Roman Bedroom, Imperial period,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

It was a Roman tradition that the natural order required the spheres of men and women to remain distinct; the man was more suited to labor outside of the family sphere, the woman, within. In many ways, this tradition gave to women dominion over the spiritual heart of both house and family. The center of the Roman world in every psychological and realistic sense was the domus, the dwelling place for family and daily life. Women of ancient Rome did not immure themselves in a sheltered, segregated area of their homes, as Greek women did, unable to participate in the business and social lives of their husbands, brothers, fathers; rather, the Roman home was a public structure, where clients visited, extended families were raised, business was conducted, children were born, and parents honored in death. The lares and penates, the familial gods, had their shrine there; so every prominent family also kept the cabinet of their notable ancestors' images, the lifelike reproductions of forbears that they were on earth to emulate and, if possible, to surpass.

It is hard for us to understand the vibrancy of a Roman home and the sense that it was the emotional center in the extended, immortal life of a family. Women had dominion in the domestic sphere to order the lives of their children and slaves; although their influence outside the domus had to be refracted through a man's world, inside they were largely independent within their means. It could be said that the woman of the house was its spiritual and moral guardian and its domus her primary temple. But what were her emotional signposts about the all-important realities of husband and children?

Other web sites provide excellent information on what women in Rome's long history wore, ate, the kinds of parties and receptions they gave, how fashions changed over time, what books they read and, if working women, what occupations they undertook when both parents had to work. This chapter will seek, rather, to outline some summary attitudes of a Roman woman's inner or emotional life as defined by her culture. See the bibliography under "Reading and Links" for further reading.

Love in the Ancient World

Up until remarkably recently in Western history, the emotion of male-female love was viewed as, at best, pleasant and, at worst, dangerous when it came to marriage and family. It was irrelevant to the true purpose of marriage, which was to continue and enhance the prestige of the family. This makes it difficult to understand the values of a Roman women, raised from birth that emotional self-discipline was the most essential Roman virtue. In all the centuries of Rome's history it was the rare exception when a woman was permitted to marry for love (particularly in elite families) and the overwhelming generality that she married at the direction of her family for its own purposes. Mutual understanding between husband and wife was considered pleasant but not essential.

With marriage and children considered largely as a business proposition in both poor and rich spheres, Roman literature as written by men is replete with complaints about women; what the women thought of their men has not come down to us. Plautus, the marvelous comic playwright from the second century BC, wrote endless satires upon the difficulties men had with their wives, echoed by Cato the Elder in a darker vein when he railed at the disguised attempts of women to rule men. It was a foolish man who, loving or lusting after his wife, relegated his authority to her. Women in such plays were considered childish, frivolous, spendthrift, and manipulative; a man indulged them at his peril:

Thus in 100 BC, a Roman censor could say to an assembly of citizens, "'...marriage, as we all know, is a source of trouble. Nevertheless, one must marry, out of civic duty'...marriage was but one of a life's acts, and the wife was but one of the elements of a household, which also included children, freedmen, clients, and slaves." A History of Private Life, 38. Public affection between husband and wife was so frowned upon that Cato the Censor could expel a man from the Senate merely because he kissed his wife in front of his daughter in broad daylight. However, it was socially approved that a man make an attempt to be kind: it was meritorious to be "a good neighbor, amiable host, kind to his wife, and lenient to his slave..." Horace. Juvenal, however, could still rail in the established fashion against a friend who'd decided to marry:

Why endure such bitch tyranny when rope's available
By the fathom, when all those dizzying top-floor windows
Are open for you, when there are bridges handy
To jump from? Supposing none of these exits catches
Your fancy, isn't it better to sleep with a pretty boy?
Boys don't quarrel all night, or nag you for little presents
While they're on the job, or complain that you don't come
Up to their expectations, or demand more gasping passion.
Juvenal, Satire VI.

Roman marriages always held an awareness of the power of the paterfamilias over his wife and children. Roman law and custom gave him unlimited powers to discipline his household as he saw fit. In a Roman domus the reality was that the woman may have embodied in moral authority but the man alone held the power. This dynamic must have created a ongoing tension between man and wife as well as father and children.

