Threads of Female Dependency in Ancient Rome

Giulia Cappucci
BCDSS PhD Researcher 

A small Latin epitaph commemorates Phryne. She was an enslaved woman from North Africa who worked as a spinner in the household of a slave owner in early Imperial Rome. Despite its brevity, this simple text is not only the only source that sheds light on Phryne’s short life, but it also allows us to examine the female-connoted activities of spinning and weaving in Imperial Rome and their cultural meanings from the perspective of outsiders to Roman society to explore: a young enslaved woman. 

Fig. 1: Drawing of a marble plaque with the epitaph of Phryne, an enslaved woman and a spinner (quasillaria), belonging to Tertulla, a female slave owner (drawing: A. Schüssler, 2024 after original: AE 1928, 9. I-III century CE. From Rome (?), unknown findspot. Current location: Rome, via Masina 5, American Academy in Rome, courtyard, bay 18, inv. no. 9347).

The small marble plaque with the epitaph (fig. 1) must come from one of the collective funerary monuments (columbaria) that characterized the city of Rome in the early Empire (1st to early 3rd century CE). There, the lower classes, including enslaved people and freedmen and -women, found a burial space for themselves and their relatives, using especially cinerary urns. Despite the unknown findspot of the plaque, this provenance can be easily assumed based on the features of the slab, which framed a niche intended for a cinerary vessel.  

Fig. 3a: Detail: Spinning women (photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, n. d.).

In the Roman world, as in many ancient cultures, spinning and weaving were considered feminine activities par excellence (fig. 2 – 4). In Roman patriarchal society, which was also characterized by slavery, cloth production, and especially wool processing, was part of the model of the ideal Roman woman and wife. She was obedient, honest, chaste, loyal to her husband, and diligently ran her house, working at the loom to make clothes for the entire household. Therefore, spinning and weaving became activities that expressed female domestic virtues. 

Fig. 4: Memorial slab, D-DAI-ROM-82VW.743 (photo: G. Fittschen, n. d.) 

However, in the early Empire (1st to early 3rd century CE), the largest and wealthiest households hardly relied on the wool work of their wives to meet their clothing needs. Large-scale textile production with specialized workshops had already developed over the centuries of the Republic. It provided the freeborn members of wealthy households with high-quality textiles and clothing. At the same time, enslaved and freed cloth-workers in the same households made garments for staff members. The enslaved Phryne was one of these domestic textile manufacturers. 

We only know Phryne thanks to her epitaph, which states that she was enslaved and served another woman, Tertulla. The text reveals that Phryne died at the age of 17, likely in imperial Rome, after being taken there from the Roman territories in North Africa. The epitaph also emphasizes the girl’s occupation in Tertulla’s household: Phryne was a quasillaria, a spinner who spun wool with a distaff. This activity, which always remained exclusively female, required no special training or skills. Domestic workers with other occupations could also carry out spinning wool in their free time without much effort. For these reasons, quasillariae like Phryne were among the less valued household professionals and had few opportunities to improve their conditions or obtain release. 

Despite Phryne’s low professional position in the household hierarchy, she was commemorated in an epitaph, and either Phryne or one of her relatives or friends decided to mention also her job title in the text. This detail shows that being a quasillaria may have been a central aspect of Phryne’s identity, which she asserted despite her status as a disadvantaged woman depersonalized by enslavement. After she died, the gravestone remembered her profession because it seemed to be as much a part of her identity as her young age and geographical origin. 

---

Further Reading

Günther R., 1987. Frauenarbeit – Frauenbindung. Untersuchungen zu unfreien und freigelassenen Frauen in den stadtrömischen Inschriften, München 1987 (especially pp. 109-124). 

Larsson Lovén L., 1998. Lanam fecit. Woolworking and female virtue, in Larsson Lovén L., Strömberg A. (eds.), Aspects of women in antiquity. Proceedings of the first Nordic Symposium on Women’s Lives in Antiquity, Göteborg 12 – 15 June 1997, Jonsered 1998, pp. 85-95. 

Larsson Lovén L., 2013. Female Work and Identity in roman Textile production and Trade: a Methodological discussion, in Gleba M., Pásztókai-Szeőke J. (eds.) Making textiles in pre-Roman and Roman times. People, places, identities, Oxford 2013, pp. 109-125. 

Vicari F., 2001. Produzione e commercio di tessuti nell’Occidente romano, Oxford 2001.