The taxonomy of patience, or when is patientia not a virtue?

Classical Philology

Volumn 97, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 133-144

  Kaster, Robert A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61149492224     PISSN: 0009837X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/449576     Document Type: Review

References (16)

1. On the story of Hostius Quadra, approached from different perspectives, see most recently D. C. Leitão, "Senecan Catoptrics and the Passion of Hostius Quadra (Sen. Nat. 1)," Materiali e Discussioni 41 (1998): 127-60
2. C. A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality (Oxford, 1999), 203-4. The much-abbreviated version of Seneca's rant given in the text here is adapted from the Loeb of T. H. Corcoran (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)
3. cf. my article "The Shame of the Romans," TAPA 127 (1997): 16-17
4. E.g., patientia laboris: Columella Rust. 6.2.8, 6.36.2, 7.1.2, 7.6.9 (cf. Sen. Dial. 4.16.2)
5. Festus p. 250 L: "pubes ... incipit esse a quattuordecim annis: femina a duodecim viri potens, sive patiens, ut quidam putant."
6. On pati as "the technical term of the passive role in intercourse," see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), 189-90 (drawing a contrast with the rare sexual use of Gk.)
7. cf. H. N. Parker, "The Teratogenic Grid," in Roman Sexualities, ed. J. Hallett and M. Skinner (Princeton, 1997), 48-52
8. Cic. Tusc. 2.53, cf. 5.41, 74, 77, 80
9. Testimonia for Regulus are surveyed by E. R. Mix, Marcus Atilius Regulus, Exemplum Historicum, Studies in Classical Literature, vol. 10 (The Hague, 1970)
10. On this characteristically Roman form of desperate endurance, see the recent remarks of C. A. Barton, Roman Honor (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), 47-56, with numerous references
11. On the "novel virtue" of "endurance" that begins to emerge in Jewish and proto-Christian writings in the late first century C.E., see the important discussion of B. D. Shaw, "Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs," Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996): 269-312, esp. 278-91
12. Some masters had a sense that there were things one should not do to a slave (in anger, for example), but this sense proceeded primarily from considerations not of the slave but of the master's character and the deforming effects of passions, or had the prudential aim of maintaining the slave system with a minimum of friction: cf. K. R. Bradley, "Seneca and Slavery," C&M 37 (1986): 161-72
13. That slaves themselves not infrequently did resist, and variously refused the role of patientia assigned to them, is also true (e.g., id., Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire [Oxford, 1987], 31-32); but that is a different matter from the ideological point under discussion
14. Serv. ad Aen. 7.503: "SILVIA PRIMA SOROR bene puellae dat doloris impatientiam."
15. Cf. T. A. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (New York, 1998), 192
16. Apul. Met. 5.10: "et tu quidem soror videris quam patienti vel potius servili - dicam enim libere quod sentio - haec perferas animo!"