“I thank the gods for three things: first, for making me a man and not an animal; second, for making me a man and not a woman; and third, for making me a Greek and not a barbarian.” In this reflection, attributed to Thales of Miletus, a man is grateful for not being a woman. If he expressed it, at least, it is because in that case he would find himself at a disadvantage. Some time later, Aristotle would recall that “the knowledge of a man is not that of a woman”, that value and equity are not the same thing in both, as Socrates thought, and that the strength of one lies in command, that of the other in submission.
After everything we’ve read so far, how is it possible that denigrating, belittling, cornering, isolating, silencing, sidelining, marginalizing, discriminating against, or oppressing women hasn’t been enough? How is it that pointing out his invented inferiority or underestimating his abilities wasn’t enough? It’s shocking to think that most women share a common feeling: the worry caused by expressing a will that doesn’t fit what they want. Even if it hasn’t even been done, that idea is enough to be in our head to feel discomfort.
Violence in the form of both physical and psychological punishments (if it is difficult to identify them now, imagine centuries ago) was a fundamental part of this whole mechanism aimed at indoctrinating and subjugating women so that they would respect their norms, so that they would not take power. They were highly effective weapons, as they continue to work today. From contempt comes hatred which produces the complete dehumanization of women. The feminicides committed throughout the world over the centuries are proof of this. (…)
Hate is one of the most effective forms of dehumanization. On the other hand, the vast majority of abusers over the centuries have claimed to have done it for their own good, to have lost their nerve but to love them, in that peculiar conception of love-inheritance that they have developed. One study suggests that, on the threshold of the fall of the Roman Empire, physical abuse among Greek couples was less, because as inferior beings, it was humiliating to fight against someone who was not their equal. However, Xenophon tells us the story of Mania of Dardanus, a Greek woman involved in political and military strategies, who was murdered by her son-in-law, who did not admit that a woman had such a decisive role. On the contrary, for the Romans, who grew up in a hierarchical society, in which violence served to maintain social order, attacking one’s partner did not constitute a discredit. Furthermore, correcting women with violence was interpreted as a good deed; even if social shame fell only on them.
It is in Rome that we find greater documentation of situations of physical violence against women (obviously the recognition of psychological violence was not even foreseen). It is obvious to underline that, in that society, such damage was not specifically recognized, but was only considered as crimes or injuries and rapes were “bodily injuries”.
To find some initial cases, we can pull the file controversiesdocuments with which students developed their oratory and juridical art. They may be fiction but they were based on common facts. This could leave us clues about some acts of violence against them. Among others, a man who just returned from war gouged out his lover’s eyes, the husband who killed his pregnant wife or the one who justified the violence because “she deserved it”.
The epitaphs document real cases of this terror. We do not know the name of the attacker, who was probably condemned to exile, but we know that of his companion, Julia Mayana, cited as “a very virtuous woman, who died before the moment established by fate, murdered at the hands of a very cruel husband”. Or her cousin Florence, “thrown into the Tiber by her husband Orpheus” at the age of sixteen.
Tacitus, in the Annals, narrates that Apronia, second wife of the praetor Plautius Silvanus, appeared dead. Her husband said it was suicide, as she was asleep. Tiberius went to his house and when he saw signs of a struggle he sent him to trial. Before the trial, his grandmother gave him a dagger to commit suicide, thus escaping the sentence. Some time later they tried to exonerate him, accusing his first wife of spells and magic potions, but she was acquitted.
Egnacio Mecenio beat his wife to death for drinking a glass of wine. In Rome there was the so-called “right to kiss”, according to which the husband or any man in the family could kiss on the lips to find out if a woman had been drinking. In Roman society this was wrong, as it was believed that alcohol could cause miscarriages or was a sign of perversion as the woman introduced an “impure” fluid into her blood.
Appia Annia Regilla, aristocrat and wife of the Greek writer Herodes Atticus, was killed with a kick to the belly while she was eight months pregnant. They accused a freedman, but then acquitted him. Octavio Sagitta, after being rejected by a woman with whom he had had a fleeting relationship, asked her for “one night’s consolation”. He arrived at the rendezvous accompanied by a freedman armed with a dagger and stabbed her, “after wounding and frightening the slave who was running towards her”. At the trial the freedman falsely accused himself, but the slave declared the truth and Ottavio was convicted.
To these are added others, better known, of emperors or rulers, where the asymmetrical relationship with women was doubled, since power was added to sex. Livia (or Cornelia) Orestila married Gaius Calpurnius Piso, but at the wedding banquet the emperor Caligula fell in love with her and forced her to divorce him in order to marry him. He raped her during the engagement ceremony. Soon after, Caligula got bored and banished her, destroying her life.
Sometimes, if the men were rejected, they didn’t even have to get blood on their hands to kill them. They preferred suicide, like Malonia after being accused by Tiberius of being an informer, when in reality he gave the order in revenge after she rejected him. And partners were not always enough: violence against mothers and sisters was also recorded. We have already seen the case of Nero with Octavia, the contempt to which he subjected her to the point of giving the order to kill her. And this after having had his own mother, Agrippina Minor, killed. Tacitus recounts that when she saw herself surrounded, she said to the centurion who carried the sword: “wound me in the womb”, from where she had given birth to her executioner.
Other common situations occurred when the system itself exercised institutional violence against them, be they partners or family members. For example, all the men were tried for crimes. If they were accused, there was no public court but a domestic court, especially in the first phase of Roman history. A painting by Jean-François Lagrenée shows us Horacio killing his sister with his own sword, for crying over her fiancé, who belonged to the enemies, the Curiacios. Two women, accused of poisoning their husbands, who had declared themselves innocent, were strangled by their relatives without a public trial. In the same way that more than a hundred women were executed after a bacchanal, accused of incest, and where “all the contempt with which our women had desecrated Rome for their shameful act was transformed into praise for the harsh punishment inflicted”.
