Fictive motherhood and female authority in Roman cities (original) (raw)
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Late antique origins of the 'Imperial Feminine': western and eastern empresses compared
This short analysis of the origins of late antique empresses aims to identify specifi c features of imperial power exercised by women. Many wives of emperors found themselves widowed and thus in a position to infl uence the education of their young sons, the 'child emperors' of the fi fth century. Contrasting the eastern and western courts at Constantinople and Ravenna, it's possible to trace patterns of preparation for imperial rule, how daughters of rulers were trained, later celebrated as augoustai, commemorated in statues and on coins. After comparing Pulcheria and Galla Placidia, the surprising career of Verina is contrasted with that of Ariadne, linking all four in the emerging phenomenon of the 'imperial feminine'. Among the many innovations introduced by Emperor Diocletian (284– 305), the new system of government, the tetrarchy, or rule of four, was one of the transformative developments of late antiquity. The plan to set up two senior emperors, each with a junior, called caesar, who would assist his rule and inherit his authority after a fi xed term, provided a certain stability from 293 to 305 when Diocletian abdicated. During that period the number of imperial cities multiplied, with Milan and Nikomedeia becoming the principal residences of the emperors and a range of other centres, including Trier, Serdica, Arles and Antioch used by the caesars. Rome remained the home of the Senate and leading aristocratic families, while Constantinople, dedicated in 330, was established as New Rome, partly to replace the older capital of empire. In some of the new centres of government the ruler's wife might hold a notable position, depending not only on her individual ambition but also on the relative importance and rank of the particular court. And from the early fourth century onwards as the number of imperial centres increased in both East and West, a rivalry between these " leading ladies " developed in step with the intense competition between their husbands, who campaigned to dominate the empire as a whole. Although this meant that the tetrarchy did not survive for long, the movement of courts between so many diff erent imperial cities persisted and generated competitive issues in which the wives of rulers began to play an essential role. Long after the imperial court was moved from its fi xed position in Rome, Theodosius I died in Milan in 395, having decreed that his two young sons were to succeed him as joint rulers in East and West. This signifi cant division of imperial authority into two equal spheres also had the eff ect of restricting the
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Literary and artistic, as well as material evidences, represent the dramatic evolution of the feminine imperial power and its consolidation from the Constantinian age until the fall of Constantinople. This symposium aims to analyse, from a multi-angled perspective, how the imperial women came to assume power and the means of their dynastical propaganda, by means of which a definitive establishment of the female political role within the imperial government was shaped. In their widest perspective, Patristic sources constitute the textual support of this development, as they essentially outline the gradual development in the construction of the Augusta’s political and religious figure, as well as the conceptualization of a court propaganda from the Late Antiquity to Byzantium. The workshop will present, with an introductory lecture, how a basilikos logos, namely Gregory of Nyssa’s paramythetikos logos dedicated to the empress Flaccilla, established firm canons of representing the feminine consort as a royal figure highlighting, in particular, the empress’ evergetism (philantropia) and her advocacy against heresies (orthodoxia). Flaccilla, Eudocia, Eudoxia, Euphemia, Irene, Zoe (some of the leading figures to be analysed in this symposium) begin to wield progressively the same power prerogatives of their masculine consort, as mostly material evidences attested. Utterly remarkable is, within the visual display, to perceive in detail this evolution forged on coins, ivories, bas-reliefs and statues which portray the Augustae in full imperial attire (with insignia and tituli) bearing noteworthy resemblances to the emperors’ portraits onto the same material supports. This momentous change, therefore, made imperial women to lose their peculiar connotations as mothers and spouses and, as a result, be distinguished not only as a mere members of the imperial family but also as βασιλίσσαι καὶ δεσποίναι (queens and regents),namely representatives of the ruling power.
The empress in late antiquity and the Roman origins of the imperial feminine
2011
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The author argues that the mother as guardian of her prepubescent children in Roman law existed since the second century CE and not since 390 CE, as maintained by most modern scholars. Moreover, both in Rome and in some Oriental provinces of the Roman Empire (there is evidence from Egypt and Arabia), in the classical period of Roman law the mother could act as administrator aiding the appointed guardian. In the Greek speaking provinces of the empire, the latter was called epakolouthetria. The author denies that the mother as administrator aiding the guardian in Rome and the provincial epakolouthetria are generically interrelated.