The previous chapter gives us much of our knowledge about the women and children of Eboracum. In addition to these we also know about Empress Helena, wife to Constantius and mother to Constantine. The other empress York can boast is, of course, Julia Domna, empress to Septimius Severus. Julia Domna is famous for the encounter reported by Dio between Julia and the wife of a Caledonian chieftain in Britannia. Julia remarked primly on how the tribal women are somewhat free with their sexual favours; the barbarian woman replied tartly, ‘We satisfy our desires in a better way than you Roman women do. We have sex openly with the best men while you are seduced in secret by the worst.’ That was probably the end of that particular edge of empire tête-à-tête diplomacy.
Julia was renowned for her impressive learning, her extraordinary political influence, and for her expertise in, and patronage of, philosophy. Julia had her fair share of political enemies, who accused her of treason and adultery, neither of which were proven. She and Severus were very close; he insisting she accompany him in the campaign in Britannia from 208. Julia was awarded the title of Mater Castrorum (Mother of the Camps) in 195.
A reference by the epigrammist Martial (AD 41–102) is interesting (11, 53): he describes a Claudia Rufina; she is of British stock, a barbarian, but nevertheless is a Latin at heart and would pass any time for a Roman or a Greek. Like all good matronae she is fertile, fecunda, univira and looking forward to her childrens’ marriages. We obviously have no way of knowing where in Britannia Claudia came from – it could have been York but probably was not – it nevertheless shows that by Martial’s time, foreign women were being appreciated for their matronly qualities just like any Roman woman. Coming from a poet not noted for his liberal views on gender equality and for his xenophobia this is praise indeed: the women of Roman Britain, and this would include Roman York, were, it seems, becoming more and more Roman under the spread of Romanisation by the end of the first century.
The Grave of a Rich Lady
In 1901, a stone coffin was discovered near Sycamore Terrace, Bootham. The treasure trove of unusual grave goods found in the coffin is dated to the second half of the fourth century and tells us much about the middle-class Roman preoccupation with personal appearance and ostentatious display. The goods include jet, elephant ivory and blue glass bead bracelets, earrings, pendants, and beads. Also in there was a blue glass jug 123 mm tall, likely to have contained perfumes, as well as a glass mirror.
The deceased was a truly wealthy lady as indicated by the exotic (and therefore expensive) provenances of many of the grave goods. Ivory was a rare material in Roman Britain, although it has been found in the nearby cemetery discovered during the construction of the railway station in the 1870s. Jet, as we have noted, became very popular in the third and fourth centuries, and may have had associations with the cult of Bacchus and with Christianity.
But the rich lady is of more interest to us than for being just the owner of fine and exotic jewellery, or for her religion. The ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’, as she has been christened, assumed a secret when she was lowered into the ground; it was not just her grave goods which had an interesting provenance. She was one of a number of multiracial people of African origin to be exhumed in York and who hailed from the southern borders of the Roman Empire; as such she and the others are indicative of the diverse, highly mobile, cosmopolitan nature of the Romans, a variegated demographic which was highly mobile, extensively travelled and multinational.
How do we know that ‘the Ivory Bangle Lady’ was African? Radioisotope analysis and other major advances in osteoarchaeology provide the answer. Radioisotope analysis is the process by which oxygen and strontium isotopes are deployed to reveal chemical signatures in bones and teeth which in turn tells us where long dead skeletons came from and where they passed their childhood. This allows us to differentiate people who lived thousands of years ago in warm climates from those emanating from cooler climes, and to differentiate locals from immigrants. In York, skeletons from two different cemeteries – one for the comfortably off, the other for the poor – showed, through cranial anatomy and radioisotope analysis, a significant number (about twelve per cent) were of North African origin; the diversity in York was not just of ethnic origin but it was also evident in all levels of society. In particular the radioisotope and cranial-skeletal anatomy analyses performed on our ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and the traces revealed by the food and drink she consumed in childhood reveal her origins, and probably those of her parents and grandparents. The lady died age 23; she was probably the wife of a high-ranking Roman soldier posted to York.
Significantly, as David Olusoga concludes in his Black and British: a Forgotten History, she and the others provide good evidence that Eburacum in the later empire was considerably more ethnically and racially diverse than York is today.
