OUP (2018) h/b 378pp £95 (ISBN 9780198829348)
The opening remarks in the preface , ‘I did not mean to write this book’ and on the following page ‘ I only intended to produce a lecture’ set up an explanation of her reasons for writing a biography of an aristocratic woman. Her aim is ‘to see what we may know about Servilia, in the context of her family and times’. With an acknowledgement of the influence of Syme in her preface, T. embarks upon a prosopographical study of Servilia’s family, but only after a survey of ‘Servilia’s world’ that has both the general reader in mind and offers those more familiar with republican Rome references to ancient and modern authorities by way of footnote. Indeed, the narrative throughout is supported by a rich layer of footnotes until the concluding pages. The paucity of evidence is highlighted by the comparison of her undertaking with a jig-saw puzzle that is missing pieces and the regular appearance of such phraseology as ‘presumably’, ‘must have been’, and similar expressions. There are also candid, even whimsical moments, as when T. muses, ‘I like to imagine the surviving friends of Brutus such as Messalla and even the freedman’s son Horace, paying their respects to Servilia in the 30s.’ Even one of Messalla’s foibles receives a mention, ‘He shared with Brutus the affectation of writing simus for sumus.’
Much of the book is a complex investigation of the social fabric of Rome in the late republic. Half-sister of Cato, mother of Brutus, sometime mistress of Caesar, Servilia could hardly avoid rubbing shoulders with the political elite; Syme thought her ‘a political force’. But T. wants to investigate how and how far Servilia had any political influence. Discounting potentia, T. sees auctoritas as the key to a woman’s influence in her social and family life and thus in politics only indirectly, through, as T. puts it, ‘lasting social clout’. There are exceptions. Drawing on a range of examples from the extraordinary intervention of the Sabine Women or the famous intercession of Veturia and Volumnia to the astonishing activities of Fulvia, wife of Antony, T. gives an overview of women’s engagement in civil/military affairs, but such is not Servilia’s style.
There are six appendices, the last of which is a look at Servilia in modern English novels. This final contribution, along with the concluding chapter, may come as a relief for the general reader after negotiating the labyrinth of prosopography that forms the kernel of the book. It also highlights the difficulty for scholars who are restricted by the paucity of evidence and do not have the liberty to create a full ‘portrait of a lady’.
Alan Beale