Emily C. Mitchell (Harvard University)
Numquam sibi libera visa: sexuality and status in the epitaph of Allia Potestas (CIL VI 37965)
The verse epitaph of the Roman freedwoman Allia Potestas (CIL VI 37965), composed by her patron Aulus Allius, contains two details that are unparalleled among extant Latin inscriptions: a heavily eroticized description of the deceased’s physical characteristics (17-23) and an acknowledgement of the deceased’s multiple sexual partners (28-29). To explain these details, critics frequently romanticize the relationship between patron and freedwoman, assuming that the erotic content of the epitaph reflects Allius’ attraction towards, and affection for, Allia: for instance, Nicholas Horsfall posits an “intense physical and emotional relationship” between the two (1985: 287), crediting Allius with “arresting personal and sexual candor” (ibid.: 255), while Valerie Hope states that Allius paints “a poignant image of his suffering” at Allia’s death (2011: 179).
This paper will argue that the inclusion of erotic material in Allia’s epitaph is better understood as part of a deliberate attempt to articulate the liminal status of freedwomen and to construct an ideal of the ‘good freedwoman’. Matthew Perry observes that freedwomen held an “ambiguous status” in society (2014: 158) and that Roman authors saw female manumission as creating an ideological problem, since the “accessible sexuality” of enslaved women had to be reconciled with the “chastity and sexual integrity” expected of citizen women (ibid.: 155). Allia’s epitaph engages with this problem, emphasizing the distinction between manumitted and freeborn women and suggesting that the ‘good freedwoman’ should be sexually accessible only within certain parameters.
Allia, the archetypal ‘good freedwoman’, is thus characterized as follows. Firstly, although she exhibits the same virtues as freeborn matronae—namely, domestic diligence, particularly in weaving (12-14), obedience (15), moral rectitude (15), and the avoidance of infamy (11, 27)—she knows her place: Allius praises her because “she never saw herself as a free woman” (numquam sibi libera visa, 16). Secondly, she is portrayed as sexually attractive and accessible: Allius admires her nipples, legs, and depilated skin (20-23), calling her corpore … benigno, “with a generous body” (22). Crucially, however, this sexual accessibility is limited to her patron and to partners approved by him: the epitaph states that she did not maintain a broad social circle (26) and that her two partners were from her own household (28-30). She thus defies the stereotype documented by Perry, who notes that Roman authors associated freedwomen with extramarital sexual conduct occurring outside the household (2014: 138). For an archetype of the ‘bad freedwoman’, we might compare CIL VI 20905, an inscription in which M. Iunius Euphrosynus curses his freedwoman and wife Acte for fleeing the household with an adulter; as Katharine Huemoeller observes, Acte is castigated for asserting her own sexual agency (2020: 137) and denying her patron the “conjugal and reproductive labor” that he expects from her (ibid.: 128-9).
Rather than romanticizing the relationship between Allia Potestas and her former enslaver, therefore, we should view her epitaph (and, indeed, Euphrosynus’ curse on Acte) as an attempt to comment on the status and expected behavior of freedwomen and thereby to contribute to a societal discourse on female manumission.