Roman Wives, Roman Widows

by Bruce W Winter

  In returning to the values of the ancients (mores maiorum) the industrious married woman was epitomised in the idealised domesticity of spinning and weaving. Idleness among rich women was therefore considered a vice and not a virtue, although men of status could boast that their hands had never known work.53 In the household of Augustus, his immediate female family were said to have spun and woven, and he himself was clothed with the fruits of their labours.54 It is interesting to note that in Crete, women who were divorced were entitled to half of the fruits of their labours which were to be returned to them.55 Industriousness and not idleness was meant to be the hallmark of the first-century woman regardless of her rank, but this was not necessarily the case with `new' women, as we have already noted.

  The text tells us that `not only' (oi p6vov b) were the young widows `idlers going about the houses, but also (&XX Kai) gossips and busybodies, speaking that which was not becoming' (5:13).56 `The kind of things that Romans reported saying to each other as gossip ... were couched in nicer language than were graffiti and depended on implication rather than direct statement.'s' Richlin proceeds to draw attention to the relationship between the obscene graffiti she had just discussed and obscene gossip. The latter, by implication, was the same as that found in graffiti.58 On Clodia, `Cicero indeed observes a certain urbane restraint: in accordance with his recusatio of obscenity in Fam. 9.22, he leaves out four-letter words; but he can still be quite crude.'S9 Richlin observes that the literature `always portrays adultery as daring, never as normative. In the same way, malicious gossip establishes that one way to acquire a bad reputation is to have a reputation for adultery, yet it grants a certain cachet to both male and female sinners. Presumably this stems from the real issue involved - not marriage but power.... Gossip seems equally interested in both male and female peccadilloes'.60 Such would also cover the affairs or casual liaisons of the young widow.

  The other complaint is that the young widows were `busybodies' (7rspirpyot). The significance of the term is demonstrated from Menander's The Arbitrators where Onesimus who was a household slave revealed to his recently returned master that the child born by his wife in his absence was not fathered by him. He was told `and you are a busybody', and even though that was the case, elsewhere he is told that the disclosure has not changed things - `I love you, busybody though you are'. In one place he admits of himself, `I am a busybody (7rspispyoc riMi)'. However, he later denies that he has been meddling, `If anyone finds I am a busybody, I will let him castrate me.'61

  The connection between the flighty young widows being gossips and busybodies and the content of their conversation is indicated (5:13). They are `saying the things that are not right' (XaaoU cti Ta Pr bfovTa). The context is the semantic field of sexuality.62 The nature of this sort of gossip is well illustrated from Juvenal, who provides a succinct picture of female gossip.

  She knows who loves whom, what gallant is the rage; she will tell you who got the widow pregnant, and in what month; how every woman behaves with her lovers, and what she says to them.63

  The comment about `what month' points to a critical issue in the Empire. The surveillance of pregnant widows was a critical matter because a posthumous child would have the right to inherit from the deceased father's estate.

  If a woman says that she is pregnant after her husband has died, she should take care to announce this twice within a month to those to whom this matter pertains ... so that they, if they wish, can send those who will examine the womb ... up to five free women are to be sent and these are all to examine together.64

  Cicero speaks of `the licentiousness of her [Clodia's] gossip'.65 The inappropriate speech of the Christian widows seems to flow from the description of their lifestyle (5:11).

  It was stipulated that the widow who qualified for financial support from the Christian community (5:9) was to be literally `a woman of one man' (svgs &vbpos yuvi ). The same was required of deacons (3:12) and overseers (3:2), who were to be `a man of one woman' (µtas yuvatxos avbpES). Does this reflect the ideal about which Tacitus wrote?

  Still better is the practice of those societies in which only virgins marry and the hopes and prayers of a wife settled once and for all. Thus, just as they receive one body and one life, they receive one husband - this must be the limit of their thoughts and desires; marriage and not a husband must be their love.66

  He was not commenting on his own generation, however much he might have wanted it to be like this, but he was repeating the purported situation in an early idealised society among the Germans. That the Christian widow at the age of sixty was to have been a `one-man woman' cannot mean that she had been married only once. There has been a trend to translate or interpret the phrase by actually inserting a verb where there is none in the text. Had it read `she had one husband', then the Greek would read yuv>7 ~GqKE €va &vbpbv but it is literally `a woman of one man' (svgs &vbpos yuvi ). That would disbar the young widows who were encouraged to remarry (5:14) from doing so with any overseer or deacon, because the latter group qualified for office only if they were `a man of one woman' (3:2). The reference is not to the older widow's marital history but to her moral conduct.67

  Why did a promiscuous young widow now wish to marry and abandon her Christian profession and not simply marry a Christian man (5:11, cf. 14)? In the oration at the marriage bed Plutarch says how the wife must follow the gods of her husband and not embrace foreign divinities.68 It is assumed that her desire to remarry was kindled by her enjoyment of her sexual promiscuity. She may have wished to abandon her faith in order to secure a husband who would not marry her if she remained a Christian.

