Breastfeeding and Wet-Nursing in Antiquity

This paper examines the role of breastfeeding in the self-definition of Perpetua, author and protagonist of the Passion of St. Perpetua, as mother and martyr. Considered to be the only extant hagiographical text in the form of a diary, the Passion of St. Perpetua presents us with the first-person account of the imprisonment of Vibia Perpetua, a twenty-two year old Roman noblewoman who was put to death as part of a group of Christians on March 7th 203 in Carthage.

This paper explores the weird and fascinating practice of adult breastfeeding in Ancient Rome. In it I examine possible connections between historical-mythological depictions of women breastfeeding their own parents, the columna lactaria and pharmacological uses of human breast milk in the medical and scientific writers. Ultimately I argue that the social perception of adult breastfeeding at Rome viewed it as something amazing, but not completely bizarre; attitudes towards adult breastfeeding were in some cases similar to attitudes surrounding women nursing their own children.

Discussions of Roman wet-nursing unfailingly make reference to the evidence of wet-nursing contracts preserved on papyri from Egypt, thanks to Bradley’s first calling attention to the implications of the sexual regulations articulated therein (1980). These contracts from Egypt were most recently invoked alongside the testimony of literary, legal, and inscriptional texts and ‘biographical’ sarcophagi in an elucidation of wet nursing in the Roman empire as a social practice born of the interrelated forces of high infant and maternal mortality and reproduction strategies (Sparreboom 2014).

My 20-minute paper investigates the symbolism of Clytemnestra’s breast in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers. I will analyze the function of this powerful visual signifier associated with nurture, which efficiently replaces her muted logos and provides Orestes with a special connection to her and a disconnection from the public logos of revenge. In her work, Holst-Warhaft (1992) 152, doubts that Clytemnestra nursed Orestes (see also Whallon (1958) 273-274, in opposition to Vellacott (1984) 154-155).