Michele Renee Salzman (SCS/AIA)
The period from the Theodosian dynasty and continuing into the sixth century AD saw the emergence of what many scholars – M. McEvoy (2013) and J. Hilner (2019) – have seen as new avenues for elite women to exercise their influence, most notably as royal mothers and sisters who were able, by working closely with trusted generals and imperial family members, to establish long and stable regimes in the name of child emperors. In religion, as well, a new visibility for elite women has also been detected. As patrons and as representatives of Christian piety and orthodoxy, imperial women exercised significant authority, even in an openly patriarchal society. But can we also see new roles for elite women in war? Or were women constrained to be only “damsels in distress” – fitting into a literary conceit going back to Homer that men used to justify war? Was this true even in late antiquity when some elite women assumed new prominence and authority? As I will argue in this paper, even in our male-authored narratives justifying war, we can see some imperial and royal women precipitating political action and taking on new roles even within the limits of late Roman society.
I base this argument on case studies of elite women who emerge as political actors of some consequence in the Latin West from the late 4th-early 6th centuries. In my paper, I will discuss three of the most well-known women – Iusta Grata Honoria (Augusta 437?-450); Licinia Eudoxia (Augusta 439-462), and the Gothic Queen Amalasuntha (526-534). So, for example, although the fifth-century Greek historian Priscus (Priscus, Frags. 16-17, 20.1, 20.3, 21.2, ed. Blockley, 1983) suggests that the “unschooled” barbarian Attila mistook the ring that Honoria had sent him as a pledge of trust as a proposal - and this is how many modern scholars have interpreted her overture - a royal ring as a symbol of imperial power would have been widely understood as part of Honoria’s prerogative as an Augusta. Analysis of contemporary coinage with royal regalia supports Attila’s interpretation of Honoria’s actions (Busch 2015). And as R. Mathisen (2009) has shown, the intermarriage of imperial and elite Roman women with barbarian generals and kings was an increasingly frequent occurrence in the fifth- century. Hence, Honoria's proposal was not nearly as misguided as Priscus suggests.
Admittedly, the three women whose actions were used to justify war – Honoria, Licinia Eudoxia, and Amalasuntha - faced limited options. They were subjugated to a patriarchal system that has shaped their reputations in their life time and for centuries after their demise. But by reevaluating the relevant extant sources for these three women, I argue that they did exercise greater agency and political influence than earlier imperial women, even those in the early fourth-century AD. Thus, this paper offers a new interpretation of women in the justification for war that acknowledges female resilience and political influence in response to new opportunities in late Roman society.