WCC Virtual Conference - Abstracts
Embodying Women’s Colonial Experiences
February 28, 2025
Organized by: Savannah Sather Marquardt and Maddalena Scarperi
Panel One: Literary Approaches to Ancient Womanhood
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Lovesickness is a very common trope in the five so-called “ideal novels” (Callirhoe, Ephesian Tale, Leucippe and Clitophon, Daphnis and Chloe and Aethiopica), to the point that it displays similar characteristics across these texts and beyond (Maehler 1990; Toohey 1992, 2004; Konstan 1994; Rothaus Caston 2006). Generally speaking, lovesickness wastes the lover away and is potentially deadly until the lover finally gets sexual satisfaction. As noted by many scholars (Fusillo 1989; Maehler 1990; Konstan 1994), the love symptoms are the same for every character and go back to the lyric and tragic tradition (Carson 1986; Lefteratou 2018).
Because of the “topicality” of lovesickness, not enough attention has been given to the very specific figure of the foreign woman in love, who appears in two out of the five novels (Ephesian Tale, Aethiopica). Their love for the male protagonist is described as even more extreme: since they are “naturally” less inclined to control their emotions (Call. 6.6.5; Eph. 2.3), they lose control over themselves and end up threatening the physical integrity of the main couple. As a result, these women are punished and erased from the plot. In this context, the foreign women are not only an example of “bad love” to oppose to the main couple’s “virtuous love” (Konstan 1994; Haynes 2003), nor are they simply derived from stories and folktales on “evil Eastern queens” (Kim 2013; Lefteratou 2018). Rather, the foreign woman is the embodiment of a “body out of place” (Ahmed 2013: 55), namely a body a priori identified as non-legible and therefore feared – unlike the Greek heroines (or even the Greek antagonists), their love is unproductive, a dangerous diversion from the novel’s final establishment of the main couple.
Starting from this assumption, I will illustrate how, despite showing the same symptoms as the other female antagonists (and women in general) across the five ideal novels, the foreignwoman is villainized in Ephesian Tale and Aethiopica and ultimately destined to leave the plot, while the Greek female antagonists displayed in the other novels manage to secure their own happy ending. Relying on Sara Ahmed’s postcolonial affect theory (Ahmed 2014) and Tamar Blickstein “affects of racialization” (Blickstein 2019), I will illustrate how the ancient novels deploy the Greek trope of lovesickness to establish a hierarchical emotional regime and ultimately alienate the foreign female lovers.
In conclusion, despite the novels’ general narrative of foreign women’s passion as dangerous for the main couple, the lovesickness trope turns out to be deadly for the foreign women themselves – rather than a necessary step in sentimental education, the lovesickness trope applied to foreign women becomes a marker of alterity, thus setting up a double standard of interpretation in the novels.
Works Cited
Ahmed, S. 2013. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. Hoboken: Routledge.
_______ 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Blickstein, T. 2019. “Affects of racialization”. In Slaby, J., von Scheve, C. (eds.) Affective Societies. Key Concepts. New York-London: Routledge. 152-65.
Carson, A. 1986. Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Haynes, K. 2003. Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel. London/New York: Routledge.
Kim, L. 2013. “Orality, folktales and the cross-cultural transmission of narrative”. In Whitmarsh, T., Thomson, S. (eds.) The Romance Between Greece and the East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 300-21.
Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lefteratou, A. 2018. Mythological Narratives: The Bold and Faithful Heroines of the Greek Novel. Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter.
Maehler, H. 1990. ‘Symptome der Liebe im Roman und in der griechischen Anthologie’, in Groningen Colloquium on the Novel 3: 1–12.
Rothaus Caston, R. 2006. “Love as Illness: Poets and Philosophers on Romantic Love”. The Classical Journal, 101.3. 271-98.
Toohey, P.G. 1992. “Love, Lovesickness, and Melancholia”. Illinois Classical Studies 17: 265-86.
