Modest,Industrious,and Loyal: Reinterpreting Conflicting Evidence for Women's Roles

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized the diverse and contradictory evidence for women's activities in the Roman world. Women are expected to be modest and subordinate to men; yet they are also found in leadership roles. A common solution has been to say that women leaders were exceptions to the rule. Certain women or groups stepped outside of cultural norms and took on influential roles. Instead of reading the conflicting reports as evidence of distinct groups of women, I interpret them as evidence of a tension that pervades the culture. At the same time that women are ideally described as modest and confined to the home, some virtues required women to exercise leadership and to pursue the broad interests of their households and cities. Women who exhibit leadership are not stepping outside of culture but also inhabit familiar social norms. Because of this, I argue that we should approach the contradictions in early Christian sources as evidence of participation in this shared cultural background. Both inside and outside the church, conformity to social norms for womanly virtue left open a range of possibilities for women's behavior, including active leadership.

Keywords

ancient women social norms modesty patronage New Testament

Scholars have long recognized the diverse and contradictory evidence for women's activities in the Roman world. On the one hand, the basic cultural assumption was that women were inferior to men and should obey their husbands or fathers. Philosophical and legal writings provide ample evidence of such views (e.g., Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.201; Plutarch, Conj. Praec. 6, 11, 33; Gaius, Inst. 1.144; Ulpian Dig. 11.1). On the other hand, the glimpses of women's lives that the scattered evidence allows show women engaged in commerce, heading households, and influencing politics, both with and without their husband's participation. Scholars who read these texts as products of their culture make interpretive decisions about how to understand this contradictory picture, and how to situate the texts within it.

An early approach to this question was to marginalize the evidence for women's participation by suggesting it was not “real” participation. Women may have appeared to hold religious and public offices; yet these were either merely honorary, or represented domestic (and thus unimportant) functions (Hillard: 40; MacMullen: 215). In this approach, the philosophical norms of women's inferiority limit the meaning of all other evidence regarding women's roles.

A more recent approach, and one that has become quite widespread, understands some ancient women as inhabiting true leadership roles. Glimpses of women's leadership are understood as exceptions to an otherwise repressive rule (Hallett: 6, 29; MacMullen: 218). Individual women, or perhaps women within a geographic region, gained a level of autonomy that was rare for women in general.

Interpreters of early Christian texts are less likely to see individual women's leadership as exceptional, but instead see the contradictory elements as evidence of distinct sub-groups with sharply differing views on women. For example, in her classic work, In Memory of Her, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza presents a pattern of women's leadership in Pauline communities that she argues was not exceptional. However, she argues that later Christians excluded women's leadership in support of the Greco-Roman patriarchal order (Schüssler Fiorenza: 168, 265–66). In this case the practices of the Pauline community contrast with the social norms of other Christian groups or of the Greco-Roman world at large (see also Kraemer 1992: 140, 150, 195–96). In another popular expression of this view, the Pastoral Epistles are understood to limit women's roles in response to a group centered around the second-century text, The Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla's actions represent a community of women leaders whose roles contradict the views and practices of the community of 1 Timothy (Burrus; Davies 1980; MacDonald. For more recent views, see e.g., Kraemer 2011: 149; Misset-van de Weg: 51; Nolan: 236–237; Tamez: 28; and Vorster: 465). These examples could be multiplied. The approach explains the diverging evidence regarding women by assigning certain pieces of evidence to distinct groups or individuals. In some groups, women were viewed as inferior and incapable, but in others they stepped outside of these constraints.

Some recent scholars have moved toward understanding Christian women as reflections of the larger culture. For example, Lynn Cohick presents Greco–Roman cultural norms and practices and then reads New Testament texts in light of these common practices. Similarly, Carolyn Osiek and Margaret MacDonald have sought to situate Christian women within a framework of cultural expectations that include leadership (Osiek & MacDonald).

In this article, I seek to extend this trajectory by addressing the problem of the inconsistent evidence for women's participation. Instead of reading the conflicting reports as evidence of distinct groups of women or exceptional women, I interpret them as evidence of a tension that pervades the culture. From a modern perspective, the position of women in Greco-Roman culture is paradoxical: at the same time that women are ideally described as modest and confined to the home, some virtues required women to exercise leadership and to pursue the broad interests of their households and cities. The evidence for this paradox is not new, and many scholars before me have pointed out the seeming contradictions. What I hope to do here is to offer a rationale to explain how what appears contradictory to us may not have been to ancient women and men. Women were expected to exhibit the virtues of modesty, industry, and loyalty to family. However, these virtues did not exist as a seamless whole, but were negotiated and embodied differently by different women under changing circumstances. Inhabiting these virtues led women to embrace a wide variety of social and familial roles.

