Agrippina the Elder, Suetonius, Tiberius, 5.53

‘But in a mind so corrupted by lusts there was no trace of honour: Messalina’s tearful complaints were being drawn out pointlessly when the gates were broken open… that was the first moment she realized her true situation. She took the sword, and, while tremblingly moving it to her throat and chest in vain, a blow from the tribune drove it through her.’

Messalina, wife of Claudius, Tacitus, Annals 11.37-8

‘If he had come to commit a crime, Agrippina said… she would not believe it of her son, that he would order the murder of his mother. But the assassins surrounded her bed, and at first the ship’s captain struck her on the head with a club. Then, just as the centurion was drawing his sword to kill her, she held out her abdomen, crying out “Strike my womb!”, and with many wounds, she was dispatched.’

Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, Tacitus, Annals 14.8

The Death of Messalina, Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938)

Dramatic Dominae

Reading the Roman historians, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was something just a little bit Game of Thrones about imperial women. If they’re not plotting to advance or avenge a male relative, they might be having dangerous affairs, or bringing their families into disrepute. Because the central thread of the histories told by Suetonius and Tacitus is the succession of emperors, imperial women most often appear as a means of helping the story along, characterising the men in their lives, or influencing their behaviour, each in her own way contributing to the historian’s explanation of how each man came to (and fell from) power.

It can be helpful to look at evidence which allows us to see the lives of imperial women on their own terms. Luckily, while searching through the smaller finds in the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions collection, we found a collection of objects that gives us an insight into one imperial woman’s financial concerns – and it couldn’t be further from conspiracy and murder.

Roman Bricks

Roman bricks weren’t the rectangular things we think of today. Instead they were slim and square, like modern paving slabs.

The centre of the bricks were marked, usually with circular stamps giving the name of the brick-maker (the officinator), the clay-district (figlinae) and the estate (praedium) from which the clay came, and the name of the current consuls. These three pieces of information essentially amount to the brand, origin, and the date of manufacture that we still expect on our labels today.

These brick stamps become popular among nineteenth-century collectors, a way of owning real Roman inscriptions that were more plentiful and portable than carved stones. Unfortunately, to make them even more portable, the rest of the brick was often chiselled away, leaving only the stamped area. That’s why most brick-stamps in museums today have rough edges, and don’t give much idea of the size and shape of the brick they once belonged to. But at least they preserve the important names. In the Ashmolean Museum’s collection of brick stamps from Portus, the main harbour of Rome, the name of one particular imperial woman is a common sight. Domitia Lucilla Minor, the wife of Marcus Annius Verus and mother of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was the owner of huge clay-fields and a major player in the brick business.

Portrait Bust identified as Domitia Lucilla Minor, mother of Marcus Aurelius. Found near the Forum in Ostia. Mid-second century AD. Vatican Museums, Sala a Croce Greca. Inv. 570.

Ladies and the Land

Of all the things that Domitia Lucilla Minor could have invested her money in, why did she choose a clay-field? Owning land was one of the few ways that aristocratic Romans could make money without being seen to engage in ‘trade’. Whether it was land that produced grain, or land that was mined for clay, many well-born Romans made themselves comfortable by having what we would now call a land portfolio, and employed staff to help them manage it.

Evidently, Domitia Lucilla’s clay-fields were so extensive that she could contract them out to more than one brick-maker. In the Ashmolean collection, we’ve found stamps showing several different officinatores, using the clay from the praedium of Domitia Lucilla in the middle of the second century AD:

Click to Enlarge

A Chip off the Old Block

In the particular case of Domitia Lucilla, her connection with brick-making was something she had inherited. Her family, the Domitii, were the most prominent family in brick manufacturing during the first and second centuries AD, and we find other bricks bearing the name of their clay-fields. In the Ashmolean Museum, we even have examples that seem to come from the clay-fields owned by her mother (Domitia Lucilla the Elder):

Naturally, certain successful brick-makers developed long-term business relationships with certain clay-field owners. The name and trident logo of officinator Ulpius Anicetianus, who appears on Domitia Lucilla’s bricks, also appears on bricks of her daughter, Annia Cornificia Faustina. It appears that, sometime after the death of Domitia Lucilla, in around AD 155/61, both the land and lucrative contracts that once belonged to her mother now passed to her.