_______ 2004. Melancholy, love, and time: Boundaries of the self in ancient literature. Ann Arbor (Mich.): University of Michigan Press.
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In this paper, I bring out a new and unexplored dimension of the figure Cassandra, portrayed by Aeschylus in the Agamemnon, by reading the play through the lens of Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe’s political philosophy and postcolonial theory. Thus taking a theoretical approach to the ancient text, I cast Cassandra as a colonized figure, as the prototypical Other, objectified and living in a colonial context. I will illustrate the double oppression that she encounters, by living the experience of a raced woman, and her tragic situation manifests in the problem of language, in the inability to communicate with the world, and in psychoanalytic symptoms.
In his thought, Fanon offers a provocative critique of the Western imperial machine and describes the psychological impact of racism and the destruction of colonialism on the colonized. Speaking from his background in psychoanalytic training, Fanon focuses on the split of the colonized subject, who is treated like a tool by the colonial regime. In a narcissistic system such as the colonial one, its inhabitants develop psychological pathologies and live according to their predetermined subjectivity. His ideas, in turn, serve as a principal source of inspiration for the writings of Mbembe. In Necropolitics, he argues that democracies have “two faces...even two bodies:” “...the solar body, on the one hand, and the nocturnal body, on the other. The major emblems of this nocturnal body are the colonial empire and the pro-slavery state...” (Mbembe 2019: 22). In these death-worlds, the individual loses the ability to set limitations on one’s own body, due to social and political interference, and is, therefore, not truly alive.
I organize my reading of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon around this conceptual model and suggest that Cassandra represents the underbelly of democracy, the nocturnal body— a necropolitical figure—for she loses sovereignty over her own body and, in the end, subjugates her life to the power of death. This position is magnified by her inability to communicate with the world around her and the suppression that she encounters in the symbolic domain or the realm of language. My theoretical intervention sheds new light on the male-female conflict, which has historically interested scholars, and allows us to look at the mythological content from a different angle. This reading develops Victoria Wohl’s claim that Cassandra is “quintessentially other” and “doubly alien” (111), as well as some of the associations that she makes with madness: “Madness is often taken in feminist theory as a privileged site of female subjectivity: see Cixous 1976...” (239). I agree with the interpretation of Cassandra and her madness as potential sites of feminist resistance, but another way of construing her otherness, her situated-ness outside of the symbolic order or “ek-stasis,” is to understand her as a marked, racialized figure. The rapprochement with Fanon will elucidate this reality and interpret her madness as symptoms of colonial violence, while the intent of this project, in reclaiming Cassandra as the centerpiece of the tragedy, aligns with the conviction of these feminist theorists.
Bibliography
Bamberger, J. 1974. “The Myth of Matriarchy,” in Woman, Culture, and Society. M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds.) Stanford: Stanford University, pp. 263-80.
Betensky, A. 1978. “Aeschylus’s Oresteia: The Power of Clytemnestra.” Ramus 7.1: 11- 25.
Butler, S. 2013. “Beyond Narcissus,” in Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses. S. Butler and A. Purves (eds.) New York and London: Routledge, pp. 185-200.
Chow, R. 1999. “The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation and the Formation of Community in Frantz Fanon.” Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. A. Alessandrini (ed.) London: Routledge, pp. 34-56.
Cixous, H. 1976. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs I.4: 875-93.
Cixous, H. and C. Clément. 1986. The Newly Born Woman, trans. B. Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Counihan, C. 2007. “Reading the Figure of Woman in African Literature: Psychoanalysis, Difference, and Desire.” Research in African Literatures 38.2: 161-180.
Durvasula, R. 2015. Should I Stay or Should I Go? New York: Post Hill Press.
Euben. J.P. 1982. “Justice and the Oresteia.” The American Political Science Review 76.1: 22-33.
Fanon, F. 2021. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. R. Philcox. Dublin: Penguin Books.
–––. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Foley H. P. 2001. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge, trans. C. Gordon. C. Gordon (ed.) New York: Pantheon Books.
