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J Lea Beness, Tom Hillard, A prehistory of Roman domestic violence, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 66, Issue 2, December 2023, Pages 111–123, https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae019
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ASTRACT
Legendary accounts of Rome’s early history are marked by tales of violence between family members. The well-known episodes do not, however, relate to domestic violence as currently understood; rather (where they are not palace intrigue), they are public acts, and are judged in that light. While revelatory neither of the realities of life in the archaic community nor the violence that occurred within the Roman domus, their importance lies in the manner in which the stories were received, revised, and retailed in later eras—and the judgements both implicit and explicit that attached to them. Two themes in particular emerge: the extent to which the public interest (identified with Rome’s inexorable advance) is set at higher value than the pietas and officia associated with the family; and the concomitant heroization of the perpetrators. Finally, the paper highlights an act of domestic violence associated with Rome’s genesis.
When the Christian Orosius looked to Rome’s origins, he saw a continuum of transgressions against morality, law, and custom.1 Romulus’ reign, he pronounced, was a parade of domestic outrages and crudelitas sine more, beginning not with the fratricide of Remus but with the murder of his grandfather, Numitor (2.4.3). Continuum parricidium characterized the regnum.2 Regarding the first murder, Orosius seems to have been mistaken; the reference to Numitor, the King of Alba, is generally regarded as an error.3 Romulus killed Amulius, his grand-uncle4—hardly a reassuring corrigendum by modern standards.5
1. ROME AS A FOREIGN LANDSCAPE: INTRAFAMILIAL STRIFE AND ‘DOMESTIC VIOLENCE’
The legendary accounts of Rome’s early history are replete with tales of intra-family violence: a brother killing his twin (or being closely associated with the latter’s violent death); a brother killing his sister for insufficient patriotism (Livy 1.26.3–5); a sister-in-law conspiring in an adulterous plot with her brother-in law, leading to a double murder within the royal family (Livy 1.46.4–9), culminating in a coup d’état, a son-in-law laying violent hands on his regal father-in-law (1.48.3), the assassination of the king on the direction of said son-in-law (1.48.4), and a daughter riding a carriage over her father’s corpse (1.48.6–7). In the Republic’s foundational year, a consul oversaw the execution of his sons for treason (Livy 2.3–5; see esp. 4.1, 5.5–9).6 Six decades later, there is another foundational moment (the codification of the XII Tables),7 and a father killing a daughter to save her from ‘dishonour’, a prospective fate deemed worse than death by her father’s hand (Livy 3.48.5).
Putting to one side the criminal conspiracy that inaugurated Tarquinius Superbus’ rule, none of these episodes represents the kind of behind-closed-doors activities that the modern mind normally associates with the term ‘domestic violence’. They were public acts.8 The association of ‘domestic’ with the domus is, of course, problematic. We must recognize that not all such violence is confined behind closed doors.9 Modern consciousness with regard to domestic violence had tended to focus on the home as the inappropriate and aberrant locus for violence (i.e. as a place where one might expect safety and refuge), and such a sentiment was not altogether lacking in Rome.10 More recent analysis, especially since the latter part of the twentieth century, continues to reveal a harsher reality, following the invasion of the private sphere by critical public scrutiny.11
In that light, the application of both the term and the concept risks anachronism in a number of ways—chief amongst them, the Roman notion of public and ‘domestic’ spheres (which cannot comprehensively be explored here),12 and the ubiquitous violence that the modern focus on domestic violence does not customarily embrace. The Roman domus could be the site of horrendous and often systemic brutality directed towards the enslaved who resided within (and who were, indeed, included within the Roman definition of the familia). ‘Coercive control’, the succinctly encompassing modern label for a pattern of relevant behaviours, throws into stark relief what might be seen as normative Roman practice; in the Roman domestic context, coercive control might be seen as an ideal rather than a misdemeanour, the exercise of power and auctoritas within the family. The desideratum of strict household management, predicated on control, was pervasive (and might extend to the women of the house).13
We emphasize that we are not probing the social realities of archaic Rome (see n. 1), but shall explore (in the following section) the ways in which purported episodes of archaic intrafamilial violence were commemorated (often as exemplary).14
2. MEMORIES, MEMORIALS, AND COMMEMORATIONS OF PUBLIC INTRAFAMILIAL VIOLENCE
Before highlighting (in the concluding section of the paper) a rarely remarked-upon account of private violence and Rome’s genesis, we shall turn briefly to four episodes belonging primarily to the public realm (and thus distanced from the blight currently defined as ‘domestic violence’). Apart from the impossibility of retrieving through them the actuality of life in eighth to sixth century Latium, the labyrinthine nature of Roman retellings of Rome’s archaic past also undermines any confidence that authentic Roman folklore can be identified. Dionysius of Halicarnassus offers multiple warnings of ‘historians’ navigating between the ‘legendary’ and the ‘more probable’ (Ant. Rom. 1.79.1; cf. 1.72–73, 75.4, 79.3).15 Roman chroniclers knew that they were treading upon slippery ground; some cared, others were blithely unconcerned.16 Tradition(s) and collective memories were subject to revision, rebirthing, and in some cases pure invention. Reality (and the value to social historians) lies only in the retellings themselves, wherein a factoid and/or a fiction becomes a datum. The topic is vast and cannot be done justice here,17 but unmistakable themes emerge. Of particular interest in this section of our paper:
– the extent to which the public context (and, indeed, Rome’s destiny) overtakes and overshadows the personal; and
– the recurrent heroization of the perpetrators of the violent acts.
