Table Of ContentLIVY’S WOMEN
Livy’s Women explores the profound questions arising from the presence of
women of influence and power in the socio-political canvas of one of the
most important histories of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita
(From the Foundation of the City).
This theoretically informed study of Livy’s monumental narrative charts
the fascinating links between episodes containing references to women in
prominent roles and the historian’s treatment of Rome’s evolutionary foun-
dation story. Explicitly gendered in relation to the socio-cultural contexts
informing the narrative, the author’s background, the literary landscape of
Livy’s Rome, and the subsequent historiographical commentary, this volume
offers a comprehensive, coherent, and contextualised overview of all epi-
sodes in Ab Urbe Condita relating to women as agents of historical change.
As well as proving invaluable insights into socio-cultural history for
Classicists, Livy’s Women will also be of interest to instructors, researchers,
and students of female representation in history in general.
Peter Keegan is a Professor in Roman History at Macquarie University,
Australia. His research ranges from sexuality and body history to the spa-
tial dynamics of social relations in urban and periurban contexts and the
epigraphy of ephemeral graffiti and death. His recent publications include
Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World, Graffiti in
Antiquity, Roles for Women and Men in Roman Epigraphic Culture, and
Written Space in the Latin West 200 BC-AD 300. He has also contributed a
range of book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers on the sub-
ject of gendered discourse in historical and sub-literary texts.
LIVY’S WOMEN
Crisis, Resolution, and the Female in Rome’s
Foundation History
Peter Keegan
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 Peter Keegan
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Keegan, Peter (Lecturer in Roman history), author.
Title: Livy’s women: crisis, resolution, and the female in Rome’s
foundation history/Peter Keegan.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042527 (print) | LCCN 2020042528 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138553255 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367706906
(paperback) | ISBN 9781315148489 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Livy. Ab urbe condita. | Women—Rome—
Historiography. | Rome—History—Empire, 30 B.C.–476 A.D.—
Historiography.
Classification: LCC PA6459.K44 2021 (print) | LCC PA6459 (ebook) |
DDC 937.007202—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042527
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042528
ISBN: 978-1-138-55325-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14848-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
CONTENTS
List of Tables vii
Foreword viii
Acknowledgements xxviii
1 AUC history: Women and the art of exemplary
storytelling 1
Res novae and mores maiorum: exempli documenta, haec
tempora, and the resonances of change 1
The rape of Lucretia: gender, crisis, and the res publica 35
Egeria, Carmenta, and the Vestal priestesses: exempla and the
male imagination 44
Damarata, Harmonia, and Heraclia: Livy’s assignation of moral
weight 48
Conclusion 52
2 Gendered collectives in livy: The agmen mulierum and
independent female demonstrations in AUC history 62
Hortensia, the demonstration of 43 BCE, and the extent of
matronal authority in Roman public life and patriarchal
culture 62
The Sabine women: defenders of the patriarchal order? 71
Veturia and Volumnia: reconstructing a tradition 80
Cato and the frequentia mulierum: a crux of social
legislation 85
Conclusion 93
v
CONTENTS
3 The rhetoric of the unfamiliar other: Non-Roman
women in AUC history 107
Stereotypes and personae: representing non-Roman
female identity 107
The Bacchanalia: a fictive history or historical romance of
gender relations? 109
From Hersilia to Theoxena: mirrors of male reality? 121
Conclusion 133
4 Topoi, tropes, and the female: The rhetorical memory
of the annalist tradition 146
The commonplace topics of gendered AUC history 147
Fakes, forgeries, and historical fiction in the Ab Urbe
Condita: the authenticity of gendered historiography 156
Conclusion 180
Afterword: Final observations 199
Bibliography 227
Index 247
vi
LIST OF TABLES
1.1. Structure, female representation, and chronology of
AUC history (extant and summary) 11
1.2. Structural relationship of narrative elements before
and after major episodes of AUC history featuring
representations of women 14
2.1. The corpus of res Romana 72
2.2. Comparison of subject-matter in the speeches of
M. Porcius Cato and L. Valerius 87
3.1. Livy’s account of the Bacchanalian conspiracy
(Liv. 39.8-18) 111
3.2. The characters of the Bacchanalian conspiracy
(Liv. 39.8-18) 115
3.3. The structural template of Livy’s gendered AUC history 134
4.1. Narrative reference-points in episodes of fratricide and
sororicide 148
4.2. Similarities between the episodes of Lucretia and Verginia 152
4.3. The mirrored representations of Tarquinius Priscus
and Servius Tullius 167
A.1. Comparative sample of gendered AUC history in Livy 201
vii
FOREWORD
Setting the scene
Between republic and empire – the late 30s/early 20s BCE and the early
decades of the 1st century CE – the years of the Augustan dispensation saw
T. Livius (known more familiarly to a modern readership as Livy) write a
history of Rome from the foundation of the city.1 With one quarter only of
the scope and bulk of its production extant, Livy’s annalistic record takes us
from the wanderings of Trojan Aeneas to 167 BCE and the dying throes of
a conflict that would mark the birth of a new power in the Mediterranean.