Goheen, R. 1955. “Aspects of Dramatic Symbolism: Three Studies in the Oresteia.” The American Journal of Philology 76. 2: 113-137.
Goldhill, S. 2004. Aeschylus: The Oresteia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Han, I. 2019. “The Anatomy of Woman: Forbidden Desire in Ovid’s Perseid.” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica (QUCC) 121.1: 119-141.
Derrida, J. 1972. Positions, trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dubey, M. 1998. “The ‘True Lie’ of the Nation: Fanon and Feminism.” Differences 10.2: 1-29.
Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lacan, J. 2006. Écrits, trans. B. Fink. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co.
Lattimore, R. (trans.) 2013. Aeschylus II. M. Griffith and G.W. Most (eds.) Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Lubow, A. 2019. “Has Robert Mapplethorpe’s Moment Passed?” The New York Times, 25 Jul. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/arts/design/robert- mapplethorpe-guggenheim.html. Accessed 11 Aug. 2023.
Lunday, E. 2008. “Violence and Silence in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Mycenae Lookout.’” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, EARRACH 12.1: 111-127.
Mapplethorpe, R. 1981. “Ajitto.” The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York City.
Mbembe, A. 2017. Critique of Black Reason, trans. L. Dubois. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
–––. 2003. “Necropolitics,” trans. L. Meintjes. Public Culture 15.1: 11-40.
–––. 2019. Necropolitics, trans. S. Corcoran. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
McClure L. 1997a. “Clytemnestra’s Binding Spell (Ag. 958–74).” Classical Journal 92: 123-40.
McClure L. 1997b. “Logos Gunaikos: Speech, Gender, and Spectatorship in the Oresteia.” Helios 24/2: 112-35.
McClure L. 1999. Spoken like a woman. Speech and gender in Athenian drama. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Moore, L. 2003. “The Veil of Nationalism: The Veil of Nationalism: Frantz Fanon’s ‘Algeria Unveiled’ and Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algeris.” Kunapipi 25.2: 56-73.
Mowitt. J. 1992. “Algerian Nation: Fanon’s Fetish.” Cultural Critique 22: 165-186.
Levin, J. 2008. “Bodies and Subjects in Merleau-Ponty and Foucault: Towards a Phenomenological/Poststructuralist Feminist Theory of Embodied Subjectivity.” The Pennsylvania State University, PhD dissertation. PennState University Libraries, https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/3180
Rabinowitz N. 2004. “Politics of inclusion/exclusion in Attic tragedy,” in Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization. F. McHardy and E. Marshall (eds.) London and New York: Routledge, pp. 40–55.
Schein, S. 1982. “The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.” Greece & Rome 29.1: 11-16.
Schmitt, C. 2000. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. E. Kennedy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sigal, P. 2016. “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Commercial Archive and the Sexualization of the Black Male Body.” Getty, 3 Oct. 2016, https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/robert- mapplethorpe-the-commercial-archive-and-the-sexualization-of-the-black-male- body/. Accessed 11 Aug. 2023.
Stephens, C. 2017. “Sexual Objectification of Black Men, From Mapplethorpe to Calvin Klein.” Advocate, 17 May 2017, https://www.advocate.com/current- issue/2017/5/17/sexual-objectification-black-men-mapplethorpe-calvin-klein. Accessed 11 Aug. 2023.
Vickers, B. 1973. Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society. London: Longman. Whallon, W. 1985. “The Serpent at the Breast.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 89: 271-275.
Whitney, S. 2015. “The affective forces of racialization: affects and body schemas in Fanon and Lorde.” Knowledge Cultures 3.1: 45-64.
Winnington-Ingram, R.P. 1948. “Clytemnestra and the Vote of Athena.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 68: 130-147.
Wohl, V. 1998. The Intimate Commerce: Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Zeitlin, F. 1978. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11.1/2: 149-184.
–––. 1990. “Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos. J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.) Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 130-167.