Multiple and Conflicting Cultural Norms

Part of the reason why groups have appeared to be delineated on the basis of their expectations of women comes from our tendency to imagine ancient culture as a seamless web of expectations for female behavior. The assumption has been that patriarchal ideals form a rigid system that consigns women to domestic anonymity. Women who do not fit this picture are either exceptions to the rule or evidence of a community that rejected those cultural norms. This view implies that culture demands univocally that women are subordinate to men, and anything that seems contradictory is an aberration. As such it expresses a view of culture as an “internally consistent whole” (Tanner: 42). This view of culture was popular in the 1970s and 80s, when many of the arguments about women's leadership in the church took root. Clifford Geertz, for example, wrote of culture as a “web of significance” spun by human beings, and identified religion as a cultural system by which humans give meaning to the world (Geertz: 5). Ideas like these have been challenged on many fronts, and those conversations can help us rethink questions of the representation of women in ancient texts.

Culture does not simply provide a set of “rules” everyone must follow, but in Pierre Bourdieu's terms, it provides a “sense” or

disposition inculcated in the earliest years of life and constantly reinforced by calls to order from the group, that is to say, from the aggregate of the individuals endowed with the same dispositions, to whom each is linked by his dispositions and interests [Bourdieu: 15].

Bourdieu asserts that knowing what it means to follow the rules is itself a social practice. As Charles Taylor explains, “a rule doesn't apply itself; it has to be applied, and this may involve difficult, finely tuned judgments” (C. Taylor: 57). Bourdieu's idea of habitus expresses the social understanding required to live by the “rules” of culture. In light of Bourdieu, interpreters who encounter social norms like the expectation of women's modesty should go on to ask what modesty looked like in practice.

The dispositions that shape actions are durable, but they are also constantly negotiated and often in conflict. As Michel de Certeau argues, “each individual is a locus in which an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of such relational determinations interact” (de Certeau: xi). Because of this, individuals necessarily make choices about how to inhabit cultural norms and roles. Even clearly stated dispositions like modesty or the subordination of women do not exist in a vacuum, but interact with other cultural norms and expectations. With this understanding of culture in mind, interpreters might expect to find texts expressing complex and even conflicting values.

Instead of seeing culture as a coherent force scripting human action, individuals may be understood to function with what Ann Swidler calls a “cultural repertoire” (Swidler: 24). Cultures provide an array of social roles, values, and ways of making meaning, which actors employ, depending on the resources and power available to them. As they utilize cultural roles in new situations, actors may employ practices associated with one role in new arenas. For example, scholars have long studied the relationship between voluntary associations, synagogues, and churches. Familiar titles and roles in civic and voluntary associations migrated into other realms like the synagogue and the church (Barclay: 113–127; Harland 2003: chap. 7; 2007: 57–79; Kloppenborg: 212–238; Richardson: 90–109). In a similar fashion, scholars have looked for roles available to women with authority or status, through which they may have exercised power in the church (Osiek 2008: 173–92; Osiek & MacDonald: 144–219). Viewed as part of a cultural repertoire, women who inhabited such roles did not step outside of culture, evading norms of women's modesty. Instead, they applied the norms regarding modesty in combination with other culturally available roles and norms.

This more complex view of the cultural norms for women's behavior points to a new way of understanding the varieties in the evidence for women's participation in early Christian communities. The different roles that women play in antiquity do not define the boundaries between communities with different gender ideologies. Instead, the possibility for different roles and leadership by women exists within and across various subgroups in the Greco-Roman world.

The Ideal of the Virtuous Woman

In the Greco-Roman world the ideal woman was modest, industrious, and loyal to her family. Funerary monuments provide some of the clearest expressions of the standards, because they praise the deceased for having fulfilled the ideal: e.g., “Here lies Amymome, wife of Marcus, best and most beautiful, worker in wool, pious, chaste, thrifty, faithful, a stayer-at-home” (ILS 8402, translated by Lefkowitz & Fant: 17). Similarly, Murdia's son praises her “because in modesty, moral integrity, chastity, obedience, wool-working, diligence, and loyalty she was equal and similar to other excellent women, nor did she yield to any woman in virtue, hard work, or wisdom” (CIL 6.10230 [ILS 8394], translated by Shelton: 291). The vocabulary may change slightly. Although they are not synonyms, both fides and pietas connote familial loyalty. Either modestia or pudicitia could embody female modesty. The same constellation of qualities appears again and again in inscriptions and literary sources and suggests a consistent set of standards for women's behavior (Cohick: 67–71; Treggiari: 243–49).