This imperial woman, the only sibling of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, led a quiet, successful life, and on her death left her own two children her considerable property portfolio. Unfortunately, reverting to type, these grandchildren of Domitia Lucilla Minor were involved in a failed attempt to assassinate the subsequent emperor, Commodus, and were both murdered. But that’s another, more dramatic story…

Duty Free Delos

The tiny island of Delos sits midway between the Greek mainland and Asia Minor.

In the second century BC, the little Greek island of Delos in the Cyclades experienced an unexpected boom, as it became the place to do business in the eastern Mediterranean. Rome was not yet an empire, but Latin-speaking tradesmen were already very familiar the region. Everyone knew something about these enterprising people from Italy.

In 166 BC, the Romans made Delos a tax free port, making it an attractive place to trade goods and slaves. Many traders set up homes on the little island, making it a cosmopolitan commercial centre where Greek speakers and Latin speakers lived and worked side by side.

A Bilingual Inscription

(L) The Randolph Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum; (R) A colossal head of Apollo mounted on Avilius’ altar.

Today, the long Randolph Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum is lined with statues and reliefs from the Arundel Collection, and with a series of Greek altars which now serve as statue bases. These altars all follow a similar formula: a marble drum, shaped like a cotton reel, encircled with swags of foliage and bulls’ heads (bucrania, which refer to animal sacrifice). But one of these altars, now supporting a colossal head of Apollo, is an important record of relations between the Greek- and Latin-speaking inhabitants of Delos.

The altar dates to the late second century or early first century BC, when it was set up as a funeral marker for a man named Quintus Avilius. It is inscribed, in uneven letters, in both languages on the smooth surface of the drum: the Latin inscription at the top, the Greek at the bottom. But while what they say is largely similar, there are some revealing differences.

 When a Roman is not a Roman

Q(uinte) Avili C(aii) f(ilie) Lanu(v)ine salve
‘Quintus Avilius, son of Gaius, of Lanuvium, farewell.’

 The Latin inscription tells us that Quintus Avilius originally came from Lanuvium, a town in Latium, just over 30 km to the south-east of Rome. Someone from Lanuvium at this date (before the Social War) would not actually have been a Roman citizen. The Greek inscription, on the other hand, gives slightly different information:

  ΚοΐντεἈυίλλιεΓαΐουυἱὲΡωμαῖε
χρηστὲχαῖρε

‘Quintus Avillius, son of Gaius, Roman, honest man, farewell.’

This inscription calls Avilius a Roman, even though he wasn’t. And our inscription is not the only Greek text from Delos to do this. It seems that traders from Italy who spoke Latin were routinely called Romaioi by the Greek speakers on the island, even though they weren’t from the city of Rome, or have Roman citizenship. As far as the Greek speakers were concerned, the distinction apparently didn’t matter. And, judging by Avilius’ altar, everyone, including the Latin-speakers, went along with it.

An honest Roman?

Another difference is the inclusion of the adjective χρηστὲ – ‘honest’ in the Greek inscription, which doesn’t appear in the Latin. We might wonder why it’s been added. Its meaning is complicated by the fact that inscriptions don’t include punctuation. If we take it with the preceding word, the phrase Ρωμαῖε χρηστὲ means ‘an honest Roman’, which isn’t very flattering to Romans! It might give us a clue as to how the Greek speakers of Delos felt about their Latin-speaking colleagues. But in fact, χρηστὲ belongs with the word which follows it. The final phrase χρηστὲ χαῖρε – ‘honest (man), farewell’, is really a common, stand-alone ending in funerary inscriptions from Delos, and the stonecutter put those two words on the line below to show they belonged to a new clause. In our English translation, at least, we can use commas.

If we want to find out about relations between the Greek and Latin speakers in Delos, perhaps most revealing of all is the fact that someone, perhaps even Avilius himself, made the decision to have his funerary monument inscribed in both languages. His friends, customers and clients could read about him in whichever language they preferred and see terms that they readily understood, even if those terms were not entirely accurate. It’s a thoughtful gesture, and perhaps no surprise from an island population that knew a thing or two about international marketing.