Vistilia, matron, prostitute and finally banished: libido feminarum or voice of dissent in Tiberian Rome?

Abstract

According to Tacitus (ann. II 85, 1-3), in 19 A.D. a woman by the name of Vistilia, born into a praetorian family, had publicly declared her activity as meretrix before the aediles. This striking gesture cannot trivially be taken as a sign of vindication of one’s sexual freedom by women anxious to indulge, with numerous partners, in the same amusements sought by men with prostitutes and/or with free women in extra-marital flings (Pomeroy, Cantarella, Berrino), but rather must be considered a political manifestation of dissent against the regime and the economic violence it perpetrated against women. Vistilia embodied a segment of the upper-class female population that intended to act in self-protection with the ultimate aim of safeguarding their own wealth, in the event that an accusation – well-founded or simply instrumental – of adultery rained down on the unfortunate woman of the moment, a crime that the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis ascribed exclusively to the female gender and condemned with heavy penalties, such as relegatio in insulam and the confiscation of one third of their property (including the dowry).