Sometimes the ideals of modesty, industry, and loyalty coincide very smoothly. One example of this is the attribute, “worker in wool,” which appears in both inscriptions cited above as well as many others. So well did wool working encapsulate female virtue that Suetonius insists that the women of Augustus's family made his clothing (Suetonius, Augustus, 73). While the extent of their labor is likely exaggerated, his assertion points to the potency of this image of female virtue. One reason the wool worker may have been so iconic is that it neatly embodies the norms of loyalty, industry, and modesty. Production of clothing was a laborious and multi-stage process that directly benefitted the woman's family. While in practice many of the steps involved may have been performed with other people or in a courtyard space between lower income houses, wool working was imagined as something done at home. Thus, the description, “worker in wool” encapsulates the ideal female virtues. Its frequency underscores how important these norms were in Roman culture.

The smooth combination of gendered virtues is seen elsewhere in the culture as well. For example, the expectation that women should be virgins when married combines the ideal of modesty with that of loyalty to her family—both to her father's household and to that of her future husband. Likewise, the Roman ideal of the univira, a woman married only once, suggests both modesty and loyalty to family (CIL 5.7763; 6.3604; 6.13299; 6.13303; 6.25392; 6.31711; Catullus 111; Propertius 4.11.36; Plutarch Tib. Gr. 1.7). In this case, the loyalty involves sexual fidelity to the husband as well as pursuit of the interests of the husband's children, for remarriage had the potential to divide a woman's loyalty. These are powerful social norms that often suggest a cohesive worldview that confined women to a restricted set of roles.

There are a great many instances, however, in which the ideals of modesty, industry, and loyalty interact in surprising ways. As I discuss below, a woman's loyalty to her family often required her active involvement in arenas defined as masculine. Likewise, industrious women entered into commerce and politics, pursuing wealth and honor for themselves and their families. In light of sources that confine women's duties to the home, modern readers often see this behavior as striking. Yet most of the ancient sources give no indication that these actions were unusual or untoward. Quite a few of the sources attribute domestic virtues like modesty to these active women. Thus, modesty does not disappear as a requisite virtue in such situations; yet neither does it circumscribe the boundaries of women's activities. Instead, “modest” women take on roles and exert authority in ways that may seem surprising to modern readers. These women are not stepping outside of existing social norms, but inhabiting them in a variety of ways.

Here I flesh out the interplay between modesty, industry, and loyalty with respect to women's wealth and patronage. I draw on the diverse and disparate evidence for women's lives, focusing on the first and second centuries. Egyptian papyri, inscriptions from the west and east, and literary texts give different glimpses of women's lives, viewed, as it were, from different angles. The particularities of women's lives likely varied a great deal from place to place. Even so, the evidence tends to reinforce a common set of norms for women's behavior coupled with considerable variety in the ways the norms are embodied by actual women. I hope to show a social pattern in which women who exhibited traditional domestic virtues also played influential roles within their families and communities. I am not arguing that women were free to do whatever they pleased. Instead, I assert that conformity to social norms for womanly virtue left open a range of possibilities for women's behavior, many of which included active leadership roles within the household, civic groups, and in the city itself.

Women's Wealth

Women of the Imperial period owned a good deal of property and made decisions regarding its use. Richard Saller (97) estimates that women controlled one-fifth to one-third of property in the Roman Empire. Elite women often owned large country estates and property in the cities as well. For example, Terentia sells property during her husband, Cicero's exile, a fact he laments (Fam. 8.5). Both Pliny the Elder (Nat. 117) and Tacitus (Ann. 12.22) mention the immense wealth of Lollia Paulina. Pliny the Younger writes of the many country estates of his mother-in-law, Pompeia Celerina (Ep. 1.4; 3.9; 6.10). His description of Ummidia Quadratilla (Ep. 7.24) and inscriptions in her town (CIL 10.5813) attest her wealth and status. None of these sources tries to explain or excuse the wealth of such women. Women controlling property was a part of everyday life in the Roman world.

