Monday, October 24, 2005
How does this text help us to better understand the Roman gender system?
The 'Laudatio Turiae' conveys the emotions of an Augustan-era husband at his wife's death with unusual length and distinctively militaristic language, extolling virtues in his wife which would at different times and circumstances normally be ascribed only to men. The inscription demonstrates, then, that within Roman marriage particularly, a wider degree of latitude existed both for males and females as compared with the more deeply inhibitive institutions in Greece several centuries prior, as personified by Xenophon's Ischomachus and Ischomachus' unnamed wife. "Turia" and her husband defy gender concepts of women as either submissive or deceptive and men as the less tender and more enduring sex. The existence of this inscription signifies a Roman recognition of human complexities that Athenian societies would attempt to subjugate.
Ischomachus states that there is "nothing in human life as useful or as fine as orderliness" (317). The intrinsic Greek fear of unruliness permeated its gender system in such ways that male and female servants' quarters were separated by bolted doors, women needed know nothing of the law or economy beyond its domestic applications, and women were tidily passed out of the authority of their fathers to possession by a husband. The Greek wife was kept busy, and thereby chaste, with domestic duties.
Roman society as well pressured females to control "appetite" in a double standard to the expectations for males, but the Roman woman was more often the actor in her affairs; Turia, in her husband's absence, went to live with his mother of her own accord, not by either his commands or any legal actions. Her husband appears unconcerned with the question of her faithfulness, listing "sobriety of attire" and "modesty of appearance" cursorily, with the intent to demonstrate Turia's unique capabilities beyond the merest exemplifications of a "good wife". Men probably had had limited access to Turia, but she herself pursued knowledge of the law and the security of her kin successfully, with her husband explicitly denying any self-recognition in the development of her character. His humility starkly contrasts with Ischomachus' proud proclamation that upon their marriage his wife had no prior knowledge of anything other than the spinning of wool.
Declarations that Turia possessed "ingenuity", "courage", and "admirable endurance" attribute to her the traits of virtus reserved for the ideal Roman male, but for which the eulogist venerates his wife. To him her femininity appears uncompromised by her aggressiveness, marshaled forth by her unusual position in history. Her inability to conceive children- the first goal, according to Ischomachus, of Greek marriage- distressed her so that she offered to divorce her husband in order to preserve his status. His subsequent horror and refusal to allow her to sacrifice her happiness emphasizes the forthrightness of his actions in accordance with his emotions; his public lament at having no offspring concerns only an absence of others with whom to grieve Turia’s loss, rather than as a failing on her part to provide him caretakers.
The concluding paragraphs of the inscription furnish the most telling evidence of operations within the Roman gender system, for they convey in stone the admission of the surviving husband of his reliance on the strength of his wife, his loss of self-control to sorrow, and his self-discovered incapability to "stand firm" against two overwhelming emotions- "grief" and "fear". On any Greek monument such a display would have been inconceivable, and its presence at a peak in the Roman age dispels any contemporary criticisms of gender as minor to expressions of romantic love between husband and wife.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 7:07 AM]