By Josiah Osgood
The civil wars that introduced down the Roman Republic have been fought on greater than battlefields. Armed gangs infested the Italian geographical region, mansions have been besieged within the urban, and bounty-hunters searched the streets for "public enemies." one of the fantastic tales to outlive from those years is that of a tender girl whose mom and dad have been killed, at the eve of her marriage ceremony, within the violence engulfing Italy within the overdue first century BC. whereas her destiny husband fought in a foreign country, she staved off a run on her father's property and raised cash to aid her fiancé in exile. additional, whilst her husband, again in Rome, was once declared an outlaw, she effectively concealed him, labored for his pardon, and joined different Roman ladies in staging a public protest. The wife's story is understood simply simply because her husband had inscribed on huge slabs of marble the flowery eulogy he gave at her funeral. during this booklet, Josiah Osgood reconstructs the lifetime of Turia, because the spouse is often recognized, extra totally than it's been sooner than by means of bringing in along the eulogy tales of different Roman ladies who additionally contributed to their households' survival whereas operating to finish civil struggle. He exhibits how the wife's tale sheds infrequent mild at the extra hidden difficulties of way of life for Romans, together with a excessive variety of childless marriages. This precise narrative is greater than a biography of 1 girl: it's a portrait of a bright interval in Roman heritage and a tribute to married love which, although from one other global, speaks to us this day.
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Extra info for Turia: A Roman Woman's Civil War
Sample text
Most importantly, so long as the male head of the family, the paterfamilias, was alive—this would usually be a woman’s father, but could also be her paternal grandfather—the woman fell under his authority and could not own property herself; but exactly the same was true for her brothers (which is why we have to assume that the father of Oppianicus’ victim, Asuvius, was no longer living). The Romans themselves recognized the distinctiveness of this so-called “paternal power” (patria potestas), but never abandoned it.
But were the alleged kinsmen capable of worse? Could they have planned to murder the parents? 42 The case concerned the murder of Cicero’s client’s father, the owner of at least thirteen valuable estates, many along the Tiber River. Preferring to spend his time in Rome, the elder Roscius was killed one night on his way home from a party. While the prosecution claimed that his son, Father’s Death 21 who had to manage the estates, was fearful of disinheritance and as so, murdered his father, Cicero points the blame instead at several kinsmen with whom the elder Roscius had a long-standing feud.
32 In the campaign to bring back Cicero, Terentia clearly was serving as a powerbroker, calling in favors owed and indebting herself and her husband to others for the future. There were other ways for Terentia to help. 33 In response to the latter, Cicero protested: “Terentia, dear, what is this you write to me about selling your block of houses? ”34 Her money had to be saved, he thought, for their children. 35 She wrote him words of encouragement, and at the same time, kept him in the dark of what happened to her: “The considerate Publius Valerius wrote to me—I wept bitterly as I read—of how you were escorted from the Temple of Vesta to the Tabula Valeria.