Above Suspicion: Discourses on Female Sexuality and Power in the Early Roman Principate (43 B.C.E. - 68 C.E.) Open Access
Stevens, Samantha (Spring 2025)
Abstract
This thesis examines the discourse on women and political power during the early Roman Principate, beginning with the establishment of the Second Triumvirate in 43 B.C.E. and concluding with Nero's assassination in 68 C.E. By tracing the public perception of several prominent women throughout this period, this thesis seeks to situate the various portrayals of imperial women within a rhetorical tradition that evolved in response to the rise of a “covert autocracy” in the Principate and engaged with the historical memory of this transitional period. This project posits that the inclusion of imperial women in this discourse was a critical method through which the Romans sought to understand the transition from the Republic to the Principate. This discourse reflects the paradox between a functional autocracy and a constitutional system that still outwardly relied on the precepts of republican political culture, as well as a shift in the role of women in the state. With this, this project explores how the rhetoric of sexual morality served to control women’s public voice and political action, examining how allegations of sexual immorality, particularly accusations of stuprum, or adultery, served as “rhetorical topoi” to obscure and control imperial and aristocratic women’s transgressions against the regime, framing women's political subversion as mere adultery in a society that did not recognize women as legitimate political actors. Through a close reading of depictions of imperial women in material culture and literary texts, this work aims to problematize the acceptance of imperial women’s archetypal characterizations, peeling back the facade that misrepresentation, distortion, and political agendas have imposed on the historical memory of imperial women in the early Principate.
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..1
Chapter 1: Fulvia and Turia, Women in the Age of the Imperators……………………………16
Chapter 2: Livia and Julia, the Women of the Domus Augusta………………………………...28
Chapter 3: Agrippina(s), Deciphering the Literary Tradition…………………………………..52
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………71
Note on Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………..74
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..76
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