Seeing the Nymphs Naked?

[Sean Manning]

or the weird one where a husband praises his wife for working wool.

What's weird about that? Spinning wool was a stereotypically female task in the Roman world, it would be like a husband now complimenting his wife by saying she was a good cook (and deservedly getting a slap if that were the best he could come up with).

An awful lot of writing on Roman wives cites the same half dozen inscriptions about women weaving. The trouble is that such inscriptions are very rare before 300 CE, and the literary evidence is not so good. My reading in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum did not turn up a lot of parallels ...

[john m roberts]

Didn't one of the emperors say that his toga had been woven by his wife? Obviously meaning that she was an example of old-fashioned Roman virtue, making her a rarity among emperors' wives.

[M. Demetrius]

That would be a significant piece of weaving. That's one huge piece of cloth.

[Epictetus]

Didn't one of the emperors say that his toga had been woven by his wife? Obviously meaning that she was an example of old-fashioned Roman virtue, making her a rarity among emperors' wives.

Maybe they didn't make togas, but supposedly Augustus' female relations made him some clothes.

Except on special occasions he wore common clothes for the house, made by his sister, wife, daughter or granddaughters...

Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 73

[Kegluneq]

An awful lot of writing on Roman wives cites the same half dozen inscriptions about women weaving. The trouble is that such inscriptions are very rare before 300 CE, and the literary evidence is not so good. My reading in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum did not turn up a lot of parallels ...

Alexandra Croom discusses women and woolworking to some degree, citing pictorial evidence on tombstones (rather than in the epitaph) and grave goods across earlier periods. In terms of literary evidence, there's Columella's description of the farmwife's duties, which include making cloth on rainy days (On Farming, 12.3.6) and a reference by Pliny to women cursing harvests by walking along roads and spinning at the same time (NH 28.5.28 - hope that reference is right). Croom does present these as evidence for spinning rather than weaving however, and argues herself that it was only the former that was restricted to women. (I'm unaware of any reference, visual or textual, to men spinning in the Roman world.)

[john m roberts]

They spin in their graves every time a Roman movie gets made.

I suspect that, when an upper-class man's wife wove his clothes "with her own hands," what is meant is that she supervised her serving-women while they did the actual work, maybe taking a hand now and then for form's sake. Sort of the way senatorial-class Roman men prided themselves on being farmers, meaning that they consulted with the steward, who gave orders to the foremen, who supervised the slaves who performed the actual labor. Men like Augustus puttered around in the garden to keep in touch with their inner farmer (and hope for a supply of poison-free food).

[alekaras5811]

Philus Estilus,
I like that, story telling used to be a great pass time when I joint the U.S. Marines. the last few years before i retired not so much. too many electronic gadgets. May I ask which country's army you served in? It sounds like you are an infantry man

[diegis]

In Yann le Bohec's The Imperial Roman Army (p.235) there is a text from the 'gravestone of an anonymous primuspilus':

I wanted to hold the corpses of Dacians; I did hold some
I wanted to sit on a seat of peace; I sat on one
I wanted to march in magnificent triumphal processions; I did just that
I wanted all the financial advantages of being a primuspilus; I had them
I wanted to see the Nymphs naked; I saw them.

Interesting summary of a well-spent life! - but where does it actually come from? le Bohec gives the reference Bull Com Trav Hist 1929-9, p.94, no.2, which means nothing much to me...

Does anyone have the original latin text, or the rest of the inscription, if there is one, or any details on location?

Hmm, was he a kind of necrophile or something?

Interesting words and find nevertheless

Anyway, in my opinion he just want to say he seen the baddest or most dangerous enemies defeated, he was welcomed home with magnificent parades for his battles, get higher ranks and financial gains for that, and he get along with the most coolest or hard to "see" close by (to not get in some kinky description) Bacchantes