Non-elite women also controlled property, albeit on a lesser scale. Papyri record women of lesser means establishing wills, and buying, selling, and renting land and livestock (e.g., P.Lips 29; P.Princ. 2.38; SB 8.9642(I); P.Diog. 11–12; P.Mich. 3.221; P.Oxy. 33.2680; P.Hamb. 1.86; P.Fay 127; P.Col. 8.212; P.Mich. 8.464; P.Oxy. 14.1758; P.Ryl. 2.243). Women also inherited, bought, sold, and freed slaves (e.g., P.Oxy. 50.3555; 34.2713; P.Coll. Youtie 2.67; P.Oxy. Hels. 26; P.Diog. 11–12; Stud.Pal. 22.40). Women appear less frequently than men in the papyri, but they are engaged in many of the same activities.

Wealth, however, was never simply a personal affair over which women (or men, for that matter) made autonomous decisions. Wealth was a household or familial matter. Not surprisingly, women's actions to preserve and extend their wealth are shaped and framed by expectations of loyalty to family. The funeral inscription to Murdia, cited above, also praises her for her bequests to family (CIL 6.10230 [ILS 8394]). Women inherited wealth from their husbands with the shared expectation that they steward that wealth and pass it on to their children (e.g., Cicero, Caecin. 11–12). The social expectation of loyalty to one's family did not eliminate women's control over their property but influenced the kinds of decisions they were likely to make with the resources at their disposal.

Certainly there were avenues for men to exercise influence over women's decisions with their property. Both sons and daughters were under the authority (potestas) of their father until his death. At that time, they became sui iuris, although women still needed the consent of a guardian in order to sell property defined by law as res mancipi: slaves, certain types of livestock, and land within Italy. The practice was meant to safeguard the woman's property for the sake of her heirs, who were members of her father's family. Yet the role of the guardian was limited. A woman who was sui iuris needed the guardian's consent if she wanted to form a dowry, but she did not need permission to marry or to choose a husband. The guardian never owned the woman's property, and had no influence over property that was not res mancipi. By the first century changes in the practice made it unlikely that a guardian could interfere in a freeborn woman's affairs (Gaius, Inst. 1.190–192; 2.1.29. See Evans Grubbs: 23–37). Although the formal role of the guardian diminished over time, the expectation that women would use wealth for the good of the family remained.

Although men could influence a woman's use of her property for the sake of the family, women also exercised daily influence over their husband's affairs through their oversight of household production (e.g., P.Mert. 2.63; P.Brem. 63; P. Giss. 68; BGU 2.601–602; SB 5.7572, 5.7737, 6.9026,; P.Oxy. 6.932, 33.2680, 59.3991). Managing the household was a job that varied depending on the social status of the family, but in any case involved the woman directly in making decisions about the use of household resources for the good of the household. In the ancient world, the household was the primary site of production of food and clothing. Although cloth and other food items could be purchased in the cities, women still performed many of the tasks required to make clothing and meals, or supervised the slaves who did so. Cicero's letters to Terentia show his reliance on her to carry out affairs in his absence (Cicero, Fam. 119, 144–45, 158). Papyri show similar patterns among non-elite women. For example, Thermouthis writes to her husband, Nemesion, to inform him of business transacted in his absence (SB 14.11585). I do not mean to suggest that control of property was a two-way street. Men had legal rights that women did not (e.g., Ulpian, Dig. 50.16.195.2, 50.17.2; Gaius, Inst. 1.144). Yet women had both formal and informal control over property, and used both to marshal resources for the benefit of the household.

Yet even as they assert control over resources, women are portrayed by their families and also portray themselves according to traditional virtues. For example, in a number of funerary monuments in the west, women of average means are depicted as domestic matrons. A world that required these women's active participation in producing wealth for their families nevertheless honored them by depicting them as static, and located within the household (Kampen: 97, 105–06, 130–36).

Similarly, in a few of the Egyptian papyri we see women claiming “womanly weakness” at the same time they pursue their own economic and political interests. For example, Demetria initiates legal action yet writes that “being unable to attend the court by reason of womanly frailty, she has appointed her aforesaid grandson Chairemon as her legal representative before every authority and every court, with the same powers as she, Demetria, who has appointed him, would have had if present” (P.Oxy. 2.261, translated by Rowlandson: 179; cf. P.Oxy. 1.3335. The weakness of women—in this case, expressed as “womanly frailty”—is a widespread cultural assumption that can be evoked as explanation or excuse; yet it does not deter women from pursuing legal action.

