Civis romana: Women and civic identity in Livy, 'AUC' I

This dissertation proceeds from a fundamental feminist question: how can women participate as autonomous members of a community governed by a patriarchal ideology that would strip them of respect and a genuine civic identity? Over the course of eight chapters, "Civis Romana" demonstrates the significance that Livy vests in his female characters from a variety of positions, even the animal kingdom, as making irrefutably necessary contributions to the emergence and establishment of the Roman civitas ---including by doing so on their own terms, in pursuit of their own interests. Rather than seeing the women's difference as a threat to the solidarity of the community, as would be expected from a Greek polis like Athens, Livy's Roman aetion figures the female not as "other", but as complementary to the contributions and responsibilities of men and masculine characteristics. The "Sabine women" episode (AUC I.9--13) proves key in establishing the importance of women at Rome, not only as a "means of reproduction" or vessel of paternal political authority, but as subjects capable of pro-social agency that serves their own interests as well as that of the civitas that has sought their participation. Only when all aspects of the civitas work in cooperation can the civic "body" thrive, and generate the unity of caritas that can fend off the true "other" in Livy's world-view: tyranny, a set of appetitive imperatives to self-indulgence at the public expense, and embodied by both male and female characters.To illuminate the angles from which Livy engages his female characters in the causes of Roman political culture, the dissertation is divided into four parts. Part I, "Before Beginnings", engages in a systematic comparison of the opening chapters of Herodotus' Histories and AUC I to illuminate the particular place that both Herodotus and Livy create for the problematic bifocal perspective on women. While some characters see women as objects at the disposal of men, Chapters One and Two demonstrate that the authors also represent women as agents who are motivated by their own subjective assessment of cultural rules, and who consequently involve themselves in events that affect an entire community. Part II, "Political Animals", focuses on the two most common types of beast in AUC I: wolves and herd animals. Chapters Three, on wolves, and Four, on herds, investigate what discursive value Livy derives from distinguishing the female from the male of the species when some important action by that animal is at hand. The implication pursued is the special contribution of female nature to the health of the civitas, which counterbalances male nature.Part III, "Mediations", takes up the venerable problem of the interstitial position of women between natal and marital households and reframes this positionality. Chapter Five compares women to kings in their respective attempts to mediate between human groups in conflict, and Chapter Six examines how women's involvement in human-divine relations aims at eliciting a different kind of divine aid than do negotiations involving men alone. Finally, Part IV "Civic Disintegration", investigates the breakdown in tandem of two peculiarly Roman formulations of institutions key to the health of the civitas as constituted by Romulus: the kingship as the center of legitimate authority, and marriage as a means of creating associations that enhance the strength of the civitas , not only among men but also by connecting the wife to the whole. In both cases, the corruption of these institutions to self-interested ends, by male and female participants alike, threatens the stability of the community such that one institution will be affirmed while the other is jettisoned in the transition from regnum to res publica. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...