The fratricide of Remus is a topic on which much can be and has been written.18 Various cases have been made that neither Remus nor his violent death was an original part of Roman folklore;19 and, if so, the context and dating of that story’s genesis is potentially relevant to the present exercise.20 But hypotheses in this regard remain speculative, and given the extensive treatments elsewhere, we restrict ourselves to brief observations of the way in which Remus’ demise was treated in recorded commemorations. If, in the first half of the third century BC, the celebrated image of the two brothers was not intended to arouse misgivings of strife,21 by the close of that century, Remus’ death (along with the question of Romulus’ complicity) had been recounted in dramatic detail by Diocles of Peparethus and then in the Annales of Q. Fabius Pictor. Through the latter, it became quasi-canonical (remaining an asset for those wishing to impugn Rome’s national character by reference to the murderous instincts of its founder).22
Yet Ennius’ Annales established that Remus’ death, whether at Romulus’ hands or by his sanction, had been necessary. The cause of pulcher Romulus had indeed received divine favour.23 No living man would henceforth breech the city’s walls with impunity (the proclamation would echo in various subsequent forms); any miscreant intruder would pay the penalty with his blood:24 no cosy apologetics needed.25 Ennius elevates Romulus’ intrafamilial violence to a ‘higher’ plane; fratricide is subordinated to a focus on Rome’s destiny, a perspective that will find recurring echoes in the subsequent narrative(s) of others.26
Neither tradition nor opinion was fixed;27 darker times prompted darker readings. Writing in the mid-40s BC, Cicero deemed Romulus’ culpability a given and judged it morally transgressive: [Romulus] peccavit.28 In the 30s (having experienced the horrors of protracted civil war), Horace envisaged the primal fratricide (scelus … fraternae necis) as a curse on Roman posterity.29 Livy’s treatment of Romulus has been described as an ‘exercise in ambiguity’;30 he knew of alternatives but followed ‘the more common story’ that Romulus had killed his brother. No explicit castigation follows, and the extenuating context supplied by Ennius is highlighted. Remus’ temerity had posed a threat to the sanctity of Rome’s walls.
By the time that Livy had put this resonant declaration into the mouth of Rome’s founder,31 it was chillingly evocative of the Republican formula which might judge an ‘errant person’ to have been iure caesum (‘justly slain’), an elevation of the notion that the officium owed to the patria overrode family sentiment.32
As the evolving Augustan age began to envisage a life beyond the carnage and lawlessness of civil strife, a vision of reconciliation and equitable management optimistically surfaced. Virgil (Aeneid 1.292–93) has Jupiter envision a Golden Age, presided over by Roman domination and with War enchained, where Quirinus (the deified Romulus) will dispense justice, together with his brother Remus, alongside Fides and Vesta.33 Domesticity and decency restored. Ovid, whilst nodding to the ‘Ennian’ and ‘Livian’ notion of necessity (in virtual reiteration: sic que meos muros transeat hostis (‘thus to any enemy who would cross my walls’)),34 has Romulus, guiltless of the actual slaying, yet feeling remorse nonetheless (repressed in the interests of providing the appropriate exemplum of fortitude), and providing full funeral honours with public mourning (his own regret on full display).35
In the Imperial period, the image of the two brothers side by side beneath the wolf seems to have established itself as an uncontentious symbol of Rome, paralleling modern associations,36 and in the Tetrarchic period, the twins were even used to represent the brotherhood of Augusti.37 But not without challenge; there were those who found them a primitive anti-model.38 Unease lingered, fuelled by critics who would not forgive the culture its founding crime,39 a ‘focal point for anxieties’.40 Principally, however, the fratricide is judged against the backdrop of civil affairs. In becoming a metaphor for ruinous communal conflict, the killing itself is removed from the domestic.41 Unlucky Remus has played his part in Rome’s pageant.
Orosius saw the Rape of the Sabine Women and the nuptiae inprobae, the brides’ dowry being the blood of their kinsmen, as a seamless part of Rome’s criminal continuum. We omitted it from our initial register of intrafamilial violence, because many will rightly classify it as interstate aggression; it deserves, however, passing consideration here as the act which was celebrated as bringing domesticity to primitive Rome.42 With the Latin term raptio signifying the act of seizure and capture, the mass abduction was mostly regarded, by those who deemed it untoward, as a crime against property.43 The violence was not overlooked by the Romans,44 but positively commemorated (annually, on 21 August at the Consualia).45 Again, Ennius appears to have set the tone; his Sabinae seems to have dwelt upon the women’s intervention in their original kinsmen’s attempt to retrieve them. The victims, now thoroughly trauma-bonded, address their would-be rescuers as fathers attacking their husbands.46 If there is a concern here for domestic issues, it is the (un)civil strife between soceri and generi. Cn. Gellius, in his Annales, also accorded a speech, in oratio recta, to Hersilia, Romulus’ prize.47
Neria, (bride) of Mars, I implore you, give peace; you, that it be permitted to enjoy propitious and prosperous marriages, since it was by your husband’s advice that in like manner they seized us, intact, that from us they might raise up children for themselves and theirs, the posterity of the Fatherland.
Ovid would take his cue from these prompts,48 focussing on the reconciliation (and also according Hersilia a speech).49 If domestic concerns intrude, they lie in the threat to Rome’s destiny posed by the discord between male adfines.
‘Happily’, serious violence was averted.
Cicero gives to the authoritative voice of Scipio Aemilianus an almost unequivocally positive appreciation of Romulus’ predatory initiative.51 The underhanded stratagem may have been somewhat ‘novel’ and crude (novum quoddam et subagreste consilium) but—implicitly—the novelty was suited to a nova civitas; and the eye to the new kingdom’s security and prosperity revealed the providentia of a ‘great man’ (Rep. 2.12).52
The most familiar Roman commemoration of the mass abduction is probably the fragmentary relief that survives from the Basilica Aemilia, its significance thrown into higher relief by the accidents of survival. It originally functioned as part of a series remembering Rome’s ‘progress’. It has now been argued (in meticulous detail) that this art belongs to the Augustan period—and that the depiction of the ‘Rape’ might therefore be set against the Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus of 18 BC (with its demographic concerns), with the Sabine women representing—in contradistinction to Tarpeia (also represented)—women’s loyalty and the Rape’s happy demographic outcome.53 If this is so, the artistry presents an almost grotesque recruitment of this tale of primitive piracy to the celebration of the Roman pageant.54
Before leaving the topic, a quick note of some relevance to the exploration of related Roman ‘sentiment’ is in order. Roman antiquarians were not in agreement as to whether the traditional wedding cry T(h)alassio derived from the chaos of the historical ‘rape’,55 but what was not in doubt was that celebration of this rapine was appropriate to the celebration of a marriage, ‘the day of marriage [being] a day on which violence is inflicted’ (Macr. 1.15.19, 21).
