Caitlin Gillespie, Brandeis University
Under Nero, Rome experienced a period of ongoing crisis, threatening oppression, and enduring trauma that challenged what it meant to be a Roman. In this atmosphere of upended social values, elite Roman women had to determine how to endure and survive. Disappear into dissoluteness? Detach in order to tolerate? Or participate, disrupting the traditional ideal of Roman womanhood? This paper examines one woman who embraced the saturnalian atmosphere of Neronian Rome and argues that her choice to derive power from vice and childlessness epitomizes the overturning of traditional values and gender expectations occasioned by a state of structural precarity.
In the aftermath of Nero’s suicide, the populace demanded the death of Calvia Crispinilla, “Nero’s tutor in vice” (magistra libidinum Neronis, Tac. Hist. 1.73.1; cf. Raepsaet-Charlier 1987 no. 184, PIR2 C 363). Otho intervened, and Calvia survived. Past scholars have interrogated ancient evidence for an explanation of how Calvia came to be an influential member of Nero’s court (Sirago 1978, 296-297; Morgan 2000, 468; Raepsaet-Charlier 1987, 177). Tacitus suggests that she matched Nero’s sexual dissoluteness, and Marshall suggests that she was a “debauched female counterpart to Petronius in Nero’s ménage” (Marshall 1984-86, 177). Cosme argues that Tacitus’ portrayal of Calvia is part of a broader image of Nero’s court (Cosme 2017, 265-266). According to Dio, Calvia accompanied Nero on his trip to Greece in 64 CE together with Sporus, served as wardrobe mistress despite her status, and plundered, sacked, and despoiled, thereby increasing her personal wealth (Cass. Dio 63.12.3-4). She later went to the province of Africa to instigate the legate Lucius Clodius Macer to revolt through engineering a grain shortage and subjecting the Roman people to famine (Tac. Hist. 1.73.1; Morgan 2000; Bessone 1979, 48-52; Burian 1959, 170; Sirago 1978, 304; Damon 2003, 240). The revolt failed, and while Macer was assassinated, Calvia escaped punishment and married a former consul.
I use Calvia to consider the parameters of unofficial female power in the early empire, especially for those who were not members of the imperial family. Calvia is one of the few women Tacitus qualifies as potens (Tac. Hist. 1.73.1), but he notes that she was powerful due to her wealth and childlessness. These twinned realities influence the populace to overlook her revolt attempt, and she was sought after by inheritance hunters (cf. Champlin 1991, 87-102). Her power does not depend on traditional feminine morality or positive exemplarity. Rather, she models the dangers posed to traditional Roman womanhood and femininity under Nero and becomes a symbol of social disruption and the disintegration of morality in a time of durational catastrophe. She doesn’t pursue elite motherhood and the defined goal of marriage (e.g. liberorum quaerundorum causa, Plaut. Capt. 889, Suet. Iul. 52.3; cf. Treggiari 1991, 8); instead, she transforms sexual vice into a political tool, embraces childlessness, and advertises sterility and wealth as a means of power. While some felt guilty for thriving under tyrannical emperors, Calvia was not one of them.