During the increase in wealth of the 1st century BC with its concomitant political turbulence, a trend is evident to rehabilitate love, or at least to make it slightly more respectable to admit suffering its pangs. Hitherto, the idea of a man languishing for his beloved would be viewed as frankly effete or (more probably) decadent and Greek. The poems of Catullus are a dramatic departure from anything previously written in Roman culture. The naked baring of emotional wounds, however sardonically expressed, was new. Catullus' agonies over his Lesbia's infidelities, his passionate attachment and disillusionment, changed the standard for what could now be discussed in literature. It was in the late first century BC, with the increasing acceptance of male and female individuality, that Sulpicia, niece of a wealthy patron of letters, could write, with astonishingly simplicity,

Sulpicia's six poems are the only poetry written by a woman in Roman history which has survived. It is interesting that Sulpicia is determined to hide her feelings from her friends and family.

Sexuality in Ancient Rome

In addition to their reserved attitude towards love, the Romans did not equate, as the Christians later did, sex and marriage with love. Sexuality in pagan Rome was a natural drive like hunger or scratching an itch; brothels and prostitutes existed in every community, the god Priapus was visible everywhere from frescoes to clay lamps, and sexual desire for a man or woman could include, but did not require, emotional attachment. The primary importance in a woman's fidelity was the maintenance of a "pure" family bloodline. Interestingly, the Romans were apparently without that western sensitivity of the cuckold as a figure of ridicule: to have an unfaithful wife was embarrassing because it proved you had lost control over her actions, rather than because the husband had been found wanting. One of the few human frailties discernible in Augustus Caesar is the agreement by historians that he fell in lust with the beautiful Livia, pregnant with her husband's child, and did whatever was necessary to marry and possess her. However, in Augustus' case, it appears that lust and love were conjoined, unlike his unfortunate daughter, Julia. Ironically, it was Augustus' legislation on marriage and children which attempted to force the genie of Roman sexuality outside of marriage back into the cultural bottle, without notable success.

Yet in the course of a length marriage and the birth (and, frequently, death) of children, deep emotional attachments inevitably grew and it became permissible to express them, especially after the death of a partner. Perhaps the increasing availability and acceptability of divorce beginning in the 1st century BC removed some of the pressures from unhappy marriages. The "Laudatio Turiae," the lengthy funerary inscription dating from that period, is a tender tribute from a grief-stricken husband to his long-cherished wife in which marital love and mutual fidelity is exalted for every passersby to see:

Funerary art of this period more frequently provides us with tender pictures of the husband, wife, and child. Suetonius, in his biography of the Emperor Vespasian, notes that, following the death of his wife, Vespasian again took up with his longtime mistress, Antonia Caenis, an educated freedwoman, who "remained his wife in all but name even when he became Emperor." One senses that the Romans of Cato the Censor's generation would have found this new tenderness both effeminate and reprehensible.

Yet with the increasing wealth of the Roman family, a wife's position was beginning to change and her husband was permitted to show her personal affection: "Under the old moral code she had been classed among the servants who were placed in her charge by delegation of her husband's authority. Under the new code she was raised to the same status as her husband's friends, and friends played an important role in the social life of the Greeks and Romans." A History of Private Life, 43. The businesslike pragmatism of early Roman marriages evolved, eventually, into an approved emotional attachment that was seen as benefiting both its partners, although its importance in the life of the family and - critically - children was less sure.

The All-important Child

Children were the great sine qua non of a Roman's life, particularly in the eyes of women. A woman without children was treated with pity or contempt: she had not fulfilled her required personal and patriotic function. Her function, it should be remembered, must be placed in the context of the ancient world in which underpopulation, not overpopulation, was the driving concern. Women died frequently from childbirth; the majority of children did not survive into early adulthood; constant wars and campaigns, starvation, drought and disease were constant dangers removing manpower from the Roman state. The inimitable Cornelia bore 12 children and buried nine before adulthood; of those remaining, two (the Gracchi brothers) died before her as adults. Agrippina the Elder bore nine children, of whom only four outlived her (and Caligula died soon thereafter). These were wealthy women, with the best medical assistance available to them; the mortality rates among poor or working women would have been higher. From the earliest years of the Republic, a woman's fertility was in every sense the lifeblood of Rome's future.

