Patronae of the Western Roman Empire Disclosed

Descrizione del progetto

Le matriarche liberatrici: una nuova visione del mecenatismo romano

Gli studi tradizionali sulla schiavitù romana si concentrano sui proprietari maschi nel contesto dell’affrancamento degli schiavi, trascurando le donne che concedevano l’affrancamento e il loro ruolo nella vita degli schiavi liberati. Questa visione ristretta suggerisce che gli schiavi liberati fossero fortemente dipendenti dai propri padroni, trascurando le conseguenze delle complesse dinamiche di genere. Con il sostegno del programma di azioni Marie Skłodowska-Curie, il progetto PoWeRED studierà il mecenatismo femminile analizzando circa 1 200 iscrizioni latine, al fine di approfondire le identità e le reti delle donne che concedevano l’affrancamento. Attraverso la creazione di un nuovo modello di mecenatismo diversificato, il progetto metterà in luce il ricorso che queste donne facevano alle persone liberate come discendenti sostitutivi e strumenti civici. L’obiettivo generale del progetto è quello di dimostrare come, ponendo al centro l’azione delle donne, sia possibile ridefinire la nostra comprensione della schiavitù nell’antica Roma e, più in generale, delle strutture sociali.

Obiettivo

The relationship between freed individuals and their former owners is central to modern understanding of the role of slavery in Roman society. While both men and women owned and manumitted slaves, scholarship has focused on male patrons in analysing this relationship. This androcentric focus extends also to the freed, with scholars focusing on how freed men were supported by their patrons in the former’s quest for social advancement following manumission. The result is a patronage model that sees Roman freedpersons as dependent on their former masters in their social mobility, seemingly reflective of inflexible status hierarchies. Despite recent studies of women slave owners, freedwomen and female slaves, the study of Roman patronage remains shaped by male patterns and, thus, by a single-gender-model. What is missing, as a corrective to this approach, is a dedicated study of female patrons: PoWeRED (Patronae of the Western Roman Empire Disclosed) offers just this through a full-scale analysis of the epigraphic evidence for patronae from the Latin West of the Roman Empire. Assembling and interpreting a corpus of c. 1200 inscriptions, and exploring the identities, relationships and network patterns of patronae, PoWeRED builds a new patronage model. This diversified model highlights also patronal dependence on the freed for both familial and social purposes: in the family, patronal ancestry building is shown via the freedpersons’ use as substitute descendants of childless patronae; in the community, patronal dependence on freedpersons as civic tools and instruments in public life is stressed. Through a diversity of patron-freedperson-relations, PoWeRED illustrates notable status malleability in Roman society. Besides building a corrective to the male patronage model, championing the female as the determining historical agent promotes a bottom-up approach via the ‘lesser’ gender, emphasizing the importance of gender in researching societal structures in the Roman world.