Chapter 3 Exploiting Fecunditas
In: Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at RomeSearch for other papers by Angela Hug in
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Abstract
The Romans thought of fecunditas not simply as a medical term analogous to our own fertility or fecundity, but as an important female virtue – one which every married woman was expected to demonstrate. This chapter begins with a study of the close connection between fecunditas and pudicitia (‘sexual virtue’) found in the literary sources. Since a virtuous Roman woman improved her husband’s reputation and social standing, this made fecunditas an important source of social capital for men, even though they could not embody it themselves. The chapter examines how men recognized and exploited this social capital, both at Rome and in the wider empire, using a case study of epitaphs commemorating women who died in childbirth. The chapter also considers how proven fecunditas was thought to improve a woman’s position in her marriage. Fecunditas was a virtue belonging to marriage; Roman society believed it created reciprocal obligations between spouses.