The Landmarks of History: Gendered Legacies in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita

Megan Bogner

“Daily, she is there — a part of the landscape of what becomes history.” -S.R. Joshel

The above quote is from S. R. Joshel’s essay The Body Female and the Body Politic: Livy’s Lucretia and Verginia, which proved to be a formative text for my own essay. Though the women that Joshel focuses on in her own essay (Lucretia and Verginia) are different than the subjects of this essay (Horatia and Tarpeia, as well as Romulus and Julius Caesar), the sentiment remains: women haunt the Roman landscape, both in reality and in literature. In Book One of Livy, death is distinctly gendered: men who die are deified, and women who die are monumentified[1]. This essay will examine different ways in which the legacies of men and women are preserved through deification or monumentification, and the potential intent behind Livy’s gendered portrayals.

First, it is important to contextualize what Livy intended by writing his history. In his preface, Livy details his intentions explicitly[2]: he neither means to confirm nor deny the stories surrounding the origins of Rome, only to convey them to the reader as moral examples.

Men like Romulus are intended to be good examples of Roman morality: they put the good of the state over themselves, even to the extent of killing their family members for the ‘greater good’ or committing war crimes for the Roman state. However, women like Tarpeia and Horatia serve as bad examples of Roman morality: they each betray their state – or do they?

Despite Livy’s stated intention to provide moral examples, the ways in which he presents these stories creates questions about whether they are supposed to be good or bad examples. Livy creates intentional moral ambiguity[4] in ‘his’ character’s stories, most likely intending for his readers to come to their own judgment about the morality of the characters. To form my own judgment about these Roman historical figures, I am examining their deaths and their legacies – specifically those of Horatia, Tarpeia, Romulus, and Caesar.

As previously stated, there is a gendered trend among the legacies of characters in Livy: the men are deified, and the women are monumentified. One instance of this would be interesting, but not significant – having two noteworthy examples of each in Book One begins a pattern of Roman attitudes towards betrayal and the role of women in society[5].

Tarpeia presents an excellent example of a morally ambiguous tale. She “refuses to be pinned down as an exemplum with clear or universal meaning” (Welch 2015, 138), with varied interpretations/implications depending on the story you choose to believe (of the options Livy gives) and how deeply you read into her unstated motivations. Livy’s story presents her, whatever her motivations, as a traitoress who, after asking for a prize (what they had on their left arms – in sinistris manibus haberent) from the Sabine king, lets him and his men into the Roman citadel, from where the Sabines are able to launch an attack on Rome (Livy 1.11.8). From here the story differs on what she sought as her left-armed prize: either she was greedy enough to ask for their jewelry or she was smart enough to ask for their shields. Either way, the result is the same: the Sabines killed her by piling upon her their shields (Livy 1.11.8). However, this episode does not end with her death; Livy further complicates the issue by introducing moral ambiguity into the minds of the Sabines as well.

Accepti obrutam armis necavere, seu ut vi capta potius arx videretur seu prodendi exempli causa, ne quid usquam fidum proditori esset. (Livy 1.11.7)

After she had let them in they overwhelmed her and killed her with their shields, whether so that the citadel would seem captured by force rather than by trickery or for the cause of setting an example, that no traitor might find security.

Though Livy’s statement about the intention behind the Sabine’s slaying of Tarpeia being a condemnation of traitors may seem like a casual clarification, it actually has a significant point: to set up the etiology of the Tarpeian Rock. Though not explicitly called the “Tarpeian Rock” until much later in Livy (1.55.1), Livy’s Roman audience would have immediately understood that he was providing the etiology of the Tarpeian Rock; and thus, we reach our first monumentification of a woman in Livy’s history.

The term monumentification refers not to the literal transformation of the body, but of the legacy; these women become remembered as objects, just as they were objectified in life – as will be explored later. In the case of Tarpeia, it is the Tarpeian Rock that bears her name and her legacy. The Tarpeian Rock is a landmark famous in Roman history for being the site at which traitors were thrown to their deaths. It is unsurprising, then, that Tarpeia herself was a traitor – and that her monument marks her act of betrayal of the Roman state, whatever her intentions were. 