The themes adumbrated above emerge with even greater clarity with the killing of Horatia by her brother, slain for mourning the death of her fiancé, an Alban champion whom Horatius had killed in combat, three Roman triplets having been chosen to face three Alban triplets.56 Livy opens with a familiar caveat, the most fundamental of details in doubt. For which side did the respective set of triplets fight? There was uncertainty as to which three were Roman, and which Alban:57 a reminder of the diversity on record.
At first glance an exemplum of hot-headed fury of a youngblood outraged by his sister’s divided loyalties, the tale is problematized, becoming an exploration of the trials through which a Roman hero must pass and the personal tragedy that must be endured for destiny’s sake. The saga is both domesticized and treated as a public affair.58 Heightening the personal aspect and underlining the familial context, we learn that the Horatii and Curiatii were first cousins, all the more closely linked through their materterae (their respective mothers being sisters). Dionysius (3.15.2) emphasized the fact:
the young men [had] been brought up in the arms of both the women [to] cherish and love one another no less than their own brothers.59
Indeed, consideration was given, in advance of the lethal contest, as to whether impietas, and the pollution of shedding kindred blood (τὸ γὰρ ἐμφύλιον ἄγος), would be involved. We may thus see in the episode the sororicide preceded by multiple fratricide.60
Albeit that the murder of Horatia was reported to have been instantly deemed atrox by both senators and the crowd (patribus plebique), Livy has the unrepentant killer set the groundwork for its vindication immediately.
This was a distinct echo of Romulus’ justification of the death of his brother Remus; destiny demanded an unwavering gaze fixed sternly on the horizon.
Yet there was a price to pay for the ‘outright slaying’ (caedes manifesta, Livy 1.26.12). A trial ensued, and Horatius was on the point of being executed, a sacrifice to Rome’s victory and the endorsement of law. The seemingly inevitable was overturned by the intervention of the father of both killer and victim, declaring that his daughter had been ‘justly slain’ (iure caesam) and that he would not exercise the institutionalized right to domestic violence placed in his hands by law and custom by punishing his son (which he would have done, he proclaimed, if he considered his son guilty of a crime requiring punishment).62 The populus concurred, moved by the old man’s tears and his son’s virtus, rather than by ius.63 Priorities had been established, though religio remained to be satisfied. Purificatory rites were prescribed by which the elder Horatius would atone for his son’s transgression, pecunia publica (‘at public expense’). These persisted, under the oversight of the gens Horatia, and specific locations were places of commemoration down to Late Antiquity.
[Horatius] therefore offered certain piacular sacrifices, which were thenceforward carried down in the Horatian clan, and, erecting a beam across a street, he had the youth, head covered, sent under the yoke. Even to this day, constantly restored by the state, the remains are known as ‘the Sister’s Beam’.
Horatia’s tomb (Horatiae sepulcrum), of hewn stone (saxo quadrato), was built on the place where she had been struck down.64
It might seem that Horatia’s memory was revered. The sepulcrum, which Livy’s earlier narrative would place ‘just outside the Porta Capena’ (1.26.2), if historic, had been built more than three centuries before the paving of the Via Appia. The attribution is thus suspect (but not its perceived significance in later times). The former monument, the famous tigillum sororium, also presents a conundrum. The precise location of the original ritual (and thus the memorial) is, unlike that of Horatia’s tomb, not specified by Livy, though epigraphical evidence places this ‘sacred place’ on a branch of the Via Sacra between the Velia and the Carinae spur of the Oppian hill at a spot known as the Compitum Acilium.65 It is clear that in Augustan times the timbered monument was associated with Horatius’ ritual (with Horatia’s ghostly presence foregrounded), yet the original function and the interpretation of the monument are debated. It was a beam that stretched between two altars, one of Janus Curiatius, the other of Juno Sororia, the purview of both deities being likewise debated.66 It seems likely that the connection between this memorial and the Horatian tale is relatively late67—though that does not diminish its significance (nor that of the sepulcrum Horatiae) to the populace of the late Republic and Augustan Rome.
Insofar as the memorials were associated with Horatia, they were admonitory. The tigillum recalled the trials that had beset Horatius following his heroism: annual sacrifices, according to Dionysius (3.22.8–9), were still performed at this ‘memorial to the misfortune of the Man (τῆς συμφορᾶς τοῦ ἀνδρὸς μνημεῖον)’; it commemorated the cost sometimes paid for praiseworthy patriotism and the desired valour in one country’s defence.
And lest that heroic sacrifice be forgotten, there was always another unambiguous monument of celebration of his valour (ἕτερον [sc. μνημεῖον] δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς) in the city’s centre. Defending his son, the elder Horatius could already point, according to Livy, to the monument that ought to sway popular favour. And it survived in Livy’s day: ‘the old man pointed to the spolia Curiatorium (the spoils of the Curiatii), set up in that place which now is called the pila Horatia’ (1.26.10). Dionysius elaborates:
Another memorial of the bravery [Horatius] displayed in combat is the small corner pillar standing at the entrance to one of the two porticoes in the Forum, upon which were placed the spoils of the three Alban brothers. The arms, it is true, have disappeared because of the lapse of time, but the pillar still preserves its name and is called pila Horatia or ‘the Horatian Pillar’.