Panel Two: Womanhood in Italic Contexts
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This paper deconstructs the (un-)making of women’s history, focusing on Pompeian graffiti and programmata (electoral posters) as a case study. With women’s marginalization in ancient literature, these material artefacts can serve as a unique window into women’s lives, shedding light on their presence in the cityscape and revealing aspects of their reality that are unknown or understudied. The analysis employs Trouillot’s (1995) framework of history production as a guiding lens to understand the challenges in perceiving women’s voices: “1) the moment of fact creation (the making of sources), 2) the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives), 3) the moment of retrieval (the making of narratives) and 4) the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).” In a first step, the paper explores the CIL as an instrument operating at level 2 or sometimes even between levels 2 and 3. As the international “standard reference-work documenting the epigraphic legacy of Roman antiquity” and the “basis for epigraphic research into Roman life and history in general” (Schmidt, 2007), the CIL is both an authoritative catalogue and an archive itself, occupying a significant position between “the making of archives” and “the making of narratives”. In doing so, it emerges as a significant contributor to historical production, not only in what information and documentation are provided but also in how they are provided. A case study of CIL IV , with a focus on parietal inscriptions in Pompeii, is employed to illustrate this, shedding light on different aspects in its contribution to the (un)making of women’s history, among which: 1) The arbitrary integration of names into masculina, a phenomenon previously noted by scholars such as Lohmann (2017) and Zimmermann-Damer (2021), resulting in the possible erasure of women; 2) The integration of dubious readings of women’s names with prices for sexual services, as opposed to the interpretation of men’s names with prices in a non-sexual manner; 3) Problematic labeling, exemplified by Matteo Della Corte’s tendency to categorize women almost exclusively as puellae, leading to their belittlement and eroticization/sexualization. These issues are particularly evident in the third supplement of CIL IV , edited by Matteo Della Corte, which in many cases fails to meet scientific standards. This issue remains problematic given that a comprehensive review of this supplement is still a desideratum. (Solin, 1973) In a second step, the paper critically examines the basis on which graffiti have been attributed or not attributed to women in past and present scholarship, considering factors such as quality, style, content, and the occupation of women. (i.a. Mouritsen, 2015) In this regard, the concept of the “persona” as a tool to deny female literacy and authorship is addressed, drawing examples from literary graffiti. In a final step, drawing on Trouillot’s level 4 (“the making of history in the final instance”), the research reveals how, if programmata are ascribed to women, their significance is often questioned or denied. (u.a. Mouritsen, 1988; Chiavia, 2002) On all levels, the research exposes circular reasoning and highlights the dangerous implications of perpetuating stereotypes and thus erasing women’s voices from the historical record. By applying Trouillot’s framework and scrutinizing the role of the CIL and scholarship, it emphasizes the importance of critically evaluating historical production at various levels and unveils the complexities surrounding the representation of women in historical narratives.
Selected Bibliography
Buonopane, A. (2009), “Una voce di chi non aveva voce: i graffiti delle donne”, in Bertinelli Angeli, M. G. and Donati, A. (edd.), Opinione pubblica e forme di comunicazione a Roma: il linguaggio dell’epigrafia, Atti del Colloquio AIEGL-Borghesi 2007, pp. 231-245.
Chiavia, C. (2002), Programmata. Manifesti elettorali nella colonia romana di Pompei, Turin.
Levin-Richardson, S. (2013), “Fututa sum hic. Female Subjectivity and Agency in Pompeian Sexual Graffiti”, Classical Journal 108 (3), pp. 319-345.
Kruschwitz, P. (2023), “Diese Verslein hat Proficentius hervorgebracht: Überlegungen zum Konzept der Autor*innenschaft mit besonderem Blick auf die lateinischen Versinschriften”, in Glaubitz, N. and Wesselmann, K. (edd.), Plurale Autorschaft. Formen der Zusammenarbeit in Schriftkultur, Kunst und Literatur, pp. 155–185.
