Res Novae Feminarum: The Dissonant Roles of Roman Women in the Triumviral Period

Abstract

The actions of Roman women in the chaotic and paradigm-destabilizing civil wars after the assassination of Julius Caesar were a locus of intense interest and anxiety for ancient authors, and, for that reason, narrative engagements with these constricted actions are particularly indicative of the underlying structures and modes of understanding that connected gender performance, power, and morality within elite Roman discourse and thought. By analyzing the representation of Roman women in the triumviral period (44 BCE-30 BCE) across class and status, I argue that, while these representations varied according to each author’s context and narrative objectives, they nevertheless demonstrate a consistent concern with how women’s actions in this period subverted and revealed the expectations of the cultural frameworks that governed Roman political and social relations. The women recorded in proscription narratives who either saved or betrayed their male relations (husbands, sons, and brothers) operated by either underlining their traditional values or abnegating them. In either case, the stable framework of Roman elite moral norms was delineated and reinforced. Representations of elite women demonstrate how some women were able to situate themselves as political actors in a way that could be read as consonant with traditional values while at the same time engaging in novel and dissonant interventions. Enslaved women and freedwomen, because of both their status and gender reveal that the performance of elite masculinity depended upon the actions of the most marginalized in Roman society. Within a social crisis that negated the protections that would otherwise preclude the need for women to take on the roles of intermediary or protector, the description of women’s actions allowed authors to think through the nature of the crisis and the meaning of Roman values.