Rome as a "Mediterranean Society"
Nov. 21st, 2005 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiSpoilers for the final episode of Rome; please do not read this until you've seen the episode, unless you want to be spoiled for things that you would not learn by reading a history book or Suetonius.
I've seen a couple times now the statement that Niobe killed herself to preserve Lucius' honor. I think the situation is a little more complicated than that, but I want to explain the original statement before I go any farther.
Anthropologists have a category they refer to as "Mediterranean societies," because many of the cultures which developed around the Mediterranean, both ancient and modern, have certain shared assumptions about honor, particularly the honor of the household -- roughly speaking, that the honor of the men in the household depends on the sexual chastity of the women of that household. So a woman who is seduced or raped hasn't dishonored herself -- she's dishonored her menfolk (seduction) or been the vessel by which some outside man has dishonored the men of her family (rape). It's a little difficult to tell whether a woman has honor as an individual in this kind of society, or whether she's just the embodiment of the honor of her male relatives, but it's mostly the latter. Anyway, the key point is that the sexual behavior of a woman can increase of decrease the honor of her male relatives, including her husband, and (at least in some of these societies) a man who's wife or daughter or sister has been touched by any kind of sexual impropriety can restore his own honor by killing the woman in question.
Classical Greece, or rather, Classical Athens, is a particularly good example of this kind of society. Rome is a little more complicated, especially in the later Republic, because of the way Roman families and Roman marriages are made. On the one hand, it's clear that the typical Mediterranean model was perfectly intelligible to Romans -- there's a famous story about a father who kills his own daughter to prevent her from being enslaved and raped and thus to preserve the honor of his household. At the same time, some women at least seem to have their own honor: in Livy's version of Lucretia's death, she kills herself to preserve her own honor, not that of her father or husband (and Tarquin succeeds in raping her not because he threatens to kill her, but because he threatens to arrange her body after death in such a way that it will seem that she was caught in adultery with a slave). Lucretia kills herself despite the protests of her male relatives because she feels that her honor has been diminished. Then, to avenge her, her relatives drive out the last king of Rome and establish the Republic: make of that what you will.
Where Roman women embody the honor of their families, the honor is that of their birth-family rather than their husbands -- Cicero, to slander Clodia, reminds her of her ancestors and all the other patrician Claudii and attacks her for not living up to the model they set. In Augustus' adultery legislation, a husband has no right to kill a wife discovered in adultery, but a father does (under certain limiting circumstances -- that the adultery happens in his house or the husband's house, that he find the couple in flagrante and that he kill the lover as well). This legislation is almost certainly the first time that adultery is made a criminal offense in Roman law (rapists could be charged with violence or sexual misconduct).
It's also worth noting that a Roman birth-family is just as likely to be dishonored by the actions of its male members; the major difference between male honor and female honor is that female honor is pretty much limited to the sexual sphere, whereas men can have honor in many different ways (e.g. politics and military service). Some Roman women do also kill themselves for political reasons (think of Porcia, Cato's daughter and Brutus' wife), though, so even that isn't a hard-and-fast rule.
OK, to bring this back to Niobe, there's the additional complication that her background isn't all that clear -- she does have a Greek name, although her family are apparently from Italy and almost certainly Roman citizens (they have to be, for the marriage to be valid). So they might be Greeks long-settled in Southern Italy -- and I'm not sure what cultural practices in Magna Graecia are common in the first century BCE, although Naples for instance was a Greek town. So Niobe might believe that she could restore Lucius' honor by killing herself, but Lucius would see her death as a way of asserting her own honor (since if he'd felt dishonored he could have divorced her with no difficulty). One cannot, however, make the statement, "Niobe killed herself to restore Vorenus' honor," at least not without quite a few caveats about what she might have thought she was doing as opposed to what he or any other Roman would have thought.
There are further complicating factors to do with the political and ethical stance Vorenus appears to have taken, but I think I've gone on long enough.
I've seen a couple times now the statement that Niobe killed herself to preserve Lucius' honor. I think the situation is a little more complicated than that, but I want to explain the original statement before I go any farther.
Anthropologists have a category they refer to as "Mediterranean societies," because many of the cultures which developed around the Mediterranean, both ancient and modern, have certain shared assumptions about honor, particularly the honor of the household -- roughly speaking, that the honor of the men in the household depends on the sexual chastity of the women of that household. So a woman who is seduced or raped hasn't dishonored herself -- she's dishonored her menfolk (seduction) or been the vessel by which some outside man has dishonored the men of her family (rape). It's a little difficult to tell whether a woman has honor as an individual in this kind of society, or whether she's just the embodiment of the honor of her male relatives, but it's mostly the latter. Anyway, the key point is that the sexual behavior of a woman can increase of decrease the honor of her male relatives, including her husband, and (at least in some of these societies) a man who's wife or daughter or sister has been touched by any kind of sexual impropriety can restore his own honor by killing the woman in question.
Classical Greece, or rather, Classical Athens, is a particularly good example of this kind of society. Rome is a little more complicated, especially in the later Republic, because of the way Roman families and Roman marriages are made. On the one hand, it's clear that the typical Mediterranean model was perfectly intelligible to Romans -- there's a famous story about a father who kills his own daughter to prevent her from being enslaved and raped and thus to preserve the honor of his household. At the same time, some women at least seem to have their own honor: in Livy's version of Lucretia's death, she kills herself to preserve her own honor, not that of her father or husband (and Tarquin succeeds in raping her not because he threatens to kill her, but because he threatens to arrange her body after death in such a way that it will seem that she was caught in adultery with a slave). Lucretia kills herself despite the protests of her male relatives because she feels that her honor has been diminished. Then, to avenge her, her relatives drive out the last king of Rome and establish the Republic: make of that what you will.
Where Roman women embody the honor of their families, the honor is that of their birth-family rather than their husbands -- Cicero, to slander Clodia, reminds her of her ancestors and all the other patrician Claudii and attacks her for not living up to the model they set. In Augustus' adultery legislation, a husband has no right to kill a wife discovered in adultery, but a father does (under certain limiting circumstances -- that the adultery happens in his house or the husband's house, that he find the couple in flagrante and that he kill the lover as well). This legislation is almost certainly the first time that adultery is made a criminal offense in Roman law (rapists could be charged with violence or sexual misconduct).
It's also worth noting that a Roman birth-family is just as likely to be dishonored by the actions of its male members; the major difference between male honor and female honor is that female honor is pretty much limited to the sexual sphere, whereas men can have honor in many different ways (e.g. politics and military service). Some Roman women do also kill themselves for political reasons (think of Porcia, Cato's daughter and Brutus' wife), though, so even that isn't a hard-and-fast rule.
OK, to bring this back to Niobe, there's the additional complication that her background isn't all that clear -- she does have a Greek name, although her family are apparently from Italy and almost certainly Roman citizens (they have to be, for the marriage to be valid). So they might be Greeks long-settled in Southern Italy -- and I'm not sure what cultural practices in Magna Graecia are common in the first century BCE, although Naples for instance was a Greek town. So Niobe might believe that she could restore Lucius' honor by killing herself, but Lucius would see her death as a way of asserting her own honor (since if he'd felt dishonored he could have divorced her with no difficulty). One cannot, however, make the statement, "Niobe killed herself to restore Vorenus' honor," at least not without quite a few caveats about what she might have thought she was doing as opposed to what he or any other Roman would have thought.
There are further complicating factors to do with the political and ethical stance Vorenus appears to have taken, but I think I've gone on long enough.
