Closely Watched Households

Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman Domus

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3133104
AutoresK Cooper (0000-0002-6517-068X, University of Manchester, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen197
Número1
Páginas3-33
Fecha de publicación2007-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPast & Present (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pastj/gtm012
OpenAlexW2126736781
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas35
Referencias citadas40

Think of your brothers, think of your mother and your aunt, think of your child, who will not be able to live once you are gone. Give up your pride! You will destroy all of us! None of us will ever be able to speak freely again if anything happens to you!1 In the prison diary kept before her execution in the spring of 203, the 22-year-old Roman matrona Vibia Perpetua recorded a disturbing encounter with her father, who had come to visit her on the eve of her audience with the proconsul Hilarianus. The father is reduced to tears and pleading, behaviour rarely attested by a Roman father to his child. The episode is well known, yet it touches on dimensions of life in the Roman household, and of the role of the paterfamilias within it, that have yet to be fully understood. What did Perpetua's father mean when he warned that ‘none of us will ever be able to speak freely again’? That a paterfamilias should be accountable for the conduct of his dependants does not surprise. Roman men were expected to show themselves impervious to ‘womanly influence’ — the self-interested persuasion of wives, lovers (whether male or female) and other objects of their affection — as a way of broadcasting their willingness to place the common good ahead of private interest.2 The present study considers another aspect of the calculated performance of domestic virtue by Roman men, the terms on which they laid their households open to scrutiny by peers and rivals. Roman law and custom accorded far-reaching powers to the property-owner and head of household, so it is perfectly logical that mechanisms for evaluating his performance in that capacity should have evolved. Far from being contained or excluded, the dominium of the paterfamilias benefited from substantial protection. Many of the duties of a man in public office were accomplished by drawing on resources which he owned or controlled in his capacity as a private citizen. Indeed, I shall argue, it is precisely because the powers centred on the domus were so important to the Romans that the domus was placed under such intense scrutiny

Affection · Art · Art history · Aunt · Political science · Power (physics · Pride · Scrutiny · Sociology · Surprise · Virtue · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Studies and Legal History · History · Law · Legal principles and applications · Psychology · Social Psychology