This chapter investigates domestic violence in the ancient world by making use of the expanded understanding of the abusive relationship between perpetrator and victim offered by the concept of coercive control. Coercive control describes a pattern of behaviour which may include acts of physical violence, but also non-physical emotional, psychological and financial abuse. I offer four case-studies, each of which takes as its starting point a behaviour associated with coercive control: (1) patriarchal entitlement; (2) patterns of abuse; (3) intimate partner homicide; and (4) non-physical abuse. A broader definition of domestic violence allows us better to understand the abuse (physical and non-physical) experienced by victims in the ancient world and encourages greater sensitivity to the experience of modern victim-survivors of domestic abuse and the ways in which these modern readers (including our students) may interpret ancient evidence.
{"title":"‘Start with the cage’: coercive control and the Roman husband","authors":"Eleanor Cowan","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter investigates domestic violence in the ancient world by making use of the expanded understanding of the abusive relationship between perpetrator and victim offered by the concept of coercive control. Coercive control describes a pattern of behaviour which may include acts of physical violence, but also non-physical emotional, psychological and financial abuse. I offer four case-studies, each of which takes as its starting point a behaviour associated with coercive control: (1) patriarchal entitlement; (2) patterns of abuse; (3) intimate partner homicide; and (4) non-physical abuse. A broader definition of domestic violence allows us better to understand the abuse (physical and non-physical) experienced by victims in the ancient world and encourages greater sensitivity to the experience of modern victim-survivors of domestic abuse and the ways in which these modern readers (including our students) may interpret ancient evidence.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In a revisionist historical environment in which scholars are increasingly invited to reconsider readings of classical texts from a philological perspective, or from an approach that privileges strict historicity, numerous interpretative possibilities present themselves. Working within such an environment, this study aims to delve into several literary expressions of domestic violence meted out to female slaves—explicitly, ornatrices—by female mistresses—particularly, elegiac dominae and satirical matronae—by combining the traditional methodologies of classical studies with theories of both protest femininity and toxic femininity. In so doing, it considers words and their meanings—notably the language of legalese as well as violence—and gender theories of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century—to read domestic violence among women as a cultural dynamic underpinned by patriarchal institutions that not only institutionalize the abuse of slaves but both initiate and permit it at the hands of disempowered females.
{"title":"Bitchy ladies: domestic violence against ornatrices in Latin poetry—protest femininity, toxic femininity?","authors":"Marguerite Johnson","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae020","url":null,"abstract":"In a revisionist historical environment in which scholars are increasingly invited to reconsider readings of classical texts from a philological perspective, or from an approach that privileges strict historicity, numerous interpretative possibilities present themselves. Working within such an environment, this study aims to delve into several literary expressions of domestic violence meted out to female slaves—explicitly, ornatrices—by female mistresses—particularly, elegiac dominae and satirical matronae—by combining the traditional methodologies of classical studies with theories of both protest femininity and toxic femininity. In so doing, it considers words and their meanings—notably the language of legalese as well as violence—and gender theories of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century—to read domestic violence among women as a cultural dynamic underpinned by patriarchal institutions that not only institutionalize the abuse of slaves but both initiate and permit it at the hands of disempowered females.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the explicit and implicit depiction of domestic violence and coercive control in a range of texts from different genres, all dealing with agriculture: a farmer’s attack on his wife after a rustic festival in a Tibullan elegy, the Elder Cato’s instructions to his overseer on how to control his wife coercively in De agricultura, and the portrayal—and suppression—of anthropomorphized domestic violence against nature in Virgil’s Georgics and Columella’s De re rustica 10. These texts throw different lights on the realities and ideologies of domestic abuse and environmental exploitation in ancient Rome, as well as their transhistorical and transcultural continuities. By examining them through a range of ecofeminist lenses, we can see how the nature–woman connection can both give a voice to the victims and contribute to their subjugation.
