Invisible Romans (14 page)

4. Women at work. A merchant aids a customer purchasing slippers at the felt products shop of Verecundus. She is probably his wife, aiding in the business.

Natalie Kampen’s investigations of images of women working concludes that contrary to the realistic portrayal of males in occupations, women are always presented in a mythologized or allegorized context,
i.e. not as actual artisans. As Treggiari notes, inscriptions show that they existed as artisans, and texts corroborate that women performed ‘production jobs’ – for example, a woman’s letter from Egypt states that she ‘works with her hands’ (Rowlandson, no. 130) – it is simply that they are not portrayed in this way in primary imagery. There are also no images of women working in the fields or running a large business. Kampen suggests that this was because doing a job was not appropriate to the mythology of womanhood as the homebody/manager, and even speculates that such work outside the home lowered a woman’s status. If this is so, then it is evidence that the homebody image of women extended down into the artisan class.

5. Women at work in a shop. Two women assist customers purchasing fruits and vegetables.

An interesting discrepancy is that women are shown realistically as vendors. Why? Kampen speculates that the unequivocally outside-the-home nature of vending (compared with, for example, cloth merchandizing, which might be confused with work done at home) meant that men and women could be represented by the same sort of iconography. But the relatively modest amount of imagery as well as the few mentions on inscriptions are probably due to the supplementary nature of this sort of work – that is to say, to judge by comparative material from other preindustrial cultures, a woman’s work outside the home was not normally carried out in the role of the primary wage-earner, although special situations, such as the death of the husband, could change that picture in individual cases.

6. Cooperating at work. A wife keeps the books, the husband slices the meat. A butcher shop in Rome.

The census returns from Egypt corroborate this; of all the declarations, not a single female gives an occupation. Surely this does not mean that women did not work, for there is much evidence that they did; but only that it was not thought of as a separate act worthy of recording. The apprenticeship contracts from Egypt were also mostly for boys; although slave boys and slave girls do appear, there are no freeborn women who can be identified as such. Probably, therefore, such girls were not intentionally targeted by families as potential workers; rather, (wealthier) families maintained the ideal of daughters-future-wives being based only at home, while other (poorer) families assumed that girls would upon marriage help out in the husband’s work however and whenever possible, but without formal training. Indeed, Treggiari also points out that when a woman is mentioned on an inscription she is usually paired with a man, presumably her husband in most cases; she interpreted this to mean that they worked together. An inscription from North Africa is eloquent about how important the wife ‘helpmate’ could be to a man’s business:

Urbanilla, my wife, lies here, a woman of complete modesty. At Rome, she was my companion and associate in business dealings, sustained by her frugality. With everything going well, she returned with me to my homeland. Ah! Carthage ripped my wretched companion from me. There is no hope of living without such a wife. She managed my household and she gave me good advice. Taken from the light, pitiable she quiet lies enclosed in marble. I, Lucius, your husband covered you in marble here. Fate’s chance gave this woman to me on the day we were born. (
CIL
8.152, Sommet el Amra, Tunisia)

A partnership such as this is also represented by the merchant couple Aquila and Priscilla, dealers in tents at Rome and Corinth in Acts 18:1. Evidence from Egypt shows that women were not only helpmates, but actual owners of enterprises. The letters and documents on papyrus show ordinary (as well as elite) women engaged in owning and dealing in agricultural land (Rowlandson, no. 180), in wage work (Rowlandson, no. 130), in business ownership and in lending (Rowlandson, nos. 182–4, 190), in leasing camels and purchasing (Rowlandson, nos. 186–7, 192) – in fact, in many of the aspects of business that were associated with males. The second-century
AD
dossier of Tasoucharion shows a woman deeply involved in the details of business transactions. There is no indication of her station, but the modest items of business would point to an ordinary woman. Artemidorus’ dream book notes women in business as well: a woman ‘who has something for sale’ and who will ‘sign a contract’ for it is noted (2.66); and a woman signing a contract for sale is mentioned in passing, as if this was usual (4.30).

Lest it is still thought that Egypt represents a peculiarity, graffiti from Pompeii once again collaborate that evidence and remind us that Egyptian material deserves to be widely applied. A woman named Faustilla is a moneylender, as she takes jewelry as a pawn for a loan:

July 15th. Earring left with Faustilla as collateral. For a loan of two denarii [= 32 asses] she took as interest one bronze as from the sum of 30 [?32] [asses]. (
CIL
4.8203)

This or a different Faustilla also took a loan, apparently in a bar, for this was scribbled on the wall:

November. From Faustilla, 8 asses in interest for 15 denarii. (
CIL
4.4528)

Other activities seem more expectable for females. Midwifery by definition is a female domain. Doctors male and female might be available, but for the ordinary person the midwife would be the expert to call in for childbirth. There are many contracts for wet nurses from Egypt. Most of the contracts are for hire to nurse foundlings; there are few notices of hiring for free persons’ children – but when these are the clients, the wet nurses are paid more (Rowlandson, no. 231). Domestic help is mostly female, too, when it is not provided by slaves. The habit of trading the services of a woman, often a daughter, for a monetary loan is well attested in Egypt, although it is not clear how widespread this was in the empire as a whole.