  There were legal, financial and social incentives `to marry and have children' (yapriv Kal TrKvoyovriv) (5:14). The Augustan laws, the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus and related measures `penalized unmarried men from the ages of twenty-five to sixty and unmarried women from twenty to fifty who did not have children and did not marry if they were divorced or widowed'.69 Juvenal records that there were upper-class women who refused to have children.70 Valerius Maximus writing in c. A.D. 3o notes that Septicia married an old man in the Principate of Augustus and was beyond menopause. There was a dispute and she excluded him from her will. The emperor forbade her husband `to retain her dowry, since their marriage had not occurred "for the sake of procreating children"'. 71 `If ... a married couple had children, and three children in particular, they gained the ins trium liberorum (the right of three children), which gave them privileges such as advancement in the father's political career and financial autonomy for the mother.'72 Widows who were childless in their first marriage but remarried and had a child enjoyed benefits from an inheritance - such was the legal pressure to have children.73

  A totally inequitable situation applied with the death of a spouse. `Men are not compelled to mourn for their wives. This is no mourning for a fiancee."' The required interval between the death of a husband and remarriage for the widow was to be a minimum of ten months.75 This was an established convention in the early empire and enshrined in Roman law. When Seneca wrote to his widowed mother his argument was -

  our ancestors allowed widows to mourn their husbands for ten months, in order to compromise by public decree with the stubbornness of female grief. They did not prohibit mourning but they limited it.76

  However, an important consideration was not so much that of propriety but `he is accustomed to be mourned on account of a confusion of blood'. 77 The Digest indicated that `it does not harm the woman who is mourning to have become engaged within the time limit' .78 The encouragement to young Christian widows to remarry would have needed to take into account at least this minimum period for official mourning (5:14). Two years was the period set before a widow could remarry without incurring any financial or inheritance penalties under the lex Papia Poppaea of A.D. 9.79

  If the only interest were in marriage and having children, then one would not have expected the call `to manage their household' (oiKob& 1roTEiv). This requirement is also foun
d in Titus 2:5 and the philosophical schools where there was the need for the wife to have taken `the helm and steered the household's course'.80 This instruction counters the lax lifestyle into which some of the young widows had drifted, for the enormous demands of running a household left no room for idleness.

  The verb, `I wish' ((3o6 Xoµat), in i Timothy 5:14 is followed by four infinitives, the concluding one providing a compelling reason for the previous ones -'to give (btbbvat) no occasion to the opponent [of the Christian message] on account of a reproach.' This is clearly related to her lifestyle giving the appearance of promiscuousness. How do marriage, childbearing and the management of the household rob the Christian's opponent of the opportunity to reproach the Christian message?" The following verse introduced by `for' (yap) states that some have already turned aside to follow Satan, a description analogous to being against Christ by reason of promiscuous behaviour (5a1), which is clearly linked to the particular lifestyle described in 5:13.82 This indicates such reproaches can justifiably be made as there are already some who have been promiscuous; this enabled outsiders to call into question the credibility of the Christian faith. A similar concern is expressed in Titus 2:5: `that the Word of God may not be discredited' by the young Cretan Christian wives who had to be called back to their senses to love their husbands and children and to run their households.83

  The remedial steps for this problem of regulating the support of real widows may seem somewhat draconian on an initial reading. However, notice needs to be taken of the unprecedented and unregulated institutional support of widows in the capital of the Province of Asia, and indeed the GraecoRoman world, the exception being Judea and Diaspora Jewish communities. One can appreciate how enticing it would have been for a young widow, or any widow in fact, to join this `welfare' association. Young widows could afford to be idle at the expense of the Christian community whose financial support also enabled them to be promiscuous. Furthermore, such inappropriate conduct was highly damaging to the credibility of the witness of the church as a whole in Ephesus. In effect, the church was paying the widows `to shoot its cause in the foot'. If the issue of their lifestyle had not been addressed, it would have had effects which were far-reaching and highly compromising for the Christian witness before a watching world.

  The appearance of the young widows could have put in jeopardy the very existence of the Christian church in Ephesus, giving its enemy the opportunity to `revile us' (5:14). Prior to this, the Roman authorities had banned cults that appeared to promote sexual promiscuity as part of their tenets.84 Tacitus records the case of Pomponia Graecina in the time of Claudius -

  a woman of high family, married to Aulus Plautius - whose ovation after the British campaign I recorded earlier - and now arraigned for alien superstition, was left to the jurisdiction of her husband. Following the ancient custom, he held the inquiry, which was to determine the fate and fame of his wife, before a family council, and announced her innocent.85

  `Her creed, as was often the case, gave rise to immorality, on which she was tried and acquitted by the family council.'86

  The extent of the financial problem for the support of widows per se is reflected in the fact that the church simply could not afford it. So that the church might be able to provide adequate care for those who were `real' widows, not only immediate families were required to assist financially but also a believing woman with widowed relatives who needed support (5:4, 16).