Lohmann, P. (2017), Graffiti als Interaktionsform. Geritzte Inschriften in den Wohnhäusern Pompejis, Berlin.
Milnor, K. (2014), Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii, Oxford.
Mouritsen, H. (2015), “New Pompeian graffiti and the limits of Roman literacy”, in Faust, S.,
Seifert, M. and Ziemer, L. (edd.), Antike Kultur Geschichte: Festschrift für Inge Nielsen zum 65. Geburtstag, Aachen, pp. 201-214.
Mouritsen, H. (1988), Elections, Magistrates and Municipal Élite. Studies in Pompeian Epigraphy (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Supplementum 15), Rome.
Savunen, L. (1997), Women in the Urban Texture of Pompeii, Pukkila.
Solin, H. (1973), “CIL IV Suppl. 3. Lfg. 3. 4. Edd. Weber, Ciprotti”, Gnomon 1973, pp. 258-277.
Schmidt, M. (2007), Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin.
Trouillot, M.-R. (1995), Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History, Boston.
Varone, A. (2002), Erotica Pompeiana. Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeii, Rome.
Zimmermann-Damer, E. (2021), “What’s in a Name? Mapping Women’s Names from the Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum”, in Longfellow, B. and Swetnam-Burland, M. (edd.), Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices, 151-175.
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The various stories and myths that we have about the Greek city-state of Locri Epizephyrii, located in Calabria, Italy, reveal a colonial civic culture obsessed with women’s bodies. According to Polybius’ critique of Timaeus (12.50), the colony was founded in the second half of the 7th century by women and enslaved men who were exiled from Greek Locris (which one is not always clear), because they entered into relationships while the elite men were away fighting in the first Messenian War. From here, female centric stories multiply, including matrilineal power, a supposed vow of sacred prostitution to Athena, and a Locrian athlete saving a maiden from the ghost of a companion of Odysseus who had been haunting a local temple. These stories reflect Locrian values, and show the ties between legitimacy, the safety of the state, and the status and sexual purity of the city’s elite women.
Redfield (2003) argued that Locri was unique in the Greek world for its attention to, and treatment of, women. However, he then argues that because of this ‘feminization of the city,’ Locri was a closed city, not involved in politics, which “found protection at the cost of abandoning an independent foreign policy. In so doing, Locri, warriors and all, adopted a feminine role, precious and in need of protection” (207). This is both an inaccurate and sexist interpretation of the evidence. From the 7th – 5th centuries Locri expanded its territory, supported and created settlements in strategic locations, fought in major battles, and forged alliances with larger powers throughout the Mediterranean.
Polybius’ account of the city’s earliest days continues with two stories about Locrians and the indigenous population. In one, the Locrians use a verbal trick to justify expelling the indigenous peoples from the area. In another, Polybius discusses a peculiar ritual the Locrians copied from the local inhabitants, but instead of a young male cup-bearer, they substituted a priestess. Recent re- examinations of the archaeological evidence reveal some evidence of co-habitation, or at least continued peaceful relationships between Locri and the indigenous peoples (Dominguez 2019). The contrasting stories about the relationship between the Locrians and the native peoples are clearly not accurate reflections of the actual interactions between the original settlers and local inhabitants, but instead are the result of changing negotiations and relationships and a justification for the adoption of local religious practices.
Tying these threads together are the pinakes, the famous finds from Locri centered on woman’s bodies, many of which depict Persephone. Here Persephone is “unusually...characterized as both the victim of ‘bridal theft’ and the Queen of the Underworld” (Mackin 2018). It has been reasonably suggested that one reason for the idiosyncratic nature of this depiction is a syncretism with an indigenous deity. I show that bringing together the maiden myths with the depictions of female rituals on the Locrian pinakes with other archaeological evidence provides a more accurate picture of a colonial settlement – one where identity and status were constantly being negotiated within and outside of the city-state.
Bibliography
Budin, S. 2008. The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. Cambridge.