On the public stage, women were active in ‘male’ businesses, as we have seen, but traditionally they were restricted to certain less reputable occupations. Literally on the stage, some women were engaged in performances and other entertainment. The contract from Egypt for a dancer and castanet players illustrates this:

Sosos son of Sosos, Syracusan of the
epigone,
has hired himself to Olympias … from Attika [?Athenian], dancer, acting with Zopyros, son of Marikkos [?], Galatian of the
epigone,
as her guardian, to work with her as a flute-player for 12 months from the month of Hyperberetaios of the 16th year for a wage of 45 bronze drachmas per month. And Sosos has received in advance from Olympias 50 bronze drachmas. He shall not fail to appear at any festival or any other engagement at which Olympias is present and he shall not provide service for anyone else without the authority of Olympias. The keeper of the contract is Olympichos, son of Herodotos, Kleopatreus … (Rowlandson, no. 215)

Such employment, like innkeeping and working as a bar girl, easily transmuted into the main occupation of women outside the household, prostitution. I discuss this in a later chapter.

Some women specialized in fortune-telling, other forms of advice (the ‘wise woman’), and magic. The elite Pliny the Elder attributes to the common people – our ordinary folk – a firm belief in the power of women and their herbs and potions; he thought that knowledge of charms and magical herbs was the singular specialty of women
(Natural
History
25.5.10). Magic was often resorted to in problem solving, and lovers frequently went to ‘old hags’ to talk about their love issues (see Philostratus’
Life of Apollonius
7.39, for example). But their expertise extended far beyond advice to the lovelorn, as Philostratus again illustrates when he has the religious figure Apollonius of Tyana speaking to an Egyptian critic:

… there are certain old women who go about with sieves in their hands to shepherds, sometimes to cow-herds, pretending to heal their flocks, when they are sick, by divination, as they call it, and they claim to be called wise women, yea wiser than those who are unfeignedly prophets.
(Life of Apollonius
6.11, also 3.43/Conybeare)

Lucius, the protagonist of
The Golden Ass,
runs afoul of just such an expert sorceress, although she is in fact a member of the local elite, not an ordinary woman. Interestingly, the sorceress is often portrayed as a procuress as well – a conjunction of two independent female professions. The connection is the assumed use of philters by prostitutes to gain and keep customers.

Although presumably wise women and prostitutes did not join associations, there is evidence that other women working outside the home did. This environment would have given them good opportunities to mix with other women, and with men. They were probably allowed into trade guilds only rarely, but certainly they were members of funerary associations and sometimes they were officers. One all-female group is even attested to, the ‘gathering of women’ found at Lanuvium in Italy
(CIL
14.2120); this was probably a household burial or cult association though, with restricted membership. Beyond these, there is much evidence for women (along with men, i.e. mixed groups) in religious associations. There was egalitarianism among the regular members, while they were stratified vertically by officers and, at the top, founders or patrons. So rich and poor, masters and slaves, men and women, free and freed could be together; an example is the membership of the religious association worshiping Zeus at Philadelphia, which included men and women, freeborn and slaves. Before males came to dominate the early Christian communities, women could hold roles as teachers and other leaders; for example, the woman Jezebel was an influential prophetess
and teacher, allegedly of immorality, in the church at Thyatira (Revelations 2:19–23). These women leaders were probably just continuing the accepted roles that women had in preexisting non-Christian associations in their communities.

Outside the town, we find women actively engaged in agriculture. In Egypt, by the Roman period, about a third of landowners were women, owning between 16 and 25 percent of the land. Clearly the fact that almost all women needed a guardian to conduct business and make legal contracts did not slow them down in terms of carrying out economic activity. Here a woman purchases land for her daughter:

To Aelius Aprodisios, strategos, from Ptolemais daughter of Agenor son of Philiskos from Oxyrhynchus city, mother of Claudia Areia, through the scribe Hermes. I wish to purchase for my daughter, Claudia Areia and however she styles herself, from the properties put up for sale near the epoikion [settlement] of Artapatou in the middle toparchy [district], from the allotment of Simias, 16 arouras [10+ acres] of katoikic [private] land … and ownership shall remain with Claudia Areia and her descendants and those acting for her. (Rowlandson, no. 171)