The second act of womanly betrayal and subsequent monumentification in Livy’s history comes with the story of Horatia. In terms of moral examples, Horatia “offers a particularly rich point of comparison… in contrast to Tarpeia’s story, in which no one is heroic, Horatia’s story is full of commendable behaviors” (Welch 2015, 136). These ‘commendable behaviors,’ as Welch puts it, are not done by Horatia, but rather by her brother, Horatius, who is the one to kill her. This kin-slaying, however, is done for the sake of the state, and so it becomes justified and even exemplary. In a battle for state dominance, Horatius kills his three opponents, one of whom is Horatia’s betrothed. When, fresh off his victory, Horatius sees his sister mourning the loss of her fiance, he strikes her down with a warning to all who would follow her example and commit treason. Despite this murder, Horatius is then acquitted at his trial, leaving Horatia’s death largely unpunished[6]. However, just as Tarpeia’s story does not stop at her death, neither does Horatia’s. Livy describes a certain beam, called the pila Horatia, which still exists in his time; he also mentions that a stone tomb for Horatia was constructed where she was killed, though he does not clarify if that tomb still remains (Livy 1.26.13-14). 

These two monuments of Horatia are especially significant: first, that the etiology of the beam regards a woman, and it still exists because the Roman state keeps it in repair (Livy 1.26.13). Clearly, despite Roman society being markedly patriarchal, this woman played an important enough role in history to be memorialized – even if she betrayed the state[7]. Secondly, the placement of these monuments within the episode itself serve to give Horatia a sense of agency and importance, even more than the enduring quality of her monuments. The story of the Horatii[8] functions as a small-scale example of the ring composition that is common in Livy’s work. The episode begins with a diplomatic arrangement between Mettius Fufetius of the Albans and Tullus Hostilius of the Romans (1.23), moves into a slaying of the Curiatii/Albans by the Horatii/Romans (1.24-25), and ends with the description of the defeated Albans’ tombs (1.25.13-14). The second half of the episode begins with the slaying of Horatia (1.26.3-5), continues to a diplomatic arrangement between Horatius and the court (1.26), and ends with a description of Horatia’s monuments/tombs (1.26.13-14). By using this ring composition, and therefore using Horatia’s monuments to end the episode of the Horatii, Livy lends agency to Horatia and allows her to have the final word, even after death[9].

If Horatia is the morally simple sister to Tarpeia’s complicated tale, then Romulus is Horatia’s twin in terms of moral simplicity. Romulus is, quite literally, the poster child of Rome; the city is named after him and it is his story which provides the clearest moral example to follow. Romulus consistently acts in ways that serve to glorify the state rather than himself, even going so far as to see to the death of his brother when he threatens Rome[10]. Then, at his death, he is deified:

Subito coorta tempestas cum magno fragore tonitribusque tam denso regem opuerit nimbo ut conspectum eius contioni abstulerit; nec deinde in terris Romulus fuit. (Livy 1.16.1)

Suddenly a rising storm covered the king with a great crash and thunder and a cloud so dense that it took away the sight of him from the meeting; nor even was Romulus then on the earth.

While it is true that Romulus was worshiped as a god, Livy raises doubt as to whether Romulus truly ascended to become a god – or whether he was murdered by the patricians (Livy 1.26.4). Like monumentification, the process of deification becomes not a process of the body, but of legacy; whatever happened physically to Romulus, he was remembered as a god.

Like Romulus, Julius Caesar was deified after his death. However, unlike Romulus, historians are certain of what became of his body: he was stabbed to death by vengeful senators[11]. The important part here, however, is not his method of death, but his deification. Caesar is more complicated to discuss in the context of Livy’s history: he is never explicitly named in Book One or the preface; however, just because he is not named does not mean he is not present. His influence is clear throughout Book One, but especially in the preface.

…labente deinde paulatim disciplina velut desidentes primo mores sequatur animo, deinde ut magis magisque lapsi sint, tum ire coeperint praecipites, donec ad haec tempora, quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, perventum est. (Livy prae.9-10)

Next let him, in thought, follow what was at first, with the gradual collapse of discipline, a subsidence as it were of morals, then mark how they slipped more and more, and then began to move with headlong impetus, until we have reached the present times, in which we can endure neither our vices nor their cure. (Gould and Whiteley 2004, 96)

Livy was living in the time of the life, death, and successor of Julius Caesar; when he writes about the decline of the present times, he means the present that is influenced by Caesar. Though Livy does not dare to directly criticize Caesar, his works and especially his preface can be read as an indirect criticism.

This then brings us to an interesting final question: what should we, as readers, make of the legacies of men and women in Livy? Women become monuments of their betrayals, and men become gods of their own glory; but in Livy’s eyes, deification is clearly not always bestowed upon honorable people. Neither is monumentification always the result of betrayal; there are plenty of other examples of betrayal in Livy beyond the scope of this essay that do not end in monumentification[12]. 

