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Question about customs of slavery and prostitution
#1
I hope someone can answer my question, as I have actually written several inquiries to the producers of HBO Rome series, and have to date received no answer. In watching an episode in Season two, where Pullo assassinates Cicero, and the Vorenii are having a picnic in the forest, Lyde mentions to Vorenus that Vorena the Elder, now rescued from indentured prostitution can never have children, but could marry, if she wanted. I've looked at the history of sterilization, hysterectomies etc etc, but have found no information on this. Was it a physical inability to now have children? Stemming from what? Just from the prostitution itself (never heard of that)? Did they render her in some way so that she could never have children, and if so, what possible method could they have used that would not kill her? Or was it a cultural prohibition? Some history books talk about the fact that prostitutes used herbs and alakloids to induce abortions, and some brothels sacrificed babies to gods, but why on earth would Vorena be PHYSICALLY incapable of having children?
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#2
Hi 'dalnurse',

Please write your real (first) name into your signature (profile). It's a forum rule.
[url:1ie1yk45]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/ucp.php?i=profile&mode=signature[/url]

As to your question, I doubt that a physical inability to have children was intended here, but a social one. Having been a slave, albeit for a short time, wil have affected her social status as a wife.
I know of similar problems (although from a 3rd-c. context) where female abducted Christians were liberated from their slavery in barbaricum, only to be confronted by a double problem. They had been pronounced 'dead' in a legal sense and the church had big problems accepting them back, abused as they had been by pagans.

Also, and the HBO series does not touch on this at all, is what the legal status of Vorena and her siblings would have been.
First of all, they were Roman citizens, so how could they have been available for abuse - would any Roman citizen touch them without fear of reprisal? I assumed that Roman citizens could not be sold as slaves without someone's consent?
And, if having been degraded to slave staus, how would they be rescued by their father without him having to fear a lawsuit by his children's new owners?

I'm not an expert on this, so maybe others could shed more light on the legal side of this.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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#3
In times of civil war you can do lot's of things illegal in impunity. But I think in this case it was juist an "artistic freedom" to tell us that Vorena lost her honour.
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#4
I have to admit that part completely passed me by. It sounds like a modern invention, though.

First of all, what is the background story? Under Roman lawe, unlawful enslavement had nmo bearing on anyone's legal status. Many comedies depend on this for their happy ending (long-lost relative abducted by pirates is recognised and freed immnediately). If a person was legally enslaved, he or she could regain citizen status by formal manumission (unrestricted until Augustus). She'd still be a freedwoman rather than a freeborn citizen under the law, but that was not a crippling disadvantage.

As to restrictions on marriage, there were some. Slaves could not marry (though slave unions were de facto recognised by some owners), and freedmen and freedwomen were barred from marrying into some social strata (though I am not sure whether that was formalised as early as Caesar's time - I think that was part of Augustus' legislation, too). There is ample evidence for Roman citizens marrying their freedwomen (possibly former slave concubines) and having children with them, so this was not at all impossible. A citizen fredwoman would, in fact, legally only be able to enter into a recognised marriage with a Roman or Latin citizen (freeborn or freed). To say that 'she can now marry' makes sense in terms of her regaining her fredeom. Slaves can not marry, free women can.

As to the inability to have children, I suspect a modern literary trope at work. There is no restriction on childbearing under Roman law (though there are sometimes unpleasant consequences for having children with the wrong person). Generally, the legal position is pretty pragmatic. There are ways to prevent childbearing, but they are either fairly ineffective (contraception) or coercive (infibulation, castration). Nothing you could mandate by law. I suspect that the notion that rape somehow irretrievably damages a mystical concept of womanhood is at play here; a rape victim is 'damaged' and can no longer be 'fully' a woman - in this case, have children. There are some medical conditions that a prostitute is in danger of that can lead to sterility (STD infections, botched abortions, injury due to physical abuse), so the writers may have had that in mind.
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!

Volker Bach
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#5
Quote:There is no restriction on childbearing under Roman law (though there are sometimes unpleasant consequences for having children with the wrong person).

Quote:mater semper certa est; pater est, quem nuptiae demonstrant.
Big Grin
Christian K.

No reconstruendum => No reconstruction.

Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
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