User:Texasroadhouser/Fannia

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First evaluation: Fannia strikes me as a figure who tests the boundaries of Roman gender customs and, in general, norms. As I see it, the nature of the text is relevant to who Fannia was, yet the sources are too few to create a substantive portrait of this person, and relies very heavily on what appears to be summarized sections of such texts (after multiples sentences, and even paragraphs, the author cites only a single source). Although neutral in tone, the general tone of this piece is not one of scholarship but of general interest. While this is what is asked of contributors by Wiki and their users, it too often extrapolates and speculates from these general, outdated, and limited sources, leaving out a lot of nuance and modern modes of thinking. Yet, while the execution was not up to par with Wiki standards, the intent, I believe, goes in hand with that of Wiki, in that it attempts to divulge the life of a marginalized individual, who is purported to have been a vestal virgin, a group that I know mostly by name, not the demographics of the group's members.

For my part, I would like to input a compendium of sources from which we get insight about this person. Primary sources, that is. Moreover, I would like to see some context vis-a-vis a few concepts, viz. what it means to have been a Vestal Virgin, a plebian women in marriage (what kind?), and what was her relationship to Pliny the Younger, who mentions her as the article suggests.

References

For the family, see Fannia gens. For the fly genus, see Fannia (fly).

Fannia (fl. around 100 AD) was a woman of Ancient Rome, notable as the granddaughter of Arria Major.

Life

Fannia comes down to us predominantly from the writings of Pliny the Younger, whom he characterizes as a woman of integrity and respectability. He writes in his "Letters," Quae castitas illi, quae sanctitas, quanta gravitas quanta constantia!: "What moral purity and integrity that woman has, and how much venerability and steadfastness." Partly modeled by Pliny on her own grandmother, Arria the Elder, Fannia is described as a political rebel in her own right. In one case, she was relegata (relegated) for commissioning and absconding with, in 93 AD, a biographical book, about her husband under the rule of Domitian. By this, and undergoing other exiles, Pliny fashions her as a paragon of the Roman wife:

The qualities emphasized by Pliny are overwhelmingly masculine traits – for example, gravitas, sanctitas, and constantia – perhaps because those were virtues most easily understood and cultivated by Roman men or perhaps because those were the virtues that reflected the most glory on the men associated with women who bore them.

To be more clear, Helvidius I was relegated, religatum, once by Nero, perhaps for his Stoic proclivities or contentious relationships with the emperor and other senators, though it is still unclear, then by Vespasian, perhaps due to his steadfast sympathy for Thrasea Paetus, husband of Arria the Younger, whose biography was being written by Junius Rusticus Arulenus, tribune (66), praetor (69), and consul in 92.

The execution of Herennius Senecio for his own involvement gives us insight into this "mild" sentence of hers. During the trial of Senecio, he blamed the book on Fannia as she had asked him to write it, a statement that Fannia confirmed. She was asked if, and confirmed that, she had given Senecio her husband's diaries. Pliny writes that: "she did not utter a single word to reduce the danger to herself." When her possessions were seized, Fannia managed to save the diaries and biography of her husband and even took them with her into exile.

In 103 AD, Pliny recorded that Fannia had "contracted this illness". She had been nursing a relative (Junia) from an unnamed "serious illness" and as Junia was a vestal virgin she had been obliged to leave Vesta's hearth and go into the care of a matron. Whilst taking care of her Fannia herself fell ill and is described by Pliny thus: "She has constant fever and a cough that is getting worse; she is emaciated and generally in decline. Only her spirit is vigorous, worthy of her husband." Though Pliny the Younger was regularly prone to exaggeration of great extent, his repeated expressions of worry suggest that the illness was one from which Fannia did not recover.

Name

Whilst examining the works and names mentioned by Pliny the Younger, Sir Ronald Syme, historian and classicist stated in his paper, "People in Pliny": "Why she should be called 'Fannia', no clue." Sir Ronald saw no reason as to why Arria Major's granddaughter would be called Fannia. This statement was made in regard to a possible connection to a Roman barrister named C. Fannius, who wrote the biographies of Nero's victims.