Roman freedwomen

This paper evaluates the impact of the Augustan marriage legislation on the legal and financial freedom of Roman women, specifically, how the introduction of the ius liberorum (the “right of children”), which granted women freedom from tutela (guardianship), affected the freedom of Roman women to deal with their property as they chose. Scholars have offered diverging views on this topic: some see Augustus’ laws as a key moment in the “emancipation” of Roman women, while others suggest that, by freeing women from tutela, the laws essentially gave legal form to existing practice. As such, the question also has bearing on the larger question of how innovations during the Augustan principate were anchored in previous law and custom. In order to shed light on these questions, this paper seeks to reconstruct the operation of tutela mulierum, in its various forms, immediately before the passage of the Augustan laws. It also considers how many women were able to claim the ius liberorum, although the nature of the evidence does not allow firm conclusions. What emerges is that the reality of tutela and the potential benefit of the ius liberorum varied widely, depending on a woman’s individual circumstances, the type of tutor she had, and especially whether she was freeborn or a freedwoman subject to a male patron; moreover, while the Augustan laws paved the way for the further weakening of tutela for freeborn women, the gap between freeborn and freed increased.

Morrell, K. (2020) ‘Tutela mulierum and the Augustan marriage laws’, Eugesta 10, 89–116.

Full text available here: https://eugesta-revue.univ-lille.fr/pdf/2020/3.Morrell_Eugesta_10_2020.pdf

In 2008, Keith Bradley wrote '[i]n classical art, gures who can be presumed to be slaves are ubiquitous, visible in almost any museum catalogue or handbook where they are often called "servants." I recognise the difculty in identifying them. But the conservatism of art historians is to be challenged and leaps of faith encouraged. Servants in antiquity much of the time were slaves, yet there is hardly any research that investigates art as a source of historical knowledge about them … the subject seems to me to be in its infancy' (Journal of Canadian History 43: 477-500; at 489). Seen against this background, relatively little has changed in the more than ten years since Bradley's remarks appeared: 'ein bislang noch wenig erforschtes Feld' (1), as the editors of this volume note. The publication of A. Binsfeld and M. Ghetta's new collection thus marks a signicant turning point in research on the visuality of enslaved (and freed) persons. The volume originates from a workshop held in 2016 in Luxembourg, where one of the editors (Binsfeld) led a project on 'Slavery in the Socioeconomic Context of the Roman Provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior and the Neighbouring Areas'. The project's Germanic orientation bears a strong imprint on the collection as a whole: eight of the twelve contributions are written in German, and many contributors address provincial material at multi-regional scales that provide useful foils to better-known monuments from Italy (e.g. c. thirty of the ninety-six black-and-white images depict works in German museums). B's. 'Introduction' efciently situates the volume's chapters within the context of previous work on the iconography and material culture of Greek and Roman slavery (though the evidence from Etruria is completely overlooked). In particular, B. notes the impossibility of formulating absolute criteria for visually identifying enslaved and freed persons, who can at best be categorised provisionally based on their depiction with one or more characteristic traits (see below). But even in the rare cases where scholars can identify their subjects as enslaved persons with condence (e.g. together with an inscription), B. notes that it remains difcult to determine 'to what extent the material sources provide us a picture of the real situation of slaves in Greek and Roman antiquity and to what extent we are more likely to receive insights into the respective society and its mentality' (3). This core methodological dilemma in the interpretation of the sourcesas lived reality vs. (elite) social ideologydirectly informs the four papers in the rst section, 'The Iconography of Slaves and Prisoners of War: General Aspects.' This begins with L. Schumacher's 'brief sketch' of the key visual benchmarks for identifying slaves (e.g. physiognomy, hairstyle, dress, profession, placement, gestures, scale, ethnicity, etc.), summarising much of his own important work in this area. H. von Hesberg focuses on the qualities of beauty and specialisation that appear in a wide range of images of servants and argues that these images represent above all the idealised world envisioned by the slave owner, even if they may be tinged with aspects of reality. F. Luciani investigates the dress of Roman public slaves (servi publici), in a chapter which impressively pieces together a 'mosaic' of disparate literary, epigraphic, and iconographic sources. H. Huntzinger's contribution focuses on the iconography of captives and barbarians in late antiquity. He arguescuriously, to my mindthat since slavery is fundamentally characterised by captivity, scenes of captivity can inform us about the conceptualisation of slavery (contra H. von Hesberg, who elsewhere interpreted the image of captives as specically referential to military conquest). In the second section, 'The Slave with Lamps, Lamps with Slaves', M. Béraud looks at the gure of the lanternarius in Roman imperial imagery. There she seeks to understand images of hooded gures (cucullati) as not merely decorative accessories, but alsobecause of their putative connection to various protective gures (e.g. Telesphoros)as amulets and companions for the dead. M. Grawehr's chapter is the most innovative in the volume. He rst sketches the distinctive JRS 2022, page 1 of 2.

Il patrimonio epigrafico lapidario modenese, che attualmente comprende circa 300 iscrizioni, ha restituito più di 160 menzioni relative a schiave, liberte e ingenuae vissute a Mutina e nell'ager Mutinensis tra la seconda metà del I secolo a.C. e la prima metà del IV secolo d.C. Le epigrafi esaminate mettono in luce alcuni interessanti aspetti relativi alla condizione femminile nella splendidissima colonia emiliana e, più in generale, nella società romana.