The Romans also have a law, enacted in consequence of this episode and observed even to this day, which confers immortal honour and glory upon those men (τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν ἀθάνατον τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐκείνοις); it provides that the parents of triplets shall receive from the public treasury the cost of rearing them till they are grown.68
We might bring this brief survey to a close with the inauguration of the Republic and Brutus, the founder of Roman liberty, conditor Romanae libertatis, remembered as one who had put his caritas publicae utilitati, his concern for the public good, before his concern for his own sons (Livy 8.34.2–3). Those implicated in a plot to restore the Tarquins were condemned to death by the Senate, ‘a punishment all the more conspicuous because the consulship imposed upon a father the ministry of delivering the penalty to his sons’ (2.5.5). The theme is by now all too familiar: the cost was personal, the imperative public, the resolve unyielding (and all the more terrible for the fact). Livy makes the spectacle one of public reception. All eyes were on the sons of the consul as the youths were led to the stake (6). Grief was felt for them, though the punishment was thought deserved.69 They were stripped, beaten with rods, and beheaded—but now the attention had turned. ‘All the time, the gaze of all was upon the expression on the face and mouth of the father as he administered the public penalty’ (7). Other sources report that he was inscrutable;70 Brutus emerged the hero, his lethal self-sacrifice endorsing the status that his expulsion of Rome’s last king, as if individually effected, had won him.71
In later generations, the episode was celebrated by the family without reservation; it is found commemorated on a denarius minted by M. Iunius Brutus in 54 BC.72
And, of course, it would become the iconographic image of the triumph of public duty prevailing over private feeling, as seen in Jacques-Louis David’s chilling painting (1789), the ‘extreme limit of patriotic devotion’, based upon the finale of Vittori Alfieri’s Bruto primo (1788): the father who put his country before his sons. It captures the triumph of the public over the personal in Roman memory.73
We shall close this section of the paper with Year 1 of the Republic. The pre-emptive ‘honour-slaying’ of Verginia (449 BC) beckons, but space commands otherwise. The heroization of Verginia’s filicidal father (to underline the other motif we have seen above) is unmistakable in some ancient accounts (see, e.g., D.H. Ant. Rom. 11.28–39; esp. 28.1 and 37.4–7) and particularly (and uncomfortably) in some modern reception.74
3. A CASE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE? ROME’S GENESIS
For something closer to ‘domestic violence’ as generally understood (while acknowledging the problematic aspects of the term—as underlined above),75 we must travel back further in time, to the prehistory of the paper’s title.
The prevalent narrative of Rome’s beginnings has the mother of the twins (Rhea Silvia/Ilia) taken by Mars. Quintus Fabius Pictor (fr. 4c) relates:
When in the usual and customary manner the maiden went to fetch water for use in the sacred rites from the spring which was in the grove of Mars, the women with her were suddenly scattered by showers and thunder, and she was raped by Mars; though deeply distressed, she was soon renewed in spirit by the consolation of the god, who revealed his name and declared that the sons she bore would turn out worthy of their father.
That version of events, which by virtue of Fabius’ authorship bore the stamp of antiquity, was transmitted by Livy (1.4.2) and would prevail, replicated in multiple versions, both literary and artistic,76 though Livy reserved the right of qualification:
The Vestal was ravished, and having given birth to twin sons, named Mars as the father of her doubtful offspring (Martem incertae stirpis patrem nuncupa), whether she actually believed it, or because it seemed more ‘respectable’ (honestior) if a god were the perpetrator of the crime (auctor culpae).77
The dramatic Fabian fragment quoted above is conveyed by the anonymous author of the Origo gentis Romanae 20, but that author, using principally Republican sources, knew of other versions—as did Dionysius of Halicarnassus78—and these authorities distinguished between the ‘realistic’ traditions and the mythologizing tales. C. Licinius Macer, writing in the mid-first century BC, preserved (or composed) an equally dramatic account.79 But, in this case, the predator was her uncle, the king Amulius, seized by passion (amore eius captum).
As dawn began to break, when the sky was cloudy and the atmosphere murky, [Amulius] ambushed her in the grove of Mars as she was fetching water for ritual purposes and had sexual intercourse with her. Then, after the months had duly passed, twins were born. When Amulius found this out, in order to conceal the circumstances that his criminal behaviour had brought about (per scelus concepti), he ordered the priestess to be killed and the offspring brought to him.80
Rhea’s powerless father, the rapist’s brother (who had ceded monarchical power to Amulius), had a pair of hapless substitutes provided to the king—and sent his newborn grandsons to the shepherd Faustulus. The subsequent execution of Rhea was an act of regal policy; the initial violence may be regarded as domestic.
This was not an idiosyncratic version of history. As noted, Dionysius was aware of variant traditions, one of them being a similar story with Amulius as the culprit—whose ‘purpose was to destroy [his niece] quite as much as to satisfy his passion’; ‘he had arrayed himself in such armour as would render him most terrible to behold and … also kept his features disguised as effectively as possible’.81 ‘But most writers’, says Dionysius, ‘relate a fabulous story to the effect that it was a spectre of the divinity to whom the place was consecrated …’ (1.77.1–2).82
There is no reason to maintain that Macer, writing in the late Republic, invented the story of Amulius’ predatory culpability (though that is not impossible).83 It remains, however, sadly noteworthy that, whether it belonged to an early oral tradition or was composed at some time in the late Republic, the sordid version of the narrative, demythologized in this particular fashion, was considered one of the more credible renderings. In juxtaposition with, and contradistinction to, the fabulous, it came across as true to life.
In this version, Rome had been generated by domestic violence, an act of forced incest followed by the murder of the victim to conceal the fact. Domestic violence was sewn into the fabric of Roman storytelling and, across the spectrum of alternative visions within the tapestry of Rome’s dreamtime, it was considered with regard to Roman origins amongst the less difficult to believe.84
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Footnotes
We thank the editors for their perspicacious insights and the stimulating symposia which preceded this volume; also for their invitation to expand upon an initially shorter note. We are grateful to the two anonymous readers who improved the present offering by their suggestions and challenging questions.
This paper deals with literary and monumental commemorations of Rome’s archaic past. There is no suggestion here that this picture coincides with (pre)historic reality. Cf. Cornell 2015: 248 (on the disjunction of archaeological and literary evidence).
Oros. 2.4.2; Lippold 1976: 397 (‘a condensed series of atrocities from the very beginning’), observing that Orosius is not as negative as other Christian critics, like Minucius Felix (Oct. 25) and Augustine (De civ. D. 2.14, 17; 3.6, 13, 15); cf. (on Orosius’ particular approach), Van Nuffelen 2012; Turner 2020. Orosius’ use of parricide aligns with the embracing definition of familial violence found in the Lex Pompeia de parricidiis of 55 BC (Marcianus, Inst. 14 (Dig. 48.9.1, 3)).