The ability of women to act and yet to assert their modesty or weakness at the same time appears to be woven into the fabric of Greco-Roman culture. The tone of many of these writings suggests that women's ownership of property and pursuit of their interests is normal and expected. The pattern that emerges is one in which claims of women's weakness exist side by side with assertions of agency and authority.

Women Patrons

A similar pattern emerges in relation to patronage. Ownership had social and political consequences in the Roman social system, although the consequences were different depending on one's social status. Elite women took on leadership roles in their communities (Dixon: 91–121; Lefkowitz & Fant: 158–61; van Bremen). They donated buildings and monuments and gave bequests to relatives, clients, and cities. They served in ceremonial capacities that symbolized the importance of their generosity. And while inscriptions show fewer titles available to women than to men, nevertheless women bore many of the same titles men did: stephanephoros, demiourgos, etc. (van Bremen: 59–80).

As patrons and donors, women gained honor for their families and provided concrete benefits to their cities. In the classic honor/shame model articulated by Bruce Malina and others, women accrued honor only through their purity or by bearing children (e.g., Malina: 51–2; Moxnes: 21–2). But Zeba Crook (592–609) has shown that women participated alongside men in the “public court of reputation.” The archaeological evidence of women's patronage, along with praise of women's public works in inscriptions and literary works, points to a social world in which women sought honor alongside men (cf. Osiek 2005:212).

Such benefaction was not limited to elite women, and there is evidence at many levels of society that women gave gifts to communities or local organizations, made bequests, loaned money, owned and freed slaves, and thus acted as patrons in many of the same ways men did. On a smaller scale, women donated or renovated buildings in support of professional guilds and religious groups (CIL 10.810, 813 [ILS 3785, 6368]; CIJ 741; Cohick: 294–296; Dixon: 107). Women also made loans and supported individual clients in business and social life (Cicero Att. 12.21.5; 12.51.3; Clu. 178; Pliny the Younger, Ep. 3.19; AE 1982, 68 10; Pleket 14).

Women were also patrons of religious organizations and voluntary associations. They donated buildings and mosaics, and they are identified with titles like “priest,” “elder,” and “mother” (Brooten: chap. 5; van Bremen: Appendix 2). As Philip Harland has argued, “although the titles were conferred as a way of honoring an influential person, in almost all cases the person so honored also clearly served some functioning role in the cults or institutions of the cities which honored them” (Harland 2007: 68). The titles of patrons confer honor on that person, but they also reflect the status and influence that person has accrued within the group.

Service as a patron was again not simply an individual act but was also a way of extending the family's influence. As Riet van Bremen argues (96), “the language of the inscriptions themselves, and also their monumental display within the cities emphasized the importance of dynastic continuity (both in the paternal and maternal line) and the coherence of the family.” Inscriptions praising patrons often attribute honor to the whole family by situating the gift within a pattern of familial giving (van Bremen: 71, 91, 102). Women's civic donations are evidence of active leadership. Yet their decisions were surely shaped by the fact that the social capital accumulated through such gifts accrued, not just to themselves, but also to their families.

As they give such gifts, women are again praised for modesty and domestic virtues. Junia Theodora, commemorated in five inscriptions for her political patronage of the Lycian people, is described as “living modestly” (Kearsley: 204–05; Pallas, Charitonidis, & Vénencie: 498). Claudia Metrodora, who twice served as stephanephoros, the highest magistracy of her city (Chiot) and who donated a public bath complex, is “virtuous and of noble character” (Kearsley: 208–09). The use of this vocabulary is commonly found in inscriptions describing women. Men tend to be praised with words that connote public service, and women with language like this that evokes domestic virtues. R. A. Kearsley writes that sōphōn (modesty or chastity) “is most often found in grave epitaphs of females in a specifically domestic context to describe a woman who had performed her familial responsibilities to husband and children impeccably” (Kearsley: 197). Similarly, van Bremen (103) notes the different vocabulary used to praise Motoxaris and her brother. Although she held more civic offices and provided monuments, he is praised “for his prostasia: leadership, authority … she for the impeccability of her character and manners.” The attribution of domestic virtues in such cases should not be read as an indication that these women never left their homes. Instead, the inscriptions attribute honor to women patrons by describing them as virtuous.

To summarize: the evidence that women pursued wealth and acted as patrons suggests a more complex picture of the socially acceptable roles played by women. The ideal woman was modest; yet that modesty inhabited a variety of forms. Modest women engaged in business and other public roles, especially when those actions were perceived to benefit their families or cities. In taking on such active roles, women did not transgress social norms, but embodied them in ways deemed acceptable by their culture.

