Animus Classics Journal: Vol. 1, Issue 1

since in modesty, propriety, chastity, obedience, woolworking, industry, and
loyalty she was on an equal level with other good women.” 8 Wool-working
was not just Murdia’s task, it was a virtue like chastity or modesty, befitting
a proper Roman woman. Another epitaph has similar connotations: “Here
lies Amymome, wife of Marcus, best and most beautiful, worker in wool,
pious, chaste, thrifty, faithful, a stayer-at-home (domiseda).” 9 As we will
see, being a domiseda also denoted virtuosity, and the proper activity of a
domiseda was lanificium. Even just in the day-to-day of Roman life, spinning
and lanificium signified these ideal feminine virtues and values.
These associations meant that lanificium played an important role
in Roman public rituals and public spaces. A Roman bride wove her own
wedding outfit on an old-fashioned loom, and she, or an attendant, carried
a distaff and spindle in the procession to the groom’s house, which was
decorated with wool. These rituals symbolized that she could weave for and
manage her new household, and contribute her textile work to its economy .10
And Roman looms were, “following ancient custom, … in the atrium,” 11
Just as Livy’s Lucretia spins “in the hall of her house.” 12 We even have
archaeological evidence: Pompeiian atria were for activities like cooking as
well as formal reception, and about 50 loom-weights (which could be from
one loom) have been found in the atrium of the “House of the Weaver.” 13
Although this is not certain evidence, it suggests that weaving was a public
activity in Roman houses; the virtue of a household’s women was always on
display for visitors or onlookers to investigate.
But as slaves or craftspeople began to work wool more often
than aristocratic women, lanificium became seen as an ancient virtue that
Romans were abandoning. Augustus used this perception; Suetonius says
that “in bringing up his daughter and his granddaughters he even had them
taught spinning and weaving,” and he wore the clothes his family made. 14
The “even” suggests that this was not a common lesson for aristocratic
women, so his home-made clothes symbolized a return to the simplicity of
ancient Rome; whether his clothes actually were made by Julia and Octavia
is less important than that he said they were. In the first century CE,
Columella bemoaned that “most women so abandon themselves to luxury
and idleness that they do not deign to undertake even the superintendence of
wool-making and there is a distaste for home-made garments and their perverse
desire can only be satisfied by clothing purchased for large sums.” 15
He laments women’s loss of virtue in each of the ways we have seen
spinning represent: they are idle and go out of their homes to buy outfits,
instead of being industrious, thrifty domisedae and lanipendae. He even
connects the lack of wool-working with the aristocratic loss of interest (of
men and women) in directly managing farms, necessitating intermediaries
like the bailiff and his wife and separating Romans from the land. 16 Losing