本文探讨了一系列不同体裁的文本中对家庭暴力和强制控制的明示和暗示描写，这些文本都与农业有关：《提布兰挽歌》（Tibullan elegy）中一位农民在乡村节日后对妻子的攻击，《农业论》（De agricultura）中加图老人对监工如何强制控制妻子的指示，以及维吉尔的《乔治亚》（Georgics）和 Columella 的《乡村论》（De re rustica 10）中对自然的拟人化家庭暴力的描写和压制。这些文本揭示了古罗马家庭虐待和环境开发的现实和意识形态，以及它们的跨历史和跨文化连续性。通过一系列生态女性主义视角来审视这些文本，我们可以看到自然与女性的联系如何既为受害者发声，又助长了对她们的奴役。
{"title":"The farmer wants a wife: ecofeminism, domestic violence, and coercive control in Roman agricultural writing","authors":"Robert Cowan","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae005","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the explicit and implicit depiction of domestic violence and coercive control in a range of texts from different genres, all dealing with agriculture: a farmer’s attack on his wife after a rustic festival in a Tibullan elegy, the Elder Cato’s instructions to his overseer on how to control his wife coercively in De agricultura, and the portrayal—and suppression—of anthropomorphized domestic violence against nature in Virgil’s Georgics and Columella’s De re rustica 10. These texts throw different lights on the realities and ideologies of domestic abuse and environmental exploitation in ancient Rome, as well as their transhistorical and transcultural continuities. By examining them through a range of ecofeminist lenses, we can see how the nature–woman connection can both give a voice to the victims and contribute to their subjugation.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Intimate partner violence—any behaviour within a current or former intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm—is a public health issue of global proportions. It disproportionately affects women: one in three women report having experienced a form of physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner during their life (World Health Organization 2021). So too intimate partner violence was prevalent in the Roman world. This chapter argues that intimate partner violence plays a significant role in Latin pedagogical exercises of the controversia, by which students came to learn persuasive oratory. It asserts that reading intimate partner violence in the controversiae provides an insight into the foundations of a ubiquitous Roman misogyny that underpins gender-based violence. It also briefly considers how education would have affected the mental outlook of an adolescent and what it meant to be educated in and with intimate partner violence.
{"title":"Reading intimate partner violence in Latin controversiae","authors":"Kirsten Parkin","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae003","url":null,"abstract":"Intimate partner violence—any behaviour within a current or former intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm—is a public health issue of global proportions. It disproportionately affects women: one in three women report having experienced a form of physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner during their life (World Health Organization 2021). So too intimate partner violence was prevalent in the Roman world. This chapter argues that intimate partner violence plays a significant role in Latin pedagogical exercises of the controversia, by which students came to learn persuasive oratory. It asserts that reading intimate partner violence in the controversiae provides an insight into the foundations of a ubiquitous Roman misogyny that underpins gender-based violence. It also briefly considers how education would have affected the mental outlook of an adolescent and what it meant to be educated in and with intimate partner violence.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142268775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article considers two case studies of intimate partner violence from Tacitus’ Annals: the murders of Apronia in ad 24 (Tac. Ann. 4.22) and Pontia Postumina in ad 58 (Tac. Ann. 13.44). Tacitus’ account of these acts of violence and the legal proceedings that follow are considered in detail to demonstrate that legal and non-legal action could be taken in response to some instances of domestic violence in the ancient Roman world and that the emperor could intervene in certain cases. It examines these case studies in the context of other examples of domestic violence in the Annals as one avenue through which to explore attitudes towards domestic violence in early Imperial Rome.
{"title":"The princeps investigates: two cases of domestic violence in Tacitus’ Annals","authors":"Kimberly Harris","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae017","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers two case studies of intimate partner violence from Tacitus’ Annals: the murders of Apronia in ad 24 (Tac. Ann. 4.22) and Pontia Postumina in ad 58 (Tac. Ann. 13.44). Tacitus’ account of these acts of violence and the legal proceedings that follow are considered in detail to demonstrate that legal and non-legal action could be taken in response to some instances of domestic violence in the ancient Roman world and that the emperor could intervene in certain cases. It examines these case studies in the context of other examples of domestic violence in the Annals as one avenue through which to explore attitudes towards domestic violence in early Imperial Rome.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper starts with the contention that the category of ‘violence’ is culturally constructed and varies according to one’s cultural and historical context. This is not intended to excuse contemporary acts that violate our laws and standards, but instead to provide a platform for examining Roman ideas of acceptable and unacceptable force so far as we can access them via texts written by male members of the elite. By examining Nero’s treatment of Octavia as it is depicted in Tacitus’ Annals, I argue that we can identify Roman social/moral condemnation of (technically legal) violence inflicted on Octavia by Nero. However, comparison with the depiction of the same events in the anonymous Octavia demonstrates how conditional this condemnation could be on the victim’s presentation as a moral and social exemplar.
{"title":"A tale of two Octavias: historical empathy and intimate partner ‘violence’","authors":"Sarah Lawrence","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae021","url":null,"abstract":"This paper starts with the contention that the category of ‘violence’ is culturally constructed and varies according to one’s cultural and historical context. This is not intended to excuse contemporary acts that violate our laws and standards, but instead to provide a platform for examining Roman ideas of acceptable and unacceptable force so far as we can access them via texts written by male members of the elite. By examining Nero’s treatment of Octavia as it is depicted in Tacitus’ Annals, I argue that we can identify Roman social/moral condemnation of (technically legal) violence inflicted on Octavia by Nero. However, comparison with the depiction of the same events in the anonymous Octavia demonstrates how conditional this condemnation could be on the victim’s presentation as a moral and social exemplar.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on the limited evidence that exists for domestic abuse and violence against older individuals in the Roman world, in particular directed against parents by their offspring. Literary and legal testimony is considered, along with some discussion of skeletal evidence, and particular instances from Roman Egypt are also presented. The article considers questions of gender in this context, and also discusses the way that the evidence typically presents only one side of the picture, a side that may be distorted intentionally or mistakenly by the alleged victim.
