Roberts - 50 Roman Mistresses

50 RomanMistresses

Scandal, virtue andwomanhood in Ancient Rome

By Tansy RaynerRoberts

Published by FableCroft Publishing

Smashwords Edition

This book Tansy Rayner Roberts (2006, 2011, 2014)

Cover image Tansy Rayner Roberts & AndrewFinch

ISBN: 9780992284473 (ebook)

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thisebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If youwould like to share this book with another person, please purchasean additional copy for each reader. If youre reading this book anddid not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only,then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your owncopy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of thisauthor.

This book was first published as a seriesof articles on http://cassiphone.livejournal.com/ and http://tansyrr.com in2006 and 2011 respectively, first as The Matrons of Awesomecelebrating Womens History Month and then as part of Rock The Romanpunk week in celebration of Tansysshort story collection, Love andRomanpunk (Twelfth PlanetPress).

Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

Siren Beat (Twelfth Planet Press)

The Mocklore Chronicles (FableCroft Publishing)

Splashdance Silver

Liquid Gold

Ink Black Magic

Creature Court (Harper Voyager)

Power and Majesty

The Shattered City

Reign of Beasts

Pratchetts Women (FableCroft Publishing)

12. Julia

14. AgrippinaMajor

18. AgrippinaMinor

Interlude:Trajans Matrons

If you believe the texts that survive totell the story of Ancient Rome, then that fascinating civilisationwas pretty much all about the men. Men went to war, men playedpolitics, and men stabbed each other in the course of saidpolitics. Even the great love stories of the era often turn out tobe all about what the men saw, desired and took.

But history is always more interesting thanyou think it is, and no matter how public the works of men were inAncient Rome, there were always women living and working alongsidethem. Their status was very different, and few ladies were allowedany kind of public honour (except when those honours were reallyuseful to the politics of men), but that doesnt mean they werenta vital part of Roman daily life and culture.

Then there were the women we do hearaboutthose who made a mark on the writers of the day, and wereimmortalised as ambitious mothers, sultry and wicked temptresses,or perfect marble wives to be placed upon pedestals like thegoddess Venus herself.

While the ordinary women fell through thecracks of history and were lost to us, the most famous became solargely by accident, because they were connected in some way to thepowerful men who were seen as appropriate subjects of scholarship.But the story of those women is an important one, however hard itis to sift through the hyperbole and wild stories to find some kindof truth as to the lives they lived.

Here are fifty extraordinary women ofAncient Romevirtuous wives and adulterous vixens, abductees andviragos, imperial mothers and mortals who became goddesses, alltaking their place in history.

In order to understand the social role ofwomen in Ancient Rome, you have to start at the beginning, and itsnot all that cheerful. In the early myths of the city, women wereseen as irrelevant to most matters beyond the bearing of children,and I think its significant that the first woman in this listdoesnt have a name.

Romulus was the founder of Rome, a man whokilled his brother for challenging his position as king (or,possibly, for mocking his half-built city walls, the myths vary onthat one). He dealt with the oops I founded a city with no womenin it problem by inviting his neighbours, the Sabines, over to thenewly built Rome for a dinner and a show, then attacking them andstealing their women.

The rape in in the phrase Rape of theSabine Women is intended in the original Latin to mean capturerather than sexual assault though frankly we can assume there wasplenty of that as well. The Sabine women were captured by theRomans, and forcibly married to them in one of those charminghistorical rituals. Once they became pregnant, they made the bestof it and accepted the Romans as their husbands. So the storygoes.

When the Sabine men went to war against theRomans in retaliation, the un-named wife of Romulus (now a queen)and her compatriots ran on to the battlefield bearing their babiesaloft and demanded that the fathers and grandfathers of theirchildren make peace with each other.

The story pretty much illustrates the sayingto make a silk purse out of a sows ear, and has served as theinspiration for some amazing artwork over the years. But itsproblematic, no matter which way you look at itand is not the onlyrape myth that forms an essential part of Romes early history.Romulus himself had been conceived when his mother Rhea Silvia/Ilialay down by the side of a river to nap, was visited by the godMars, and woke up pregnant.

And then, most famously, theres

The kingdom begun by Romulus under suchviolent circumstances came to an end because of an assault onanother virtuous wife.

The seventh king of Rome was one of theTarquin family, and his sons were a pack of loutish young yobs. Onenight over wine on yet another battlefield, they started boastingas to who had the best wife. A quiet young cousin of theirsinsisted that his wife, Lucretia, was more virtuous than any ofthem.

Fully soused, the princes and their palsdecided to bet on the matter, and rode home to see whose wives werebest behaving themselves. They spied on the wives of the Tarquinprinces who were (shock, horror) dining with each other, chattingand generally having a merry time. Not shagging the slaves, notindulging in naughty parlour games with each other, not evendrinking wine (a capital crime for women at this time)simplyhanging out and having fun. This was still seen as an embarrassmentto their drunken husbands.

Lucretia, on the other hand, was quietly athome with no company but her maidservants (read: slaves), workingin wool by candlelight. Her husband promptly won the bet.

All well and good, but one of the Tarquinprinces was so affected by this experience that he became obsessedwith Lucretia. One evening, he slipped away from camp by himselfand went to visit her. As he was a kinsman of her husband, it wasLucretias duty to offer him hospitalitydinner and a bed for thenightand she did so. When the household was asleep, Tarquin slidinto Lucretias room and held a sword to her throat.

The charming prince gave Lucretia a choice:submit to him, or he would kill her and a male slave, and leavethem in bed together so she looked like an adulteress. Faced withthese options, she did not struggle.

Tarquin thought he wassafe, because no woman would sully her reputation by admitting tobeing one of the raptae (Latin for snatched woman/stolen woman/rapevictim). He didnt realise that Lucretia was braver than he gaveher credit for. She called her father and her husband to her thenext day, and told them exactly what Tarquin had done to her. Then,before they could stop her, she stabbed herself anddied.

Enter Brutus, a friend ofthe family. Outraged that the crown prince had caused the death ofsuch a chaste and modest Roman matron, he used the death ofLucretia as an excuse to kick out the Tarquin monarchy and usher ina Republic. (The poet Ovid, in a neat play on words, refers toBrutus snatching, yep, theres that word raptae again, the knife fromLucretias body)

What is most interesting about this story(apart from the continuing ramifications of the Roman ideals ofwomanhood) is that, whether or not it was true, it was the acceptedstory five hundred years later, the official explanation of thebeginning of the Republic. No Roman batted an eyelash at the ideathat a king could be deposed and an entire political systemoverturned because the heir to the throne assaulted a woman, andthe men of the city took the womans accusation seriously.