Domínguez A. J. 2019. “Locrian colonization in Magna Graecia: Cities and territories,” in Greek. Colonisation in Local Contexts: Case Studies in Colonial Interactions, eds. J. Lucas, C.A. Murry, and S. Owen. Oxbow Books: 25-42.
Mackin, E. 2018. “Girls Playing Persephone (in Marriage and Death),” Mnemosyne 71.2: 209-228.
Mac Sweeney, N., ed. 2014. Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies. Dialogues and Discourses. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Redfield, J. 2003. The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in South Italy. Princeton University Press.
Sabbione, C. 1982. “Le aree di colonizzazione di Crotone e Locri Epizefiri nell’ VIII e VII sec. a.C.,” ASAtene 60: 251–99.
Panel Three: Royal/Imperial Womanhoods
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This paper provides a general study of the royal iconography of Cleopatra Selene II (40-5 BCE), the Queen of Mauretania who was born as an Egyptian princess to Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Roman triumvir Mark Antony. It explores the ways in which Cleopatra Selene’s multiplicity of identities, both racial and cultural, were presented in her adopted country of Mauretania, a Roman allied kingdom in modern-day northern Africa. The paper considers Cleopatra Selene’s identities in the context of both racialized gender and cultural code-switching, as well as her role as the iconographic continuation of a long line of exemplary and innovative Ptolemaic Egyptian queens. Until quite recently in the modern historiography, Cleopatra Selene has existed on the margins of Ptolemaic history. Consequently, this paper recontextualizes Cleopatra Selene as an important historical figure in her dynasty who stood at the intersection of African, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures, rather than an outlier of these histories. This is particularly provided through an iconographic analysis of contemporary images of Cleopatra Selene as a queen of Mauretania, examined in comparison to the royal iconography of Cleopatra VII and other Ptolemaic Egyptian queens. Overall, the paper hopes to provide a framework through which to confront cultural anxieties about racialized gender by demonstrating Cleopatra Selene’s steadfast commitment to presenting a multiracial and intercultural persona to her diverse population of subjects in Mauretania.
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From popular culture to scholarly essays, Alexander’s encounter with Rōxanē at the peak of his Central Asian campaign has exerted a considerable fascination (Stone 2004) and has consequentially been the subject of considerable debate (Holt 2005). However, despite partial nuances, the overarching intellectual framework has remained strikingly consistent through the decades (cf. Lane Fox 1973, Bosworth 1981, and Naiden 2019). Whether the diplomatic skills of Alexander are emphasized, or his destructive impact on local life is stressed, Central Asians, particularly women, both belonging to élites families and not, are presented as little more than helpless pawns in male great politics against the background of the waning Achaemenid Empire.
The present paper argues for a considerably different scenario. Drawing on recent scholarship on Persian administrative practices across the Empire and the affordances the imperial framework offered to affluent families as well as lesser prestigious individuals (such as crafts(wo)men and merchants: Henkelman 2018), I shall seek to illustrate how (and only apparently in a paradoxical fashion) precisely because of the radical transformations brought about by the Persian conquest in the socio-economic fabric of the Central Asian satrapy, the local elites were nevertheless able to disproportionately expand their margins of maneuver and, consequently, their power 1. vis-à-vis the satrap and 2. in the face of their internal rivals.
Such a background allows us to frame the experience of the Makedonian invasion by local women in a remarkably different light. It shall be argued that economic interests and social networks commanded by women of Rōxanē’s stock should be conceived as the actual driver of the choices undertaken by both Alexander, his allies, his rivals, and his heirs in Central Asia. Such a shift in focus, it will be demonstrated, goes a considerable step in making better sense of the few scattered hints we have of the apparently oversized engagement of individuals such as Apama (Spitamene’ daughter) in the first decades of the Hellenistic period (Ramsey 2016). It is only once both the local as well as the imperial social, political, cultural, and economic backgrounds of these women are taken into proper account that their prominence in the extant literary sources loses its anecdotal character and becomes a matter of proper historical inquiry.