Two additional aspects of this social pattern are directly related to the interpretation of Christian texts. First, the tension created by the gendered virtues (modesty, loyalty, and industry) can be found within a single source or author. Plutarch, for example, lauds the submission of women to men (Conj. Praec. 6, 9,14, 32). Yet he also recommends his wife's work as an author (Conj. Praec. 48), dedicates his own work to a female friend (Mulierum Virt. 1; Is. Os. 1), and praises examples of women's military and political leadership (Mulierum Virt.). Likewise, Philo frequently reproduces common gender stereotypes in his writings (e.g., Sacr. 21, 26; Spec. 3.169). Yet he also approves of women living the philosophical life in parallel with men (Contempl. 32–33, 69–71, 83–90; see D'Angelo: 63–88; J. E. Taylor 2003; J. E. Taylor 2004: 110). Such sources reinforce the idea that interpreters may find contradictory approaches to women within individuals or communities.

Second, the pattern includes elements that appear to modern readers as explicit contradictions. For example, Turia's husband praises her in an inscription for traditional female virtues:

Why should I mention your personal virtues—your modesty, obedience, affability, and good nature, your tireless attention to wool-working, your performance of religious duties without superstitious fear, your artless elegance and simplicity of dress … your affection toward your relatives, your sense of duty toward your family….

Yet it is clear that Turia has not fulfilled these virtues by sitting passively at home. Her husband goes on to recount how she avenged her parents' death, supported female relatives with her own money, and assisted her husband in political difficulty:

When you threw yourself on the ground at [Lepidus's] feet, not only did he not raise you up, but in fact he grabbed you and dragged you along as if you were a slave. You were covered with bruises, but with unflinching determination you reminded him of Augustus Caesar's edict of pardon…. Although you suffered insults and cruel injuries, you revealed them publicly in order to expose him as the author of my calamities [CIL 6.1527, 31670 (ILS 8393), translated by Shelton: 292].

Turia fulfills the female virtues in part through her determined action.

Similarly, there are contradictions between legal materials and evidence of practice. For example, the jurists tell us that potestas, the control of the pater familias over lesser members of the household is, by definition, a male capacity, because women did not have potestas over their children (Ulpian, Dig. 50.16.195.2). Yet as Richard Saller and others have argued, the term pater familias referred generally to property owners and slave owners, and as such included women as well as men (Saller: 185–90; Gardner: 377). In another example, the jurist Ulpian states that women do not serve as magistrates (Dig. 50.17.2). Yet as I discussed above, inscriptions assign women the titles of magistrates. This strange variety seems to be a regular feature of Roman life: the “rules” do not always align neatly with the evidence of practice. There are explicit prohibitions of women's participation in certain activities or roles, along with evidence that women not only did these things, but did them with approval.

My intention is not to resolve this contradiction, but to note its regular appearance. The pattern suggests a deep tension within Roman culture. It is not that some women could be civic and familial leaders, but not others, or that women in some groups could, but not in others. Instead, Roman women both could and could not be leaders of households and communities. Modesty and the assumed superiority of men demanded that they not do these things. At the same time, the pursuit of other gendered virtues demanded that they do so.

Conclusion

Assertions of agency and leadership by women are part of the cultural milieu of the first and second centuries. Ancient women were shaped by cultural expectations of passivity and subordination to men. Yet women who demonstrate leadership or agency were not operating outside of culture, or with a different set of rules. The agency of individual women appears normal rather than exceptional in the sources cited above. Women regularly appear across the varied kinds of evidence as people who assert social influence and control over resources for the good of their families and cities. Women are not named to formal leadership roles as often as men; neither are they free to act in any way they please. But their actions taken for the good of the family or community are expected.

Conflicting and even (to us) contradictory norms for women's behavior occur in much of the evidence available. Cultural norms for women's modesty do not disappear when there is evidence of women's agency, nor does women's leadership vanish when norms of modesty are extolled. Instead, the presence of women leaders in Greco-Roman society appears to be normal even in groups whose stated principles exclude or limit women's participation. Women affirm the weakness of females as a general principle even as they seek their own self-interest. These tensions are present within single documents, individual authors, and in subgroups of Greco-Roman culture. Because of this, it seems unwise to use the contradicting norms as principles by which to demarcate groups of people with diverging views.