Carvings etched into a stone in a Cumbrian village tell us that a group of soldiers called the Aurelian Moors were garrisoned in the nearby fortress of Aballava. Moors indicates North African origin while Aurelian dates them in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Confirmation of their presence here is found in a Roman official’s travel list. But the auxiliaries probably did not stay in Aballava: studies of over 200 skulls in York revealed that over one in ten exhibited features very similar to the North African auxiliaries.
The women who have become known to us from their tombstones are:
Julia Velva – shown feasting for the next life, as described above.
Aelia Severa – a member by marriage of the honestiores – the upper echelon of citizens in positions of high standing in local government – as opposed to the second class humiliores; Aelia’s family were wealthy enough to have given one of their slaves, Musicus, his freedom and he himself became a member of the local nouveau riche.
Julia Brica – RIB 686. The draped figure of Julia Brica stands in the niche holding a cup in her hands. To her right is the draped figure of her daughter, holding in her right hand an object which may be a pet. Found with RIB 693 on the site of the Mount Hotel in 1892.
Candida Barita – died with her two daughters Mantia and Tetrica.
Emilia Theodora – RIB 677 shows the most distressing of functions some mothers had to perform: organising the burial of her son, namely Valerius Theodorianus, of Nomentum, who lived for thirty-five years and six months. The York Museum Handbook (1891) described the skull as ‘of noble proportions’. He had his tomb set up by Emilia, his mother and heir. His coffin was found in the early 1800s in a garden at the Mount.
Aelia Aeliana – RIB 682 is the funerary inscription for Aelia Aeliana, found during the building of the current railway station in 1872. Her tombstone depicts a three-legged table with claw-feet, laden with food.
As noted, Aelia is one of three women (Julia Velva and Mantinia Maercia are the other two) where dining scenes can be seen on their tombstones to cater for their needs in the afterlife; they are shown reclining on a couch and being served food and wine.
RIB 134. This tomb, found on the Mount, shows a triple tragedy commemorated by a retired soldier, Gaius Aeresius Saenus, and the tombstone he erected for his wife, Flavia Augustina, and his two infant 2-year-old children. Perhaps this is how Aeresius liked to think how things might have turned out.
Generally speaking, as mentioned, the Roman soldier took up a posting unaccompanied by his wife or partner; relationships were nevertheless, quite naturally, fostered with local women and seem not to have been discouraged or punished. The ruling came in the form of the Augustan Lex Julia de Maritandis Ordinibus prohibiting marriage between senators, and their near relatives and freedwomen; marriage to convicted adulteresses or those in a dubious profession (actors, dancers, prostitutes); and serving soldiers below a certain rank until the reign of Septimius Severus when the ban was relaxed in 197; provincial officials were prohibited from marrying women from the province; guardians could not marry their wards.
Legionary commanders, the legatus legionis or legate, second-in-command to the governor were, like the governor, exempt from this order and enjoyed the privilege of having their wives with them on their postings. We know that between AD 86 and AD 213, 127 legates served in Britannia but we can only identify twenty or so; rarer still are the legates’ wives – but York throws up a rare example in Sosia Juncina by way of her appearance on the altar dedicated to Fortuna by herself and her husband Quintus Antonius Isauricus, legate of the VIth. Stoically following the drum was the order if the day – either in the fortress praetoria or, less comfortably and potentially more dangerously, on campaign.
Despite the long absences from home, wife and children, some soldiers welcomed the regulation. We have the opinions of a veteran commander and seasoned politician, Aulus Caecina Severus, who adopts what is possibly an extreme view, exaggerated in his unsuccessful speech in the senate of AD 21, as recorded by Tacitus (Annals 3, 32-35); but it contains within it the arguments which no doubt moulded the regulations relating to accompanied postings. Severus gets on with his wife and they have had six children together – however, he has left her at home for the forty years he has been away in the provinces. Why? Because women encourage extravagance in peace time and weakness during war; they are feeble and tire easily; left unrestrained they get angry, they scheme and boss the commanders about; he cites instances of women running patrols and exercises, how they attract spivs and embrace extortion.
Centurians too were, amongst other privileges, allowed to be accompanied by their wives. Claudia Marcia Capitolina came to York with her husband, the super veteran Petronius Fortunatus, with the VIth Victrix and after time with the XXXth Ulpia Victix on the Lower Rhine and before his posting to Arabia with the III Cyrenaica but not before they had had a son in York when Claudia was 30 and he 45. Petronius could point to fifty years’ service to his name and time with thirteen legions. How do we know this? Because of the monument the 80-year-old Fortunatus erected to himself and to Claudia, and his son, Marcus Petronius Fortunatus, proudly and painstakingly listing his military career – an army service record etched in stone.