Keywords: Alexander III (the Great), Baktria, Central Asia, Indigenous Agency, Persian WomenReferences:
Bosworth, B. A., 1981. Alexander and the Iranians. The Journal of Hellenistic Studies 100, 1-21.
Henkelman, W. F. M., 2018. Bactrians in Persepolis - Persians in Bactria. In A Millennium of History. The Iron Age in Southern Central Asia (2nd and 1st Millennia BC). Proceedings of the conference held in Berlin (June 23-25, 2014). Dedicated to the memory of Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, edited by J. Lhuillier and N. Boroffka. Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 223-257.
Holt, F. L., 2005. Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lane Fox, R., 1973. Alexander the Great. London: Allen Lane.
Naiden, F. S., 2019. Soldier, Priest, and God. A Life of Alexander the Great. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ramsey, G. C., 2016. The Diplomacy of Seleukid Women: Apama and Stratonike. In Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Papers Chosen from Seleukid Study Day IV (McGill University, Montreal, 20 - 23 February 2013), edited by A. Coşkun and A. J. P. McAuley. Stuttgart: Steiner, 87-107.
Stone, O., 2004. Alexander. Santa Monica (CA): GK Films.
Panel Four: The Regina Tombstone: A Case Study
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In 2010, the Regina tombstone appeared in the exhibition “An archaeology of ‘race’: Exploring the northern frontier in Roman Britain” at Durham University, which aimed “to demythologize the northern frontier […] as a space of homogeneous English folk, shielded from flows of populations and cultural influence” (Tolia-Kelly and Nesbitt 2009). As a tombstone erected at Arbeia by a Palmyrene man to commemorate his wife, and freedwoman, from southern England, it spoke perfectly to the theme. With its combination of mixed iconographic elements—from Palmyrene portraits, English dress, and Roman funerary monuments—and its bilingual inscription in Latin and Aramaic, its cultural heterogeneity is also clear to see. Currently, in 2024, the tombstone is on display at the British Museum in the exhibition “Legion: Life in the Roman Army,” in which the role of women and ethnic diversity appear to be afterthoughts.
As it is physically moved from the frontiers to the imperial center, at its museum of colonial holdings, what can these different presentations of the Regina tombstone tell us about how Britain conceives of its diversity and multiculturalism, ancient and modern? When the tombstone was displayed in 2011, the political landscape and discourse surrounding race in Britain allowed for Regina’s husband, Barates, to be positioned within the framework of blackness in Roman Britain, which the cultural wars of 2024 would not tolerate. In this paper, I use theories and methodologies from Black Studies and critical race theory of the British schools of thought to untangle this web of negotiations between identity and coloniality (Andrews and Palmer 2016; Warmington 2014). I engage especially with the work of Paul Gilroy (Gilroy 1993), his critics, and Stuart Hall (Hall et al 2021), as well as classical scholarship that positions Roman Britain within the Black Atlantic framework (Walters 2020). Through this inquiry, I ask, how can Regina help us reclaim the diversity of the northern frontier for a multicultural modern Britain?
I restore Regina to her local context of Hadrian’s Wall as “debatable lands” with its own unique subculture (Hingley and Hartis 2011), and I explore the dynamic of social relations between masters and their enslaved persons, specific to military communities along the northern frontiers (Kampen 2018; Webster 2005; 2010), that would have characterized her experience. In doing so, I also recenter the violence inherent in Regina’s enslavement, often obfuscated in a narrative that romanticizes her relationship with Barates. I also consider the tombstone within the studies presented in the recent volume, Gendering Roman Imperialism (Cornwell and Woolf 2023), including the argument that women’s funerary monuments were used to showcase local identities. Webster similarly argues that provincial Roman art negotiated domination and resistance (Webster 2003). How does the Regina tombstone navigate this tension? Even on the northern frontier, could Regina ever escape her colonial context, the Roman Empire?