Like the culture at large, early Christian texts also exhibit conflicting signals about women. Although a full interpretation of any of these texts lies outside the scope of this article, scholars have long noticed the strange disparities within Christian texts regarding the roles of women. For example, 1 Timothy demands women's silence and modesty (2:9–15) and shows concern that young widows will be idle rather than industrious (5:13). Yet women also serve this community in official capacities as widows (5:9). And although a few interpreters argue that 1 Timothy 3:11 indicates only “wives of deacons,” the consensus view is that the verse lays out the qualifications of women who are deacons (Collins: 91–92; Krause: 69; Witherington: 241). Similarly, Thecla is characterized as a modest virgin who stays inside her mother's home (ATh 7). To many interpreters, her pursuit of Paul (23, 40) suggests her subordination to his authority. Yet she also baptizes herself (34) and is sent by Paul to teach the gospel (41). The two works are by no means identical, but they share a pattern that is familiar from other ancient texts in which women are both denied and assert authority.

Instead of assigning texts like these to different factions with radically different views, it may make more sense to view the contradictions in the Christian texts as evidence of the negotiation of complex and often conflicting cultural dispositions. Among these dispositions are gender norms and expectations, marital status, and various social roles like patron, host, deacon, and widow. Different individuals and groups negotiate the tensions in different ways, so that the forms of women's leadership may differ even within one locale. Yet none of the differences seem to represent a group that has stepped outside of the shared cultural framework. Texts in which women appear as remarkable leaders still embrace their theoretical subordination to men. Texts asserting women's subordination also expect their service as leaders. The pattern reflects the church's participation in wider cultural norms that simultaneously encouraged and limited women's public leadership.

The task of this article has been to complicate the picture of ancient women in a way that may help readers to reflect differently on these texts and the questions they raise. If culture does not operate with “rules” and “exceptions,” interpreters may start with a different set of assumptions as they approach these texts. We might not be surprised that women served in leadership roles even in communities that extol their silence, and we might expect women's roles to be limited even in communities that praise their exemplary leadership. Different questions about these texts might then result. For example, what might it have looked like for women in 1 Timothy's community to fulfill norms of modesty while serving as deacons and widows? Given the cultural expectations for women's patronage, does Thecla represent a radical departure from the cultural norms? What are the dispositions of culture that Thecla and 1 Timothy share? Similar questions could be formulated for many of the texts we have used to assess the participation of women in the early church. Regardless of the answers to such questions, I hope that readers may begin to imagine ancient Christians as participants in a complex system of social norms that both limited and assumed women's influence in the public sphere.

References

Barclay

John M.G.

2006. “Money and Meetings: Group Formation among Diaspora Jews and Early Christians.” pp. 113–27 in Vereine, Synagogen und Gemeinden im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien, edited by Gutsfeld

Koch

D.-A.

. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.

Bourdieu

Pierre

. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Nice

, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Brooten

Bernadette J.

1982. Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. Chico, CA: Scholars Press.

Burrus

Virginia

. 1987. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

Cohick

Lynn H.

2009. Women in the World of the Earliest Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Collins

Raymond F.

2002. 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: A Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Crook

Zeba

. 2009. “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited.” Journal of Biblical Literature 128: 591–611.

D'Angelo

Mary Rose

. 2007. “Gender and Geopolitics in the Word of Philo of Alexandria: Jewish Piety and Imperial Family Values.” pp. 63–88 in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourse, edited by Penner

Vander Stichele

. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Davies

Stevan L.

1980. The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

10.

de Certeau

Michel

. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Rendall

. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

11.

Dixon

Suzanne

. 1983. “A Family Business: Women's Role in Patronage and Politics at Rome 80-44 B.C.” Classica et Mediaevalia 34: 91–112.

12.

Dixon

Suzanne

. 2001. Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres and Real Life. London, UK: Duckworth.

13.

Evans Grubbs

Judith

. 2002. Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood. London, UK: Routledge.

14.

Gardner

Jane F.

1995. “Gender-Role Assumptions in Roman Law.” Echos du Monde Classique 39: 377–400.

15.

Geertz

Clifford

. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books.

16.

Hallett

Judith P.

1984. Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

17.

Harland

Philip A.

2007. “Familial Dimension of Group Identity II: ‘Mothers’ and ‘Fathers’ in Associations and Synagogues of the Greek World.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38: 57–79.

18.

2003. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

19.