  It was suggested that i Timothy 5:11-14 contained descriptive, evaluative and prescriptive elements. The first two resonate with concerns expressed in the wider society. The prescriptive element required the church to refuse to enrol young widows for financial reasons so that the old widows who were by themselves could be `honoured' with financial support.87 The young widows were to marry, have children, and manage their households.88

  In conclusion, some young widows in the church had been influenced by the values of the `new' woman, whether the latter was married or widowed. The appearance of the young widows in terms of their lifestyle was such that it provided opponents of the Christian movement with the opportunity to discredit it.

  The terminology used in the injunctions to women in Titus 2:3-5 provides clues as to some of the problems the early Christian movement struggled with, given what is known of the first-century Cretan/Roman secular mores of both older and younger wives. This letter sent to Titus in Crete evaluates the consequences for Christian women of some of these cultural legacies.

  Since c. 450 B.C. Cretan women had been in a more privileged legal position concerning their rights and matters relating to inheritance than their sisters in Athens - they had `somewhat more independence' when contrasted with that of Athenian women.' The rights of both Cretan and Athenian women were recorded on the same inscription and provide important information on unique aspects of Cretan women's rights.2 Lefkowitz and Fant recorded the Cretan women's particular legal status they enjoyed with a citation from the inscription dealing with their legal code: `She is to keep her property.'3

  Even in the case of divorce and widowhood the woman's property rights were protected and in the division of other goods recognised. `If a husband and wife divorce, she is to keep her property, whatever she brought to the marriage, and one-half of the produce from her property and half of whatever she has woven.... If a man dies and leaves children behind, if the wife wishes, she may marry, keeping her own property and whatever her husband gave her according to an agreement written in the presence of three adult free witnesses.... If a women dies without issue the husband is to give her property back to her lawful heirs and half of what she has woven within and half of the produce if it comes from her property.... If a female slave is separated from a male slave while he is alive or if he dies, she is to keep what she has.... If the mother dies leaving children, the father has power over the mother's estate, but he should not sell or mortgage it, unless the children are of age and give their consent. If he marries another wife, the children are to have power over their mother's estate.'4

  The principle is also enunciated in the legal code: `The mother's property shall also be divided if she dies, in the same way as prescribed for the father's. 15 There were other rights unique to the women of Crete relating to inheritance: `instead of the traditional dowry which was fixed at the time of the wedding, daughters had a specific portion of the inheritance equal to half that of the son.'6

  Plutarch provides a contrast with what prevailed elsewhere. In a revealing comment in his wedding oration, he argued that `a co-partnership in property is especially befitting of married people'. What that meant in reality he explained by way of analogy. `As we call a mixture "wine'; although the larger component part is water, so the property and the estate ought to be said to belong to the husband even though the wife contributed the larger share.'' Cretan women had long been ahead of their time in this respect and certainly would not have endorsed Plutarch's argument. According to Strabo, Cretans enshrined in their constitutions the belief that `... liberty is a state's greatest good, for this alone makes property belong specifically to those who have acquired it'.8 This may well have accounted for the importance attached to the retention of a wife's property during her marriage.

  Pomeroy notes that for Cretan women from the lower classes `Marriage, divorce, birth, and possessions of chattels were subject to laws rivalling in complexity and comprehensiveness those affecting the upper classes. Extensive regulations were required concerning marriage of slaves.... A married female slave could herself possess property, for the divorce regulations state that she may take her moveables and small livestock'.9

  Cretan legislation governing sexual offences such as rape sought to penalise the male perpetrator in some way. Even in the case where a slave had been raped, her testimony was given credibility. `If a person deflowers a female household servant, he shall pay two staters. If she has already been deflowered, one obol if in the day-time, two obols at night. The female slave's oath takes precedence."° The female rape
victim's testimony was given credence and, however limited, the rapist suffered some financial penalties.

  So the women in the Adriatic region of Crete possessed some measure of protection and enjoyed greater legal rights long before Roman rule. Mackenzie notes that even in the pre-Hellenic period they `lived on a footing of greater equality with men than in any other ancient civilization.... We see in the frescoes of Knossos conclusive indications of an open and free association of men and women, corresponding to our idea of society, at the Minoan court"This measure of independence and power came in part through the retention of property in marriage and what was generated from their land for the duration of it.

  The feminisation of the divinity in Crete in the forms of the snakegoddess, the dove-goddess and the lady of wild creatures meant `that the conception of the Mother was an essential part of Cretan faith'.12 That, however, was not peculiar to Crete.13

  Plutarch, however, noted a phenomenon peculiar to Cretans. Their citizens referred to their country as the motherland -'as the Cretans call it, our mother country (µazpig), and not our fatherland unlike others'; and `they possessed more privileges, for they had `earlier and great rights' 14