El propósito de este trabajo es el estudio de la figura de la liberta en la ciudad de Ostia durante los tres primeros siglos de nuestra era. Las fuentes epigráficas de este lugar nos aportan una interesante y variada información sobre quiénes fueron estas mujeres, qué personas formaron parte de su círculo íntimo y cuál fue el papel que desempeñaron en la sociedad de la época. A continuación, se analizan todos esos datos que nos ayudan a conocer mejor cómo era la vida de estas féminas con pasado servil.

This paper intends to study the figure of freedwoman in Ostia during the first three centuries of our era. Epigraphic sources have provided us with interesting information about who these women were, what their intimate circle was and what role they played in the society of the Roman era. All this information has been analyzed to better understand the life of these women with a servile past.

Aggiornamento e revisione delle iscrizioni romane di Mutina per il sito web http://www.mutinaromana.it/it/  a cura di S. Pellegrini e G. Pellacani e realizzato da Altair4 Multimedia in occasione della mostra "Mutina Splendidissima. La città romana e la sua Eredità" (Modena, Foro Boario, 25/11/2017 - 08/04/2018).
Sezioni interessate: "Carta Archeologica" (schede nn. 1-3, 54-57, 62, 63, 74, 96, 290, 309, 326, 350, 800, 962); approfondimenti "Cittadini di Mutina nell'esercito romano", "La religiosità"  e "Artigiani e mercanti".

Los textos publicados en el presente volumen han sido evaluados mediante el sistema de pares ciegos. © Los autores © AJHIS © De la presente edición: Los editores I.S.B.N.: 978-84-943493-3-1 Depósito legal: S.174-2015 Maquetación y cubierta: Edita: Hergar ediciones Antema Realiza: Gráficas LOPE C/ Laguna Grande, 2-12 Polígono «El Montalvo II» 37008 Salamanca. España Reservados todos los derechos. Ni la totalidad ni parte de esta publicación pueden reproducirse, registrarse o transmitirse, por un sistema de recuperación de información, en ninguna forma ni por ningún medio, sea electrónico, mecánico, fotoquímico, magnético o electroóptico, por fotocopia, grabación o cualquier otro, sin permiso previo por escrito de los titulares del Copyright.

El objetivo de nuestro artículo es analizar la figura y el círculo familiar de Cornelia Faventina, mujer
atestiguada en la epigrafía de la Colonia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco. Proponemos su estatus liberto
utilizando una serie de marcadores epigráficos y onomásticos combinados con el análisis de su comportamiento epigráfico, tanto como dedicante individual como a través de la comparación con el
de otras dos mujeres hispanas de contextos dispares. Su promoción social, constatable a través del
matrimonio con un duovir, la convierte en un caso excepcional dentro del patrón matrimonial propio
de los libertos en Roma y en la Hispania romana.

This publication aims to study the evidence concerning Cornelia Faventina, a woman attested in
the epigraphy of the Colonia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco. We make use of new onomastic and epigraphic
markers which allow us to propose that she was a freedwoman. This conclusion will be reinforced by
comparing her epigraphic representation with two relevant cases of Hispanic women from different
backgrounds. Her social promotion, clearly attested by her marriage to a duovir, presents her as an
exceptional case in the freedpersons’ pattern of marriage in Rome and in Hispania.

Legal marriages were forbidden to slaves in Roman times, but this limitation dropped if they were manumitted by their masters and become freedpersons. According to ancient sources, a marriage between a patron and his freedwoman was encouraged by laws and welcomed by society, even if the man was freeborn.!
The situation was completely different in case a freeborn man had a relationship with a freedwoman who belonged to a different familia, a so-called liberta aliena. This type of union was strongly opposed by the Romans for legal reasons, either it was a proper marriage or just concubinage. Nevertheless, several epigraphic monuments prove that these relationships were more common than we may think, especially in small urban contexts outside Rome.!
Gravestones have provided much information about the life of the people involved in these unions, and the personal details are very useful to reconstruct the social, economic and familial context.!
The aim of this paper is to present the figure of these libertae alienae and the impact their bonds with freeborn men may have had within local communities. Another topic that should be considered is how the couples arranged to be remembered by posterity trough the funerary monuments; the choice of reporting on stone their relationship is a sign of pride and not of shame, and a clue that, in some way, these relationships were, if not totally accepted, at least admitted by society.

L'intervento, presentato in occasione della Giornata di Studi "IL CONTRIBUTO DELLA DEPUTAZIONE DI STORIA PATRIA ALLA STORIOGRAFIA DI MUTINA E DEL SUO TERRITORIO NEL 2.200° ANNO DALLA FONDAZIONE"  (Modena, Palazzo Comunale, 17 febbraio 2018), è dedicato alla vicenda che, tra la fine del XIX secolo e l'inizio del XX, ebbe come protagonisti il funzionario archeologo Edoardo Brizio, la Deputazione di Storia Patria di Modena e il noto avvocato modenese Giuseppe Fregni, cultore di storia locale, deciso a "imporre" ai concittadini, in maniera piuttosto maldestra e fraudolenta, la sua singolare interpretazione dell'epigrafe di Salvia Cypris e Salvia Italia, venuta alla luce in quegli anni a Cognento.

The poster focuses on the diffusion of Greek and Latin cognomina amongst the children of Roman freedwomen in Rome, Italy and the Roman provinces; in particular, I am going to show some specific connections between the type of name (i.e. Greek or Latin) and the legal status of the child (freeborn, freed, slave), confirming, through the analysis of quite a big sample of names, some general guidelines proposed by other scholars in previous studies. The analysis of onomastics of slave, freed and freeborn children is useful for trying to identify the legal status of all those children defined as incerti, throwing more light to a topic still very open to discussion.