Hillard

Tom

. 1992. “On the Stage, Behind the Curtain: Images of Politically Active Women in the Late Roman Republic.” pp. 37–64 in Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views, edited by Garlick

Dixon

Allen

. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.

20.

Kampen

Natalie Boymel

. 1981. Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia. Berlin, Germany: Gebr. Mann Verlag.

21.

Kearsley

Rosalinde A.

1999. “Women in Public Life in the Roman East: Iunia Theodora, Claudia Metrodora and Phoebe, Benefactress of Paul.” Tyndale Bulletin 50: 189–211.

22.

Kloppenborg

John S.

1993. “Edwin Hatch, Churches and Collegia.” pp. 212–38 in Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Christianity and Judaism, edited by McLean

B. H.

. JSNTSupp 86. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.

23.

Kraemer

Ross Shepard

. 2011. Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

24.

1992. Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

25.

Krause

Deborah

. 2004. I Timothy. London, UK: T&T Clark.

26.

Lefkowitz

Mary R.

Fant

Maureen B.

1992. Women's Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

27.

MacDonald

Dennis Ronald

. 1983. The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press.

28.

MacMullen

Ramsay

. 1980. “Woman in Public in the Roman Empire.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 29/2: 208–18.

29.

Malina

Bruce J.

1981. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. Atlanta, GA: John Knox.

30.

Misset-van de Weg

Magda

. 2001. “Magic, Miracle, and Miracle Workers in the Acts of Thecla.” pp. 29–52 in Women and Miracle Stories, edited by Korte

A.-M.

. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

31.

Moxnes

Halvor

. 1996. “Honor and Shame.” pp. 19–40 in The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation, edited by Rohrbaugh

Richard L.

. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

32.

Nolan

2000. “Narrative as a Strategic Resource for Resistance: Reading the Acts of Thecla for Its Political Purposes.” pp. 225–42 in Narrativity in Biblical and Related Texts, edited by Brooke

G. J.

Kaestli

J.-D.

. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.

33.

Osiek

Carolyn

. 2008. “The Patronage of Women in Early Christianity.” pp. 173–92 in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature, edited by Levine

A.-J.

. New York, NY: T & T Clark.

34.

2005. “Family Matters.” pp. 201–20 in Christian Origins, edited by Horsley

Richard A.

. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.

35.

Osiek

Carolyn

MacDonald

Margaret Y.

. 2006. A Woman's Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

36.

Pallas

Demetrios I.

Charitonidis

Séraphin

Vénencie

Jacques

. 1959. “Inscriptions lyciennes trouvées à Solômos près de Corinthe.” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 83: 496–508.

37.

Richardson

Peter

. 1996. “Early Synagogues as Collegia in the Disapora and Palestine.” pp. 90–109 in Voluntary Associations in the Greco-Roman World, edited by Kloppenborg

J. S.

Wilson

S. G.

. London, UK: Routledge.

38.

Rowlandson

Jane

, ed. 1998. Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

39.

Saller

Richard P.

1999. “Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household.” Classical Philology 94/2: 182–97.

40.

Saller

Richard P.

2007. “Household and Gender.” pp. 87–112 in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, edited by Scheidel

Morris

Saller

. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

41.

Schüssler Fiorenza

Elisabeth

. 1988. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York, NY: Crossroad.

42.

Shelton

Jo-Ann

. 1998. As the Romans Did. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

43.

Swidler

Ann

. 2001. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

44.

Tamez

Elsa

. 2007. Struggles for Power in Early Christianity: A Study of the First Letter to Timothy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

45.

Tanner

Kathryn

. 1997. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Guides to Theological Inquiry. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

46.

Taylor

Charles

. 1993. “To Follow a Rule …” pp. 45–60 in Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, edited by Calhoun

LiPuma

Postone

. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

47.

Taylor

Joan E.

2004. “The Women “Priests” of Philo's De Vita Contemplativa: Reconstructing the Therapeutae.” pp. 102–22 in On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds, edited by Schaeberg

Bach

Fuchs

. New York, NY: Continuum.

48.

2003. Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's “Therapeutae” Reconsidered. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

49.

Treggiari

Susan

. 1991. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

50.

van Bremen

Riet

. 1996. The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: J. C. Gieben.

51.

Vorster

Johannes N.

2006. “Construction of Culture through the Construction of Person: The Construction of Thecla in the Acts of Thecla.” pp. 98–117 in A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha, edited by Levine

A.-J.

. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.

52.

Witherington

Ben

. 2006. Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John Vol. 1. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.