Salvenia Meteliana came to Housesteads with her centurion husband. He was born in Cologne and died at Lambaesis in Egypt. These wives, like many army wives today, were highly organised, unflinching and adaptable to any situation. Papyri found in Egypt show the women to take moving the family from posting to posting in their stride while husband goes on ahead to his new legion.
Other wealthy women who may well have lived in York at some time with military or administrative connections through a husband include:
Candiedinia Fortunata, whose tombstone (RIB 632 now lost) was found before 1702 at Adel Mill, just south of the Roman site at Adel, Leeds. Candiedinia was described as having lived fifteen years as a devoted (pia) wife.
Titia Pinta (38 years old), whose coffin (RIB 720) was found about 1615 at Eastness near Hovingham, inscribed:
(To) Titia Pinta (who) lived 38 years and to Valerius Adjutor (who) lived 20 years and to Varialus (who) lived 15 years Valerius Vindicianus had (this) set up to his wife and sons
And Cosconia Mammiola (RIB 3209) whose damaged coffin is now in store in the Yorkshire Museum. It was found during ploughing at Hood Grange farm near Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe. It contained human bones which included pieces of four male femora, indicating that it had been re-used. Cosconia’s epitaph describes her as piissim(ae), extremely devoted.
Children include:
Sepronia Martina, Julia Brica’s daughter who died aged 6. This sad epitaph for mother and daughter (RIB 686) set up by husband and father was found in 1892 on the site of the Mount Hotel, beside the Roman road leading south west to Tadcaster. The epitaph reads:
To the spirits of the departed (and) of Julia Brica, aged 31, and of Sepronia Martina, aged 6, Sepronius Martinus had this set up.
Mantia and Tetrica Barita who died with their mother.
Corellia Optata, who died aged 13.
Felix. In 1872 a tombstone was excavated from under the road opposite the current railway station (RIB 672) reading:
To the memory of . . . Bassaeus Julius and of his very sweet son Felix.
Simplicia Florentia. Another desperately sad inscription (RIB 690) comes with the epitaph for 10-month-old Simplicia Florentia found in a coffin on the south side of the bridge over the railway in Holgate Road in 1838; the coffin contained a skeleton set in gypsum:
To the spirits of the departed (and) of Simplicia Florentina, a most innocent soul (anime inocentissimae), who lived ten months; her father, Felicius Simplex, made this: centurion of the Sixth Legion Victrix.
It has been suggested that this was in fact a Christian burial.
Crescens (RIB 695) is another child death – this time of 3-year-old Crescens buried with his 30-year-old mother, Eglecta. The right-hand side of the tombstone was found built into the south wall of All Saints’ Church, North Street about 1682 while the left was discovered while the church was being underpinned in 1931.
To the spirits of the departed (and) to Eglecta, aged 30, here buried beside their son Crescens, aged 3; Antonius Stephanus had this set up to his wife.
RIB 696:
to her child, (who) lived 13 years, the mother, Vitellia Procula, as heir in part, (set this up).
This had been reused in a medieval building and spotted in 1865 in a heap of rubble near Ebor Street, Clementhorpe, on the west bank of the River Ouse and south east of the Roman colonia. The text reveals something about the Roman laws of inheritance: Vitellia Procula had part of the family estate coming to her anyway, a legacy possibly split with ‘her child’, which could have been a girl or a boy as Roman girls achieved adulthood at 12, two years before boys. The ancient but revered XII Tables permitted women to inherit and to be named in wills – one of the few areas of equality in Roman jurisprudence and society – likewise Emilia Theodora (RIB 677) was due to inherit after burying husband Valerius Theodorianus. Aurelius Mercurialis describes himself as Julia Velva’s heir in the tomb he erected for her so she may have inherited from parents perhaps at some point during their marriage.
Finally there is the sad coffin, complete with cupids, in which Septimius Lucianus laid his wife, Julia Victorina, to rest, and his infant son, Constantius.