Orosius’ suggestion that Romulus killed Numitor is a tradition rather divergent from that of Augustine, his onetime guide. According to the latter (De civ. D. 18.21), Numitor is said to have co-ruled with Romulus. It is, to our knowledge, singular, and commonly dismissed as a confusion with Amulius; cf. Groag 1937: coll. 1403–04, but it is a confusion that suits Orosius’ theme; cf. Lippold 1976: 397–98.
Did Romulus kill Amulius? In the coup that overthrew Amulius in Alba, Livy (1.5.7) has Romulus’ troupe advancing from one direction and Remus’ from another. And then, ita regem obtruncat. The singular verb has the greater manuscriptal authority, though obtruncant was later introduced, presumably because it better suited the context of the supposed confluence. For an apparatus, Conway-Walters [1914] 1955 ad 1.5.7. The parallel accounts of Dionysius and Plutarch, both purportedly based on Fabius Pictor, have Amulius fall in the general melee accompanying the taking of Alba (Ant. Rom. 83.3; Rom. 8.8), confirming the instincts of those who transmitted the verb in the plural. The matter is of some importance given the observation of Licinius Macer’s account (of which Livy knew) at the end of this paper.
And see our final observation.
We have passed over, on the eve of the monarchy’s fall, the much-discussed rape of Lucretia, though see Konstan 1986: 207 (observing that Sextus, the son of Tarquinius Superbus, here assaults the wife of his second cousin). For the story of Lucretia’s death in the context of father–daughter relationships, see Hallett 1984: 116–17, 142. For the multiple receptions, Donaldson 1982.
For Appius the Decemvir, the villain of this story, as conditor Romani iuris, perhaps a specious claim, Livy 3.58.2; cf. Miles 1995: 114–15, 119–26, 129. It is not irrelevant that Brutus, the first consul, was also marked as a conditor (Livy 8.34.4).
As Witzke (2016: 251) observes, ‘violence against women is a stunningly repetitive structure throughout Livy’s early history … The stories of terrible violence against women in early Rome [concern episodes that] are public, politically motivated, and largely symbolic’ (250; cf. 270). For the role of women in the structuring of Livy’s historical narrative, see Keegan 2021: passim.
One of our anonymous readers points to illuminating discussions of such incidents spilling over into public space in the modern era; see Meth 2003, esp. 3, 19–20 (albeit dealing with a significantly different culture).
Plu. Cat. Ma. 20.2 (denouncing violence within the nuclear family). This is treated by Finn’s article in this issue.
The state had, of course, intervened in the domestic sphere in Greco-Roman Antiquity. For modern developments (e.g. in Australia), Arrow 2019: 47ff., cf. 70–76 (on the definition of ‘domestic violence’ percolating into public debate).
The material in this chapter deals exclusively with individuals of high social status. Rome’s principes often lived in veritable ‘fishbowls’ with little hidden (Cic. Off. 2.44; Sall. Jug. 85.23). On the very public aspects of parts of the elite domus, see Vitruvius 6.5.1 (though here a distinction is drawn between those rooms of ready access to outsiders and those restricted to members of the familia; cubicula, triclinia, balneae ceteraque were to be entered by invitation (or command) only). The familia, of course, embraced more than immediate kin. On the language of public and private in Roman housing, see, e.g., Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 17–37. For a further bibliography of studies concerning the public function of aristocratic houses, see Stein-Hölkeskamp 2006: 750–51 n. 1, to which add Tuori et al. 2015; Dardenay and Laubry 2020; Zanella 2020 (the last two advocating a dévitruvisation of modern conceptions of the Roman domestic space). The extent to which the Roman political, social, and intellectual elite might not have conceptualised violence within the home as an issue (see immediately below), or seen anything radical in their private lives being exposed to public discourse, is an open question.
Plaut. Aul. 478–84; cf. Clark 1998: 121 (on the enforcement of compliance). See also chapters 6 and 7.
On this well-known aspect of Livy’s enterprise, see Chaplin 2000.
For the variety of the stories told of Romulus and Remus, Wiseman 1995: 14. For Dionysius’ method, Cornell 2023.
For explorations of the porous boundaries and the hybrid borrowings between myth, history, and historiography, see Miano et al. 2023: passim.
The treatment here is impressionistic, and a corroborative argument must be left to a discrete paper.
E.g. Cornell 1975: 1–32; Bremmer 1987; Cornell 1995: 57–63; Wiseman 1995, esp. 9–11; Mencacci 1996: 194; Fraschetti 2005: 5, 30–35; Forsythe 2005: 93–96, 331–34; Raaflaub 2006; Carandini 2006: 440–52, 469–76 (M. T. D’Alessio); Smith 2011, esp. 22–23, 26, 30; Stok 2013; Smith 2013; Neel 2014; Smith 2016. Cf. Carandini 2006: 1, 220–43; Neel 2017: 69–77.
Mommsen 1881, arguing a late creation (critiqued by Wiseman 1995: 92; Grandazzi 1997: 171–72); Strasburger 1968, arguing anti-Roman propaganda (critiqued by Wiseman 1995: 96–97); most notably, Wiseman, passim.
Wiseman, having argued that Remus’ invention marked the end of the patrician–plebeian conflict (1995: 106–07), suggested that Remus’ death was introduced as an act of sacrifice to ensure the inviolability of Rome’s walls, in the context of the Battle of Sentinum, 296–295 BC (140, 117–25). Cf. (on the hypothesis of sacrifice) Fraschetti 2005: 33, 143 n. 8; Forsythe 2005: 93–96. For debate, see, e.g., Harris 1996; Purcell 1997; Coarelli 2003: 48–53; Massa-Pairault 2011.
A statue of a wolf suckling the brothers was erected—or augmented—in 296 BC (Dulière 1979: 43–53; Holleman 1987; Coarelli 1992b: 87–91; Wiseman 1995, esp. 72–76, 107; Papi 1999; Neel 2014: 120–22), the first datable allusion to twins—and, indeed, Remus’ existence. Celebratory, it memorialized both infants as conditores; Livy 10.23.11–12; Wiseman 1995: 72–76 (illuminating the context). Ditto, about a generation later, when the wolf and twins were featured on some didrachms (Crawford 1974: 1, 137 (no. 20, 1)) for which a precise dating cannot be certified. Here, regrettably, a fuller survey of coinage celebrating the image, curiously intermittent, must be set aside for reasons of space.