I believe the key to the gendered differences in legacy lies in exactly what the difference is: their gender. Livy was living in a not only a patriarchal society, but a casual rape culture as well. “Raped, dead, or disappeared women litter the pages [of Livy’s works]… the rape of women becomes the history of the state” (Joshel 2009, 381), and these stories of the literal objectification of women “were perpetuated as part of a living historical tradition by Roman writers” (Joshel 2009, 384). In other words, just as Livy’s culture objectified women, so did his stories reflect this with the literal objectification – or monumentification – of women’s legacies. Joshel puts it beautifully in The Body Female and The Body Politic:

Within an emergent imperial order, women are fixed within the frame as boundary and space. The move from animate life to inanimate matter is repeated in etymology. In each case, the Romans used a story of a Woman’s body to explain the name of a fixture of Rome… Whether the story follows the naming or vice versa, women’s bodies literally become building material – the stuff of physical and political topography. Women who are supposed to have lived are transformed into places and spaces. (Joshel 2009, 394)

The Romans propagated their values by putting them into state; they made the position of women vs men in society permanent and rememberable by making stories into monuments and men into gods.

Notes

[1] There are other men and women mentioned in Livy but not in this argument (i.e. Tanaquil, Remus, etc) who are neither deified nor monumentified; I leave to the reader their own interpretations of those moments, as this essay is examining these specific instances.
[2] The reliability of Livy’s preface is a subject too large to be contained by the scope of this paper. For the purposes of this topic, I am assuming that Livy was being literal with his words and intended readers to take them at face value.
[3] For the purposes of this essay, translations of the preface are from the Gould and Whiteley commentary. All other translations are my own.
[4] For more about Livy’s writing’s moral ambiguity, see Solodow 1979.
[5] I am focusing closely on four examples, two each of deification and monumentification: Caesar, Romulus, Tarpeia, and Horatia. Aeneas, though deified, is omitted from my argument due to the fact that Livy credits Romulus as the founder of Rome, not Aeneas (prae.7), which signals a preference for Romulus in Livy’s history. Additionally, Romulus is given much more focus and length than Aeneas in Livy’s writing; therefore, I too have turned my focus to Romulus. As for the Sabine women for whom the curiae are named, there is already a large amount of excellent scholarship on the subject of the Sabines, so I am choosing to let it stand as is. The curiae also are not physical monuments, so they are excluded from this argument. Caesar, though rarely (if ever) explicitly mentioned, hangs as an additional specter above Livy’s work, which will be examined further in this essay.
[6] It should be noted that, in full technicality, Horatius is punished lightly – though I do not find it to be a satisfactory punishment for his actions.
[7] “Betrayal of the state” is the way Livy/Horatius frames it – because Horatia mourned an enemy, she committed treason. From a modern perspective, we can be much more sympathetic to her cause.
[8] I am using ‘Horatii’ to mean ‘the 3 brothers and Horatia’ – for is she also not one of the Horatii?
[9] Also of note is the word used to describe Horatia’s tomb, “sepulcrum”. In Book One, the only places this word is used are to describe the tombs of Horatia and the Albans – therefore further helping to solidify the ring composition of this episode.
[10] The complications of this episode are too broad for the confines of this essay, so I am leaving it up to interpretation whether Romulus or a follower of Romulus killed Remus.
[11] It should be noted that while Horatia and Tarpeia are monumentified because of their betrayal, Caesar and Romulus can be read as being deified to cover up the fact that they were betrayed.
[12] Additionally, monumentification is not seen as an entirely bad thing; Livy calls his own work a monumentum in his preface (Livy prae.10). Welch’s essay argues that this is referring to his own text as a tool for teaching a moral lesson. It is, however, significant that Livy uses the word monumentum here; he only repeats words as they are significant, and the only other times he uses that word in Book One it refers to either a physical monument or, once, the establishment of the curiae from the Sabines – which is an example of women’s monumentification that I chose not to include in the main body of my essay due to its intangibility, but is nonetheless noteworthy. 

Bibliography

Gould, H. E., and J. L. Whiteley, eds. 2004. Livy: Book I. London: Bristol Classical Press.

Joshel, S. R. 2009. “The Body Female and the Body Politic: Livy’s Lucretia and Verginia.” In Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Livy, edited by Jane D. Chaplin and Christina S. Kraus, 380-408. New York: Oxford University Press.

Welch, Tara S. 2015. Tarpeia: Workings of a Roman Myth. The Ohio State University Press.