Perinatal, Neonatal and Child Mortality
Infant mortality in Britannia and Roman York may have been as high as thirty deaths in every 100 pregnancies, compared with 9.1 per 1,000 in western Caucasian populations today. It is worth noting that improvements on those shocking Roman statistics only came about relatively recently: the London Bills of Mortality for 1762–1771 show that fifty per cent of infants died before age 2. Susan Treggiari has usefully compiled some revealing statistics extrapolated from an assumption that female life expectancy at birth was 25. A woman, of course, would not expect to die at that age, rather it means that thirty per cent of all babies died before their first year and fifty per cent by the age of 10; these survivors would then have a fifty per cent chance of reaching 50. Seventeen percent would see 70. This reveals a lot about the demographics of women in Roman society, and the number of women available for marriage, and for remarriage .
Pliny gives some of the (mainly outrageous by our thinking) reasons suggested to explain the very high rate of maternal and infant mortality. Babies born before the seventh month do not survive and only those babies born in the seventh month survive if they are conceived the day before or after a full moon or during a new moon; eighth-month babies are common, despite what Aristotle says, however, they are vulnerable until they are 40 days old. For mothers, the fourth and eighth months are the most critical; abortions at that time are fatal. He goes on to record how, in a normal pregnancy, the ninth day after conception sees the onset of headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, loss of appetite and nausea, indicating that the foetus is forming; male foetuses produce a healthier complexion in the mother and make for an easier delivery; movements in the womb begin on the fortieth day with males, for females after ninety days. Babies are particularly vulnerable when they start to grow hair and during the full moon; if the pregnant mother eats too much salt then the baby will be born without nails; excessive maternal yawning can be fatal during delivery.
It has been estimated that the average early Roman Empire woman had to give birth to five babies if she was to ensure the survival of two and to do her bit to maintain the required birth rate.
In reality the main causes of neonatal mortality, death within the first twenty-nine days of life, were insanitary conditions at the birth, over swaddling and trauma; infant morbidity and deaths were often caused by intestinal disorders, particularly enteritis and dysentery. Celsus recorded that the latter was particularly virulent in children up to the age of 10 and in their pregnant mothers, when the unborn baby would also be lost. Over-zealous swaddling – where the limbs are confined and the heartbeat slowed down dangerously – dirty laundry, and mastication of baby foods by wet nurses who themselves might be carrying an infection, may also have taken their toll. As indeed would goat’s and cow’s milk, which can contain infectious organisms and would have been used not just by reluctant breastfeeders but by poorer, undernourished women who were unable to feed and could not afford a wet nurse.
Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC–c. AD 50 ) was a Roman encyclopaedist, known for his De Medicina – the only surviving section of a much larger encyclopedia. The De Medicina is a primary source on diet, pharmacy, surgery and related fields, and it is one of the best sources concerning medical knowledge in the Roman world.
We have already noted that, due to the high rate of infant mortality, Roman parents inured themselves to the harsh fact that their baby might well die so as to minimise the grief that is normal in such a tragic situation. The employment of wet nurses, and the knowledge that some Romans ‘farmed out’ their infants for the first two years or so of their lives, may suggest a level of parental indifference. Cicero says as much: ‘no one pays any notice if he dies in the cradle.’ The tombstone of 12-year-old Julia Pothousa from Arcadia may endorse this: her parents wish was that she had died earlier, before they had grown to love her.
There is inscriptional evidence for maternal mortality, and pain in childbirth, and a matrona’s concern for her offspring at the end of the first century BC in Egypt. Dosithea, aged 25, died in childbirth; she died ‘in pain, escaping the pangs of childbirth’. Rusticeia Matrona died in childbirth and from ‘malignant fate’ at the same age in Mauretania; she urges her husband to look after their son. Also 25, Daphne, from Carthage, died giving birth; her epitaph records her aching concern for the baby: ‘who will feed him, look after him for the rest of his life?’ Socratea died of a haemorrhage in childbirth aged 36. This 15 year old died giving birth, with her baby, in Tusculum in the first century BC: ‘the tomb [holds] two deaths in one body, the [urn] of ashes contains twin funerals.’ It is highly likely that similar tragedies occurred in York on a regular basis.
The situation, of course, cannot have been helped by the conjecture surrounding, and ignorance about, the length of gestation. Aulus Gellius inclined to the view that babies could be born in the seventh, ninth and tenth months – but never in the eighth. Strenuous work in the fields and poor diet was the lot of many women and this can only have exacerbated the problem.