Bibliography:
Andrews, Kehinde and Lisa Palmer. 2016. Blackness in Britain. New York; Routledge.
Carroll, M. 2012. “‘The Insignia of Women’: Dress, Gender and Identity on the Roman Funerary Monument of Regina from Arbeia.” Archaeological Journal 169 (1):281–311.
Cornwell, H. and Woolf, G. (eds) 2023. Gendering Roman Imperialism. Leiden: Brill.
Cussini, E. 2004. “Regina, Martay and the Others: Stories of Palmyrene Women.” Orientalia 73(2):235–44.
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One of the most striking finds from Roman Britain is the so-called Regina Tombstone (RIB 1065), discovered in the late nineteenth century in South Shields, northern England. It is now held at Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum, with a replica on display in the British Museum, and consists of a sculptural relief and inscription. Although parts of the relief are badly damaged, Regina’s portrayal is typical for a Roman matron, with visual signifiers of wealth and skill in the household arts; were it not for the inscription noting her as natione Catuallauna (“by birth a Catuvellaunian”), the tombstone could hail from anywhere in the Roman world. Regina, like several other British women memorialized in funerary inscriptions, was a native Briton, albeit one far from her tribe’s territory in southeastern England. Although unique due to its bilingual inscription in Latin and Palmyrene (the native language of the dedicant, Regina’s widower), the Regina Tombstone is part of a small collection of Romano-British funerary monuments celebrating native British women, all of whom are identified by their tribes and several of whom have Celtic names.
This paper explores the portrayal of British and Romano-British women in the Roman archaeological and literary record. British women like Boudicca, Cartimandua, and Dio Cassius’s unnamed Caledonian appear in Latin literature as stock figures of unruly barbarian women, while a first century relief from Aphrodisias celebrates the conquest by portraying the Emperor Claudius subduing a half-naked personification of Britannia in an unambiguous visual metaphor for rape. The appearance of British women in the archaeological record, however, suggests a more complicated negotiation of Romanness and Britishness. Due to the paucity of epigraphic evidence from Roman Britain, tombstones are typically associated with military rather than civilian life on the island, and the bulk of Romano-British tombstones with ethnic designations, both male and female, have similarly been associated with the Roman miliary. I argue that while funerary memorialization of Romano-British women was linked with other Roman funerary monuments, the continuing use of ethnic distinctions both on and off the island suggests a strong sense of regional and tribal identity. Female Romano-British tombstones like the Regina Tombstone, RIB 621 (found in Rotherham), and RIB 639 (found in Ilkley) all memorialize women who are explicitly designated as members of specific British tribes in their otherwise-Roman funerary dedications. I compare Regina’s portrayal as a Roman matron with RIB 639’s portrayal as a Celtic woman in her relief, despite the Latin inscription on her tombstone. By looking at the Regina Tombstone in context of other British and Romano-British women, I argue for a reevaluation of the complex relationship between Roman-style memorialization, the Roman military occupation of Britain, and the different kinds of ethnic identity available in Roman Britain.
Keynote
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After forty years, gender archaeology is now generally accepted as one important interpretative framework within the archaeological discipline, although how and where it is applied varies widely. Efforts to integrate gender perspectives within Mediterranean archaeology have, so far, suffered from fragmentation and a lack of sustained, collective effort. This is especially problematic because Mediterranean archaeology itself has a lot to offer to the continuing development of gender archaeology, in particular when it comes to understanding long-term changes in contexts of cultural contact and colonization. In this talk, I shall use the Greek colonization of southern Italy as a case study to illustrate how the multidisciplinary analysis of a well-resolved archaeological record can open a window into the gendered dynamics of interaction between local populations and newcomers, and in so doing raise doubts about previously held assumptions regarding power relations, regional mobility and the construction of local identities. But using gender archaeology to de-construct biased histories and re-construct past social dynamics inclusive of everyone that was involved in the process also highlights some methodological (and theoretical) limits of our discipline, which I shall address as a conclusion.