Allia Potestas was a freedwoman from the Roman town of

Perugia Perugia (, , ; lat, Perusia) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber, and of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and part o ...

who lived sometime during the 1st–4th centuries AD.Horsfall, N: ''CIL VI 37965 = CLE 1988 (Epitaph of Allia Potestas): A Commentary'', ZPE 61: 1985 She is known only through her epitaph, found on a marble tablet in Via Pinciana,

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

in 1912. The inscription, considered to be one of the most interesting of Latin epitaphs,Gordon, A.E: ''Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy'': Berkeley 1983 is unique because it contains both typical epitaphic information and more personal and sexual details.

Epitaph

The 50-line epitaph is written in verse, mostly in

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, ...

. The author appears to have been well-read, with some of the poem imitating Ovid's ''

Tristia The ''Tristia'' ("Sorrows" or "Lamentations") is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of August ...

''. However, the majority of the poem is original in formulation. The poem, apparently written by her lover, can be divided into three sections. The first focuses on Allia's virtues, describing her as extremely hardworking – "always the first to rise and the last to sleep... with her woolwork never leaving her hands without reason". The second extols her beauty with semi-erotic descriptions of her body and notes that she lived harmoniously with two lovers. Finally, the author laments her death and promises that she "shall live as long as may be possible through isverses."

Significance

The epitaph is original and rather unusual among surviving epitaphs for several reasons. * The open treatment of

polyandry Polyandry (; ) is a form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. Polyandry is contrasted with polygyny, involving one male and two or more females. If a marriage involves a plural number of "husbands and wives" ...

– Allia lives harmoniously with "her two young lovers", "like the model of

Pylades In Greek mythology, Pylades (; Ancient Greek: Πυλάδης) was a Phocian prince as the son of King Strophius and Anaxibia who is the daughter of Atreus and sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus. He is mostly known for his relationship with his cous ...

and

Orestes In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (; grc-gre, Ὀρέστης ) was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and the brother of Electra. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and ...

." * The erotic physical description – Allia "kept her limbs smooth" and "on her snow-white breasts, the shape of her nipples was small." * The absence of typical formulated gravestone poetry. Most surviving epitaphs portray their subjects in a more, from a Roman perspective, ideal light.

Women in Rome Freeborn women in ancient Rome were citizens (''cives''), but could not vote or hold political office. Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct polit ...

were expected to be "devoted to housekeeping, child bearing, chastity, submissiveness, and the ideal of being all her life ''univira'' (one-man woman)".Lewis, Naphtali and Reinhold, Meyer: ''Roman Civilization: Selected Readings. Volume II: The Empire'': Columbia University Press 1990

Ethnicity

Allia was probably of Greek descent. It is likely that the name ''Potestas'', meaning "power" in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, was merely a translation of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

name ''Dynamis'', also meaning "power".

Date

Much controversy surrounds the exact dating of the epigraph. Upon first discovery, the work was dated to the 3rd–4th centuries AD on paleographic grounds, and thus this date is often used. Other stylistic and linguistic analysis suggests that the 2nd century AD is more likely. Regardless, most scholars agree it is no older than the 1st century AD, due to the apparent

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

ian influence.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Potestas, Allia Women of the Roman Empire People from Perugia Latin inscriptions 1st-century inscriptions