Scholars of the recent age have commented at varying length on his literary
technique, narrative artistry, and rhetorical aptitude.2 A few knowledgea-
ble students of Graeco-Roman historiography have evinced a belief in an
overall design to the Livian corpus and speak of organisation and critical
intent.3 Nonetheless, whether AUC history is approached from the hyper-
critical perspective of Quellenforschung (source criticism),4 quarried for its
philological reserves of Latinity and style,5 or interrogated as unintentional
witness to the Augustan milieu,6 a question intrudes.
Livy himself tenders the problem in his opening preface.7 The genre of the
composition is res populi Romani, history of the Roman people. Its subject
matter comprises vita. Livy exhorts his ancient audience to embrace the
stuff of life itself, in its ethical and political manifestations (mores, artes).
The domain of content is apposite: at home and in the army (domi militi-
aeque). Livy’s publication is, in part, a social document, intended to instruct
and edify in matters of human interest. The historian “speaks” to his audi-
ence about the issues which warrant representation – and it is one of these
issues, the role and function of women at key turning points in Rome’s
history, which this volume addresses.
Representations of women appear frequently in the surviving books of
Livy’s monumental history of Rome, a city which in the historian’s time was
the capital of a growing Mediterranean-wide empire.8 Even a casual reader
of Livy’s record of the achievements of the Roman people a primordio urbis
(Liv. 1 pr 1) – namely “from the foundation of the city,” a phrase which is
traditionally rendered in more generic terms as Ab Urbe Condita (AUC)
viii
FOREWORD
history – will register the presence of women, frequently at pivotal moments
in the story of Rome’s archaic and classical past. Whenever this occurs, the
women Livy represents may appear as named subjects of particular episodes
in the city’s developing narrative; or as unnamed categories or collectives of
person, socially, culturally, or biologically defined as female, and depicted
in various urban or rural spaces across a range of mythological, semi-
legendary, or historical events in the traditional chronology of ancient
Rome.9
At first glance, to the modern consumer of personalities or events drawn
from recent, remote, or fictional historical narratives, this may not seem espe-
cially out of the ordinary. After all we live in an age when historical subject
matter is crafted more and more into works of creative literary, theatrical,
and cinematic art – and, even more perfidiously to many, contemporary
news is rendered problematic in the face of disinformation, data manipula-
tion, and negotiated falsehood. Nonetheless, in relation to the composition
of history in general, and the representation of women in particular, there
are three important aspects of Livian historiography which require critical
attention.
The first issue bearing on the composition of AUC history and the inclu-
sion of women in Rome’s legendary (mythological), semi-legendary (archaic
and early republican), and non-contemporary (middle-late republican) nar-
rative concerns the relationship between Livy’s personal story and his his-
torical precedents and sources. While little is known about Livy’s formative
years, and especially that time forever changed by the battle of Actium,10 it
is logical to infer that the historian’s individual experience mirrored that of
most persons living in such a seismic period of political upheaval.11 What is
often underestimated, however, in regard to what men and women living in
Rome saw, felt, and knew about the changing political landscape following
a century of civic violence – and, contingently, those histories which incor-
porated representations of men and women participating in transformative
social and political events – is the concurrent and profound impact of these
events on republican society, on social relations, and on individuals living
through such times. In particular, it will almost certainly have been the case
that Roman women were prone to the imperatives of time, accident, and
changes as they manifested themselves in the evolution of other, apparently
unrelated, social institutions. As a consequence of the interrelated political
and social upheavals affecting Rome during the 1st century BCE, then, Livy
will have seen gradual, or in some instances radical, changes to the roles of
certain Roman women, changes reflected in the actions of powerful non-
Roman women. Examining the ways in which women are depicted in Livy’s
narrative of Rome from its foundation in the 8th century BCE to the end of
the war with Perseus in 167 BCE should always bear in mind what personal
experience the historian possessed and to what information he had access in
relation to elite and subaltern Roman and non-Roman women, his knowl-
edge and awareness of the social categories of women (freeborn, libertine,
ix