Yet the claims of blood mattered less than the claims of name. In the face of underpopulation, adoption was an everyday occurrence which saved innumerable families from extinction. Bastards in Roman society played almost no social or political role in well-born families, although they could be tolerated (or adopted) by the poorer classes. What mattered was the continuation of the family name both to honor its progenitors and provide for even more successful future generations and the adoption of similarly well-born children to replace those fate had removed.

Simply put, a Roman mother's primary duty was to provide children for the state and to raise them to make the most of their opportunities. She was the primary inculcator of her children's values and director of their education. Children were treated, by modern sensibilities, harshly and were not excused on the grounds of childish misbehavior. They were seldom taught that they had the right to (or much chance of) personal happiness in their marriages or lives, but did learn that serving the family' needs and elevating its position was all-important. If this seems severe to current sensibilities, we in turn would have been likely have been viewed by the Romans as foolishly weak and emotional in our approach to the all-important requirements of child rearing. Daughters as well as sons quickly absorbed the fact that their marriages were important as a family convenience.

Image courtesy of B. McManus, VROMA.

Mothers apparently continued to correct their children's behaviors as a lifelong molding process; one thinks of the Emperor Tiberius who, in the end, moved to Capri in late middle age rather than endure his mother Livia's interference. Where a Roman mother loved, she chastened; and the more her pride, frequently, the greater the chastening process. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was a concept familiar to any Roman parent.

Shortly after birth, children were handed over to wet-nurses (although Galen in the later Empire approved of breast-feeding for emotional reasons). Wealthier parents tended to turn control over young children over to household slaves such as nurses or pedagogues [tutors] until the children reached marriageable age. Children might see their parents daily at dinner but spent the rest of their young days apart. In addition, the nuclear family would have been an alien concept in Rome; family by definition and valuation involved grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts. Frequently children were raised by their relations, such as the Emperor Vespasian, raised by his paternal grandmother even though his mother was still alive.

Parents, family, and slaves all shared one concept in molding the characters of children: self-discipline. "The cornerstone of every individual character...was the strength to resist. In theory, the purpose of education was to temper a person's character while there was still time, so that later, when he or she was fully grown, the germs of luxury and decadence...could be successfully warded off...the antidote to self-indulgence was activity..." A History of Private Life, 16. Although the influence of Stoicism added much to this imperative, it certainly predated it in the earliest legends of Rome.

The Unending Authority of Family

Romans were unusual in that, especially in wealthy families, both daughters and sons shared the equivalent of a grammar school education, although usually only boys went on to advanced studied in their early teens. The reason more young girls did not do advanced study was simply that Romans considered a woman marriageable by the age of 14 or 15, soon after entering puberty. Both the younger Agrippina and her mother, as well as Augustus' Julia, were married before they were 15. Boys tended to marry in their late 'teens or even early '20's. Therefore parents only had perhaps 15 years to mold their children into the Romans they were intended to become. For as long as the father lived, both his daughter and his son were under his authority, until the daughter married (and sometimes, not even then if she married sine manus, without transferring her father's authority to her new husband). Sons remained under their father's authority as long as he lived, a feature unique to the Romans. The son could not borrow money or complete many business transactions without paternal permission; whatever he earned or inherited, in theory, belonged to his father; and he could be disinherited at any time up to as much as three-fourths of his father's estate. Whether these laws were as enforceable in practice as they appear on the books is another question. The last father on record as killing his son for disobedience lived in the reign of Augustus and public opinion was outraged.

Of all crimes, parricide or matricide were viewed with most societal horror, even exceeding incest. When Sextus Roscius was defended by Cicero for the supposed murder of his father, the grim but traditional penalty he faced was to be beaten, sewn into a leather sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and the entire clawing menagerie thrown into the Tiber. Even in the decadence of Nero's reign, his murder of his mother, the impossible Agrippina the Younger, was viewed with such horror that it besmirched his reign for all later historians. "Honor thy father and thy mother" was also a Roman commandment carved in societal stone, perhaps because in every generation they were the fountainhead of the only thing that mattered or endured - the Roman family.

Sources:

A History of Private Life, ed. Paul Veyne, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Harvard University Press (Belknap Press), 1987, 1999.

Funerary bust and monument courtesy of B. McManus, VROMA. Image of woman reading in her domus from an 18th century drawing of Pompeian murals at John Hauser's Pictures of Pompeii.