See, e.g., Just. Epit. 28.2–3, esp. 28.2.8–9 (whatever the slippery context of that supposed declaration and the time of its composition). Cf. D.H. Ant. Rom. 1.4.1–2 (and the references in n. 2 above); Wiseman 1995: 15–16; Yarrow 2006: 285–87 (‘an embarrassing past’).
Enn. Ann. 1, fr. 43 Goldberg–Manuwald = Cic. Div. 1.107.
Enn. Ann. 1, fr. 46 Goldberg–Manuwald = Macr. 6.1.5.
Purcell 1997, drawing inter alia on Dougherty 1993.
For the death of Remus seen in Ennius as a ‘necessary’ sacrifice for the safety of Rome, an expression of Romulus’ ‘patriotism’, Bannon 1997: 160–61; cf. Neel 2014: 33–48.
See, inter alia, Classen 1942; Wagenvoort 1956; Evans 1992: 91–93, 102; Stem 2007; Neel 2014: 60–77.
Off. 3.41; cf. Wiseman 1995: 11; Dyck 1996: 544–45 (and references therein); Bannon 1997: 162–64; Neel 2014: 27, 77–82.
On the theme of Rome’s Original Sin, see Watson 2003: 268–69, 282–86. Cf. Neel 2014: 82–87. For the date of Epode 7, Watson 2003: 269–70.
Miles 1995: 154, 155–64; cf. Neel 2014: 75–77, 142–44; Martin 2015: 265. Having also experienced the civil war (and in hope of Rome’s redemption), Livy trod a fine line. The context of his work has been much discussed; see Levick 2015.
Jaeger 2015: 67 (observing that the pronouncement provides the first direct speech in Livy’s narrative); cf. Ogilvie 1965: 55; Vasaly 2015: 223. For another approach to Livy’s account, emphasizing a certain Livian ‘awkwardness’, see Bannon 1997: 165–66. Cf. Stem 2007: 435–71 (‘morally questionable acts’ may be understood as undertaken in Rome’s interests).
Scipio Aemilianus thus reflected on the slaying of his cousin/brother-in-law Ti. Gracchus (Cic. Mil. 8; Vell. 2.4.4). Velleius makes such patriotic sacrifice of familial feeling more explicit when he come to his vindication of Scipio Nasica’s lethal role; Nasica was ready to put patria before cognatio, and the public weal before private interests (2.3.1; cf. Hillard 2011: 232–33). That theme is apposite.
See also, inter alia, Wiseman 1995: 145–49; Harris 1996; Stok 2013. Wiseman, evoking Propertius and Diodorus of Sardis, observes that the murder was not only forgotten, but evidently denied: ‘Fratricidal strife was a thing of the past’ (146). In explanation of Virgil’s poetic metaphor, Servius (ad Aen. 1.276) elaborates on an expedient symbolic resurrection of Remus:
After Remus’s death, a pestilence struck Rome. Oracles advised the placation of his manes … a curule chair with sceptre, crown, and other regal insignia was set beside that of Romulus whenever the latter made proclamations, connoting joint rule.
An indication that at some stage it was felt appropriate that remorse, or at least embarrassment, ought to have been felt?
Fast. 4.848; cf. 838–40.
Fast. 4.807–62, esp. 845–48 (contrast 2.133–44); Stok 1991, esp. 191–98, 210–11; Dyck 1996: 544–45; Fraschetti 2005: 33–34, 143 n. 12; Neel 2014: 158–68 (and references therein). Cf. D.H. 1.87.3 (with Romulus temporarily immobilized by dejection—until rallied by his foster mother Laurentia, a detail not irrelevant to the current theme). And Faustulus lives on; other versions had him slain in the melee over the wall (D.H. 1.87.2; cf. Plu. Rom. 10.2, 11.1), adding another quasi-parricide to Romulus’ charge sheet. Worse, according to Plutarch, Faustulus was struck down together with his brother Pleistinus, ‘who had shared in the rearing of the twins’; and Romulus buried Remus together with his foster fathers. The memory of Remus was never securely enshrined (the very location of a putative Remoria would bemuse antiquarians), D.H. 1.85.6, 86.2, 87.2–3; Fest. 345 L; Plu. Rom. 9.4, 11.1; Ampolo, in Ampolo and Manfredini 1988: 295–96, 298; Richardson 1992: 332–33; Aronen 1999: 204–06; Fraschetti 2005: 142 n. 2; Coarelli 2003.
See, e.g., Andreae 1978: 36; Yarrow 2021: 90; cf. Mazzoni 2010 (on the image’s malleability).
Barker 2015; Davenport 2019: 114; Barker 2022.
[Mamertinus], Paneg. Lat. 10(2).13.1–2 Mynors (Nixon and Rodgers 1994: 73–74); cf. Leadbetter 2004: 260–64.
See n. 2.
Bannon 1997: 189–93; cf. 174–88.
In judging him guilty of a moral offence, Cicero pronounced Romulus in defiance of both pietas and humanitas. The former is often presumed to have been the expectations of brotherly love, but we are inclined to wonder whether it was civic virtue that was front of mind here. Cf. Neel 2014: 11 (drawing attention to the analogous death of Horatia, which follows below).
Cf. Miles 1995: 180–219 (underlining the masculinist objectives in Roman marriage).
Justin’s epitome of Trogus (28.2.8–9) had Aetolian critics refer to the Romans as thieves and this act as the seizure of brides by authorized force (vi publica, which Yardley translates as ‘state terrorism’; 1994: 201; cf. Yarrow 2021: 285). The motif of wives seized, like their lands, is taken up by Sallust’s Mithridates (Hist. 4.60 [= 69 M; 67 McG].17 Ramsey).
Thus, at Virg. Aen. 8.635 (where the seizure, an action sine more, takes its place in the tumultuous history of Italy on Aeneas’ shield) and on a denarius minted by L. Titurius Sabinus, c.89 BC (Crawford 1974: 356–57 (RRC 344/1a–c)), portraying the seized women as unwilling. It has been suggested that the image was an admonition to the Italians to embrace integration; Morel 1962; dismissed by Crawford; revived by Yarrow 2021: 190 and 191, fig. 4.36; cf. Farney 2007: 82–87, 263 on the positive messaging.
