Mary Mc Nulty (University of Washington)
In Bella Civilia 4.12-51, Appian narrates approximately eighty proscription tales, focusing on the most notable tales out of the numerous stories he encountered in his research. He includes tales of the proscribed who were executed due to betrayal by a family member and those who were saved due to the risks their family members took to protect them. Women are key actors in the proscription tales found in Appian given that the domestic sphere became a political battleground during this period (Milnor 2005). Osgood (2006) and Milnor (2005) have both demonstrated the importance of women in these narratives and how the scenes grapple with questions of loyalty and the proper role of the domestic sphere. Less attention, however, has been paid to the portrayal of women’s grief and suffering in Appian’s proscription narratives. In this paper, I focus on Appian’s portrayal of three women who did not succeed in saving their proscribed family members, two of whom die by self-starvation. Appian does not explicitly group any of the women with his examples of “good” or “bad” women. I argue that the inclusion of their stories emphasizes Appian’s attention to those impacted by the proscriptions and that their stories allow him to further his project of probing the question of the legality of the triumvirate (Gowing 1992).
I first examine the narratives of Arruntius’ wife (4.21) and Ligarius’ wife (4.23), who both are unable to prevent the murders of their husbands and subsequently kill themselves by self-starvation because of their grief. My discussion focuses on how Appian utilizes the figure of the starved female body to express the chaos of the political situation. Van Hooff (1990) has observed that death by starvation was a highly distinctive method of suicide in antiquity, while Joshel (1992) has noted that the dead female body is of central importance in accounts of early Roman history during periods of political turbulence. Drawing upon these arguments, I will argue that the figure of the starved female body not only allows Appian to demonstrate the misery of the proscriptions, which caused the deaths of more than those on the proscription list but also to further underline the deception and hypocrisy of the triumvirs, especially given that Ligarius’ wife unsuccessfully informs on herself thereby showing how ingrained praising certain virtues, such as loyalty, remained in the legal system.
I then examine the narrative of Atilius’ mother who does not allow her son to enter her house after his name is included on the proscription list (4.30). Although Appian only gives the reader this brief detail, the mother’s refusal raises issues of loyalty within family relationships during the triumviral period and shows Appian’s attention to the difficulty of these relationships during this period. The portrayal of these women demonstrates Appian's preoccupations with deception and legality in his characterization of the triumviral period.