6 3 , 1 64, t65 tenement blocks, see insulae Terence (P. Terentius Afer) t t 6, 12.4, 1 3 8, ' 3 9 Terentia 40, 4 2., 50, 94, 9 5 Tertulla 4 3 Tertullian ( Q . Septimius Florens Tertullianus) 4 2. theatres, seating arrangements 1 8- 1 9 TJBERJUS, see Julius Caesar, Ti . Tiro, see Tullius Tiro, M. toga praetexta 2.8 toga uirilis 1 4, 2.8, t 2. 3, I 3 3 tortores I 5 8, I 5 9-6o, I 6 2. TRAJAN (Ulpius Traianus, M . ) 2. 3 -4, 75. I 2.2. tria nomina I 7 t , 1 8 4 - 5 , t 88

Index

25 2

Tricho u . �. 1 6 � Trimalchio ��. �09 Tullia 4 3 , 44, 5 9 , 84, 94, 1 1 1., 1 3 9 Tullius Cicero, M. 1 7, J 5 , 3 9, 40, 4 � . 4 3 . 44· s o, 6 3 , 7 5 · 8 4 , 8 7 , 89, 94-5, 97., 99- 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 0�, 1 04 , 1 0 5 , 1 06, 1 09, 1 1 1, 1 2 1, 1 16, 1 1.7, 1 1.8 , 1 3 0- I , 1 3 9-40

Tullius Cicero, M., junior

87, 94,

I 3 9-4 0

Tullius Cicero, Q. 94- 5 Tullius Cicero, Q., junior 1 40 Tullius Tiro, M. 8 9 tutela �s. t 8 o n. 3 7 tutor �s. 3 �. t 68 , 1 6 9, t 8o n .

Valenrinian 3 7, 1 1. 3 Valeria Paulla 4 3 , 44 Valerius Maximus 1 0 3 , 1 08 Valerius Messalinus 1 oo- t , I o6, 1 07

uerbera 1 46 , 1 5 I -6 5 passim uernae � I , 5 4 , 1 76 Vesral Virgins 4 I , 5 6 uindicta, see manumission Vipsania 34, s o, 57, 59, 6o, 6 � . 66, I 5 3, •

37

uncles 5 4 , 66, 6 8 , 70, 7 � Urgulanilla, see Piau ria Urgulanilla

s s . • s 6,

I 58

wedding hymns, see marriage hymns wet-nurses, see nurses whippings, see uerbera widowhood 5 4 - 5 , 5 8, 6 I , 67, I t t , 113

widows

t I - u ., 6 5 , 9 5 , 2 1 7