Virtuous women
We know of good women from literature, legend, coins and statues but, above all, from the many epitaphs that have survived from Roman Italy - such as the following, concerning 'Claudia'.
'Stranger, my message is short. Stop and read it. This is the unlovely tomb of a lovely woman. Her parents gave her the name Claudia. She loved her husband with all her heart. She bore two children, one of whom she left on earth, the other beneath it. She had a pleasing way of talking and walking. She tended the house and worked wool. I have said my piece. Go your way.' (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, CIL 6.15346)
Bereaved Romans often praised their mothers, wives and daughters on their tombstones, although their words were usually much briefer than this famous epitaph from Italy in the late second century BC. Often, however, they did echo the key feminine virtues mentioned in the epitaph, those of affection, good housewifery and chastity. Wool work was very much a symbol of a good woman.
'Augustus instigated the practice of holding up the women of the imperial family as inspiring models of virtuous womanhood ...'
Every Roman schoolchild also learned the story of another good woman, Lucretia, who attracted the unwelcome attentions of a tyrant by her beauty and her domestic industry (working late at night at the loom). Her rape and subsequent suicide was said to be the origin of the Roman revolt against the Etruscan monarchy, and the foundation of the Roman Republic in 509 BC. The story is told by the historian Livy in his first book (late first century BC).
Augustus instigated the practice of holding up the women of the imperial family as inspiring models of virtuous womanhood in the first century AD. Later emperors carried it further and in the second century AD empresses such as Sabina (wife of the emperor Trajan) were depicted as embodying, for example, pietas (family feeling).
Faustina the younger, wife of Marcus Aurelius, often featured on coins symbolising various virtues, while Marcus's daughter-in-law, Lucilla, was particularly associated with modesty.
Letters and epitaphs tell of the particular grief of Roman parents if a girl died before marriage - and they seem truly to have delighted in their living daughters. The first and second century writer Pliny the Younger (Letter 5.16) paints a touching portrait of his friend's daughter, Minicia Marcella, who died at the age of 13.
Published: 2003-09-08
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