{"title":"The abuse of aged parents in the ancient Roman world","authors":"Tim Parkin","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae002","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the limited evidence that exists for domestic abuse and violence against older individuals in the Roman world, in particular directed against parents by their offspring. Literary and legal testimony is considered, along with some discussion of skeletal evidence, and particular instances from Roman Egypt are also presented. The article considers questions of gender in this context, and also discusses the way that the evidence typically presents only one side of the picture, a side that may be distorted intentionally or mistakenly by the alleged victim.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142252210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
‘Either I’ll have you as a wife, as I had you before, or you must die!’ So Andronicus yells at Drusiana, having locked her in a tomb for refusing to have sex with him, in the second-century Acts of John. Drusiana’s domestic setting houses a nested story of violence. Her husband’s abuse parallels that of a rival assailant, Callimachus, who in turn also involves Andronicus’ steward in his violent planning. After a brief overview of the passage, and consideration of its genre alongside other Greek novels and its use of comedy, this paper analyzes the domestic setting’s violence through the portraits of these three male characters and Drusiana. The article suggests that intersectional dynamics support the text’s rehabilitation of the elite male characters and denunciation of the ‘unchangeable’ steward, with implications also for understanding broader attitudes about marriage and sexual abuse in antiquity. In keeping with other portraits of sexual desire and violence elsewhere in the Acts of John, it argues that the text conflates violence and desire in the interest of championing celibacy, which is idealized in a mixed message about the one named female character in this passage, Drusiana.
{"title":"Domestic sexual abuse in early Christianity: conflations of violence and desire in the Acts of John","authors":"Kylie Crabbe","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbae008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 ‘Either I’ll have you as a wife, as I had you before, or you must die!’ So Andronicus yells at Drusiana, having locked her in a tomb for refusing to have sex with him, in the second-century Acts of John. Drusiana’s domestic setting houses a nested story of violence. Her husband’s abuse parallels that of a rival assailant, Callimachus, who in turn also involves Andronicus’ steward in his violent planning. After a brief overview of the passage, and consideration of its genre alongside other Greek novels and its use of comedy, this paper analyzes the domestic setting’s violence through the portraits of these three male characters and Drusiana. The article suggests that intersectional dynamics support the text’s rehabilitation of the elite male characters and denunciation of the ‘unchangeable’ steward, with implications also for understanding broader attitudes about marriage and sexual abuse in antiquity. In keeping with other portraits of sexual desire and violence elsewhere in the Acts of John, it argues that the text conflates violence and desire in the interest of championing celibacy, which is idealized in a mixed message about the one named female character in this passage, Drusiana.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140962262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Danish politician Hartvig Frisch’s reading of Thucydides at the eve of and during the Second World War is a particularly illuminating example of the modern reception of the Athenian historian. This is not due to any peculiar character of his interpretation, which scarcely differs from other contemporary accounts of the History of the Peloponnesian War as a lesson in seeing the world ‘realistically’. Rather, it is due to Frisch’s eagerness to make the text meaningful in a very practical sense. Addressing fellow socialist politicians, working-class youths, and students alike, and drawing parallels between the situation of his native Denmark and the fate of the Greek island town of Melos in 416 bce, Frisch saw Thucydides’ History as an invaluable guide for the demanding times of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular for the inhabitants of ‘small nations’ like his own.
{"title":"When Athens invaded Denmark: reading Thucydides before and during the Second World War","authors":"Hans Kopp","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbad017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbad017","url":null,"abstract":"The Danish politician Hartvig Frisch’s reading of Thucydides at the eve of and during the Second World War is a particularly illuminating example of the modern reception of the Athenian historian. This is not due to any peculiar character of his interpretation, which scarcely differs from other contemporary accounts of the History of the Peloponnesian War as a lesson in seeing the world ‘realistically’. Rather, it is due to Frisch’s eagerness to make the text meaningful in a very practical sense. Addressing fellow socialist politicians, working-class youths, and students alike, and drawing parallels between the situation of his native Denmark and the fate of the Greek island town of Melos in 416 bce, Frisch saw Thucydides’ History as an invaluable guide for the demanding times of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular for the inhabitants of ‘small nations’ like his own.","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139162466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: Bibliographies","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/bics/qbad019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbad019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43661,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134931674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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