Download Augustus 07 Lecture XXII

The Rome of Augustus
Lecture XXII 26 April 2007
“God and Country” (conclusion) / "A Woman's Place...?"
Tiberius’ reply to a Greek city that had offered to establish a divine cult of Augustus and himself:
“It is fitting that all men in general and your city in particular should reserve special honors
befitting the gods in keeping with the greatness of my father’s services to the whole world; but I
myself am content with the more modest honors appropriate to men.”
Some distinctively different religious groups in Augustan Rome:
Ovid in Art of Love (Sourcebook 181), on places to meet women: don't ignore the shrine of Adonis, the
Synagogue where the Syrian Jews gather for the Sabbath, and the temple of Isis.
—Jews granted toleration by Julius Caesar as reward for help after war with Pompey, exempted from cult of
emperors, an exemption renewed by Augustus. But passage from Cicero, In Defense of Flaccus [Sourcebook 217]
perhaps typical in showing Roman resentment of Jewish separateness. [Similar issue would later confront Christians.]
—Worshipers of Isis (Egyptian moon-goddess), found in Rome at least from time of Sulla.
–According to Dio Cassius, Antony and Octavian in 43 vowed a temple to Isis (perhaps to fulfill a promise of
Julius Caesar to Cleopatra); temple never built.
–Octavian in 28 and Agrippa in 21 issued orders prohibiting Egyptian religious rites being celebrated within the
city limits; private worship (and public worship outside the city) implicitly permitted.
–Mistresses of elegiac poets given to Isiac worship; a way of marking them off from "proper" Roman women.
–Passage in Sourcebook (217-18) from Apuleius (2nd c. AD) illustrates a more personal way of conceiving
relation between worshiper and deity. Isis figures also in Ovid's story of Iphis, end of Book 9 of
Metamorphoses: Isis much more sympathetically drawn than Olympian gods like Jupiter or Diana; is O. making
pointed use of an Egyptian deity to show how a god "should" behave?
Last major area of social life to be examined: place of women, marriage and the family.
Women’s role traditionally limited to the private sphere of the family and household (domus), i.e.,
as daughters, wives, and mothers. A typical epitaph: “She maintained the house, she wove the wool
[Domum servavit, lanam fecit]” Women's actions outside the family sphere carefully controlled, usually
legitimated by a link with a male, e.g., political advertisements at Pompeii with wives joining husbands to
urge support for candidates.
But within that sphere–seen as the moral center of society–their status respected both by law and
tradition (mos maiorum). Roman mother the primary source of moral education for her children.
–Examples of strong mother-figures who influence leading men of the state, pointing to a real
moral auctoritas exercised by the mother. E.g., Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi; Servilia, mother of Brutus
the assassin of Julius Caesar, Atia, the mother of Octavian, as portrayed in the biography by Nicolaus of
Damascus (selections in Sourcebook 29-32).
–Horace's image of the "stern mother" in Odes 3.6 (Sourcebook 150) a symbol of the past that
Rome needs to recapture.
Traditional conceptions of approved female behavior so central to ideas of social order that their
maintenance or violation carries powerful civic overtones; central domestic role of women given religious
form in Vestal Virgins, sacralized versions of ideal home-guardians.
Positive and negative female images as forms of political symbolism:
–Positively, Livy's Lucretia: her rape by Tarquin emblematic of Rome's oppression by kings; her
self-definition as a faithful wife, her choice of death over living with dishonor the ultimate expression of
the Roman male ideal for a woman.
–Negatively, Sallust's Sempronia, co-conspirator of Catiline and embodiment of the conspiracy's
threat to moral/social/political order (Sourcebook 26): self-directed, not loyal to husband and family,
sexually aggressive, fiscally irresponsible, with skills and interests not fitting for a respectable woman, e.g.,
dancing and lyre-playing.
–Similar portrait of a morally degraded wife in Horace, Odes 3.6 (dancing again!). Poem also
noteworthy for explicit link between Rome’s neglect of the gods and the decline in its morals.
–Deliberate cultivation of "improper" female traits by love-poets such as Propertius, e.g.,
portraying mistresses as sexually controlling, unencumbered by family ties, skilled singers; a way of
establishing a position outside respectable society.
Upheavals of civil war produce a drastic change in the visibility of women; in years after Julius Caesar's
death, women are featured in visual media in quite new ways, e.g., coins celebrating marriage of Antony
and Octavia; interesting parallels with Hellenistic monarchs.
–Women's essential role has not changed–they are still seen as acting in concert with men and
under their direction–but they share in the general loosening of traditional limits on personal display set in
motion by Caesar.
–One case of a Roman woman at this time exceeding even these new limits: Fulvia, Antony's third
wife, who assumed a quasi-imperator role in military operations against Octavian in 41 BC. Result: Fulvia
subjected to same verbal abuse as her male counterparts in the obscene messages inscribed on lead slingbullets from siege of Perugia (Sourcebook 218). A more subtle form of attack on her in epigram of
Octavian (also in Sourcebook): her actions sexualized (and thereby "feminized")
–Cleopatra an even more blatant threat to Roman notions of woman's role: Antony's subservience
to her (as portrayed in Augustan sources) his most disgraceful act. Tantalizing thought: what if Julius
Caesar had lived and continued his liaison with Cleopatra?
Next time: the family of Augustus as Rome’s “first family”; Livia and Julia as contrasting examples of how
women adapted to the roles designed for them in this dynastic system; Augustus’ efforts to reform Roman
marital behavior.
Readings for Lecture XXIII: Propertius 4.3 (Sourcebook 164-166), Ovid, Metamorphoses, stories of Baucis
and Philemon (Book 8, Humphries pp. 200-204), Ceyx and Alcyone (Book 11, Humphries pp. 272-282);
Zanker, Power of Images, pp. 156-166; Susan Treggiari, excerpts from Roman Marriage (Sourcebook 321348); Suzanne Dixon, excerpt from The Roman Mother (Sourcebook 349-359).
Today’s prelude: “Cara sposa” from Handel’s opera Rinaldo, sung by Andreas Scholl (countertenor), with
the Accademia Bizantina conducted by Ottavio Dantone, from a Decca CD.