Var. L. 6.20. If Remus’ slaying was annually remembered, it was associated with 21 April, Rome’s birthday. A pattern emerges: the victims’ erasure.
Ars rhet. Lat. 6.4. RLM 402, 28–31 Halm; Goldberg and Manuwald 2018b: 206–09; cf. Wiseman 1980: 79 and 196 n. 24; 1983: 447 (= 1987: 287).
Hist. 3, fr. 15 Peter; 15 Chassignet; 5 Cornell (= Gel. NA 13.23.13).
As had Dionysius (2.35) and Livy (1.13).
Fast. 3.179–234.
Fast. 3.202. The chill allusion was clear. And the Sabines, coincidentally, are cast as the aggressors, having threatened what Mars had sanctioned. Mars has bequeathed his son his father’s temperament (patria mens); 3.197 (a rather rudimentary psychoanalysis, favouring genetics over culture), violence is a given.
Cicero’s Scipio had previously judged that Romulus exercised virtually a divine pragmatism (Rep. 2.10).
And the story is prettied by having the victims well-born (honesto ortas loco virgines) and given in marriage to those of the best families in Rome (easque in familiarum amplissimarum matrimoniis collocavit). It is difficult to resist seeing the dark humour of having primitive Rome boast of amplissimae familiae.
Ertel et al. 2007: 121–28, esp. 126–28; cf. Arya 2000 (for background).
In that vein, we may recall the inclusion of the Sabine women, both their ‘rape’ and subsequent intervention, in the celebratory medallions of the Hadrianic–Antonine period, for which see, e.g., Gnecchi 1912; Rowan 2014. An anonymous reviewer reminds us that the abduction also surfaced for a time, perhaps controversially, in Late Antiquity. The imagery re-emerged on contorniates, or souvenir medallions, thought to date to Constantius II’s visit to Rome in AD 357. They seem to celebrate the violence of the act; cf. Holden 2008 (arguing that they are to be associated with the increasingly popular circus games, and that the imagery disappears around AD 400 as a result of both the increasing influence of the Church and a growing sense of vulnerability in uncertain times). For the date of the ‘Constantian’ medallion, Holden 2008: 130–31. For Christian objection to the theatrical spectacles, Holden 2008: 132–33. Holden also points to the suggestion of Albertson 2012: 178–79 that the iconography of Mars and Rhea disappears for the same reason.
Livy 1.9.12; Plu. Quaest. Rom. 31; Ogilvie 1965: 69; Miles 1995: 188–89; Wiseman 2008: 148–52; 1983.
Livy 1.26.1–14; cf. D.H. 3.21.
Livy 1.24.1.
Cf. Keegan 2021: 147–50 (underlining Livy’s focus on male obligation[s] ‘in matters of the public good’), 183, 210–11 (on the blurred distinction between domestic and public spheres). See the important discussion of Feldherr 1998: 132–44, which begins at the point where the discrepancy between what is owed to the state and family becomes acute (Horatius’ triumphal return).
Cf. Konstan 1986: 209 (noting the ‘pattern of fraternal or quasi-fraternal strife’ that stalks Livy’s account of Rome’s monarchical period).
On the embrace of the word frater, Tansey 2016: 126–29. When, in 1785, Jacques-Louis David came to dramatize the episode (familiar as he was, through Corneille’s Horace (1640), with (a version of) the complicated kinship bonds), his taut scene signified the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the state, the ancient cue taken. We regret we cannot linger on the masterpiece and its gendered sensitivities.
Livy 1.26.5. Notably, the atrocity is counterbalanced by the perpetrator’s merit.
Livy 1.26.9; taken further by V. Max. 8.1.1a (where the virgin’s amor was judged immaturus, premature, and Horatius’ liberated right arm could draw, it was said, as much glory from the shedding of kindred blood as that of the enemy); the forgiving populus was judged on this occasion, pudicitiae custos (2a). The chilling formulation iure caesum (discussed above, n. 32) carried the notion that some people deserved to be killed. For its rhetorical justification, Cic. Mil. 7–8, wherein the precedent of the gallant Marcus Horatius (fortissimus vir) is explicitly adduced. Livy’s readers were well aware of its potency. Cf. Schol. Bob. in Cic. Mil., p. 113 Stangl (= pp. 63–64 Hildebrandt).
Livy 1.26.12.
Livy 1.26.13–14.
CIL VI 2295, 32482 (ad Kal. Oct., fr. 1, 3–4) (= EDR080255, EDCS-45300109). That accords with the evidence of D.H. 3.22. Platner and Ashby 1926: 538–39 (canvassing ‘various explanations’ of the symbolic yoke); Holland 1961: 26; 77–91; Ogilvie 1965: 117; Richardson 1992: 200; Pisani Sartorio 1993; Coarelli 1999b.
Livy’s etymology of the toponym, albeit in accord with a well-entrenched tradition in the surviving testimonia (D.H. 3.22.7–9; Fest. 380 L s.v. ‘Sororium tigillum’ (though offering conflicting information in the following lemma, ‘sororiare’); Paul. Fest. 399 L; De vir. ill. 4; and Schol. Bob. p. 113 Stangl) is contestable. See Radke 1965: 290–91 (s.v. ‘Sororia’), 101–02 (s.v. Curiatius); Ogilvie 1965: 117 (arguing that the epithet Sororia associates the goddess with the swelling of girls’ breasts and has nothing to do with the evocation of a ‘sister’, while Janus stood in oversight of the ‘male cult parallel’); Coarelli 1992a: 111–17; Boëls-Janssen 1993: 39–48 (for detailed surveys); Feldherr 1998: 143–44.
E.g. Holland 1961: 77; 80.
D.H. 3.22.9–10. On the pilae Horatiae, see also Schol. Bob. p. 113 Stangl (= pp. 63–64 Hildebrandt); Platner and Ashby 1926: 390–91; Ogilvie 1965: 116; Richardson 1992: 291; Coarelli 1999a. On the legislated largesse, Riccobono [1941] 1968: I.15; Giuffré 1977: 19.
