ABSTRACT
This essay explores the values and uses of silence by Roman women in republican times as a form of political agency for affirming their gender and social identity. In the patriarchal ideology of Roman society, freedom of speech and political participation defined manhood and, more specifically, the male members of the elite, as much as silence and domesticity described the quintessence of womanhood. Yet, textual record attests that, on a few critical occasions in republican times, Roman women displayed the exact opposite qualities: they stepped into the public arena of male politics, publicly demonstrated their political views in groups, and shaped issues and outcomes of Roman politics. The discussion of these exceptional demonstrations staged by elite women in public will show that female silence was the norm. However, far from being merely ‘absence of speech’ or just an act of deference to patriarchal norms and ideals, female silence or reticence was a mode of being for republican women. For them, to appear modest and reticent about male affairs was an act of performance and a means by which they could affirm their social identity. From this perspective, the performance of silence and gender exclusion was a form of nuanced agency. When political deliberations threatened their social status and identity as elite women, republican women suspended their performance of silence temporarily and made public claims on the state in order to restore those forms of particularistic identity that the other members of the social collectivity recognized and respected. At the hands of Roman women, silence was a strategy for expressing agency and as modality of political participation.