The miscreant adolescents are portrayed as criminally culpable: guilty of proditio (Livy 2.3.1, 4.7; 5.5), coniuratio (2.4.3, 7), and facinus (2.4.4).
Polyb. 6.54; D.H. 5.9.6 (fearing that Greeks may find this ‘cruel and beyond belief’, 5.8.1); Plu. Publ. 6.3. Dionysius has Brutus pronounce the penalty himself (5.8.3), as did Plutarch (6.2); cf. V. Max. 5.8.1 (where Brutus would rather live childness than fail the public need).
And, thus, the cameo at Virg. Aen. 6.819–23, the only hint of criticism being the allusion to superbia (or, at least, his superba anima) and the suggestion that Brutus’ amor patria is accompanied by a great thirst for praise: vincet amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido. And what Roman reader would say that was a bad thing? Virgil, as elsewhere, would have the reader think twice.
Crawford 1974: 455–56 (433).
Again, as in David’s Oath of the Horatii (n. 60, above), the women of the household are to the right of the tableau but in swooning desolation, contrasting the unmoving firmness of masculine patriotism; Starobinski 1982: 111–17 (esp. the evocative analysis of the scene at 114–15), 259–64. Their pain is collateral.
See, e.g., Macaulay 1884: 132–34 (with its reference to the killer’s ‘good right arm’); Church 1886: 155–61. On Livy’s account (which does not downplay the horror of the public that greeted this ‘sacrifice’), Keegan 2021: 151–56. See now Welch (forthcoming), protesting the extent to which Mommsen and other modern scholars have been blind to Livy’s depiction of the outcry of Roman womanhood at this desecration of innocence. Welch’s argument will offer a balance to our own reading of the tradition.
See n. 9, underlining the potential pitfalls of exclusively associating ‘domestic violence’ with the domus. And, in the case of this particular episode, see below, n. 84.
See, e.g., Cappelli 2000: 161–75. On the evolution of the imagery, Albertson 2012. Some of the most unambiguous numismatic references to the twins in the Imperial period emanate from the reign of Maxentius (see, in particular, RIC VI Rome 190; Ostia 5, 13, 39–42, 51–52). On some reverses (RIC VI Rome 189; Ostia 11), Mars and a woman, presumably Rhea Silvia, are depicted, hands clasped in a pose of marital concord, with a miniaturized image of the wolf and twins between them. From this retrospective and cynical distance, there is almost a hint of dark humour in the image of well-satisfied parenthood—surely not the intention of the moneyer.
The qualms conveyed by that suspicious qualification were transmitted by others and avidly advanced by Augustine (De civ. D. 18.21); the story of divine intervention was fabricated to honour or excuse Rhea’s stuprum.
As apparently did Livy.
The Origo gentis Romanae also cites a certain Marcus Octavius as a source, though this writer is not easily identified. See Christopher Smith’s introductory remarks, in Cornell 2013 (no. 107); cf. II.1152–53; III.660–61. The extent to which the ‘fragment’ above represents the wording of Macer, Octavius, or the author of the Origo is moot.
Macer, Histories 1, fr. 1 (in Peter, Walt, Chassignet, and Cornell no. 27 (II.675)) = Origo gentis Romanae 19.5–7 (trans. Oakley). Cf. Neel 2012: 181.
Thus, even in this account of domestic violence, some tellers allowed political calculation, however deplorable, to intrude; cf. Konstan 1986: 207.
Dionysius indicates that the ethereal version prevailed. After the predator had consoled the girl, he was ‘lifted upwards and borne away on a cloud’ (1.77.2). Dionysius then contemplates the validity of such tales (3–4), asking whether ‘the god’ does such things, and then elaborates the story at some length. Livy’s brief account dwells less on the ethereal than is conveyed in most subsequent glosses of his narrative—though his version knowingly eschewed the sordid detail of predatory incest. (On Livy’s knowledge of Macer’s History, see, e.g., 4.7.11, 7.9.3.) Plutarch, too, knew of this story of domestic rape as one of the variant traditions in circulation (Rom. 4.3). Rhea was believed when she declared Mars’ paternity of her children, Plutarch says, because of various items of circumstantial detail she supplied—yet it was also claimed that ‘she was thoroughly deceived on this score (καίτοι τοῦτο παθεῖν αὐτὴν ἐξαπατηθεῖσαν λέγουσιν)’ and that ‘[she had been] really deflowered by Amulius himself, who came to her in armour and ravished her’. See also the commentary of Ampolo and Manfredini 1988: 284; and Walt 1997: 150–55, 212–14.
Oakley (Cornell 2013: III.319) is also inclined to see Macer as one of the rationalizing authors cited by Dionysius and Plutarch, though that, of course, does not establish Macer as ‘the inventor’. The date at which the otherwise unknown Octavius composed cannot be confidently speculated.
Such rationalizations might have been, it has been suggested, characteristic of Macer; Oakley, in Cornell 2013: I.327; III.419, 27 F1–2 and comm.; and Smith in the same work (on Octavius), III.660–61 (on 107, F 2)—though Oakley is not inclined to push that hypothesis too far given the ‘scanty remains’. Ampolo and Manfredini (1988: 284) also date this ‘deviation’ to the first century BC, pointing to Macer.
One last concession might need to be made (in the light of our earlier emphasis on the blurring of the line between public and private acts of violence in the Roman context—or, more to the point, between the ‘domestic’ and the ‘political’). Amulius was a king, and his niece/victim was the daughter of a rival claimant to the throne. The drama was indeed familial and the crime one of non-consensual incest, but does the regal status of the miscreant distance to some extent the crime from the ‘domestic’? Perhaps. But we choose to regard this episode, as recorded, as one of domestic violence and its memory as a demonstration of the uncomfortably routine manner in which an irregular pregnancy might be explained.
We close with one more grim remark. The subsequent killing of Amulius might be regarded as an act of war as much as an incident of intrafamilial vendetta, but if those accounts which ascribe Rhea’s impregnation to her uncle’s sexual violence are followed, together with Livy’s report that Amulius was killed by one or other of the twins—or both (see above, n. 4), we may add (inadvertent?) parricide to the cavalcade of family violence.
