Learning from Women: Mothers, Slaves, and Regime Change in Tacitus’ Dialogue on Orators

Abstract

Abstract This essay offers a new assessment of the role of women in Tacitus’ Dialogue on Orators and of their significance for Tacitus’ analysis of regime change. The women of the Dialogue have received only cursory scholarly attention: they appear briefly in Messalla’s diatribe on the decline of Roman education (Dial. 28.4-29.2), when he contrasts the virtuous mothers of the Republic with the enslaved nurses who rear children in his own period, when an emperor rules in Rome. Yet Messalla’s exemplary mothers undermine his own interpretation of Roman history, and his description of the household ruled by slaves foreshadows Maternus’ account of Republican politics at the conclusion of the text. Women in Messalla’s speech challenge ideas of decline in the Dialogue and represent the possibility of practicing politics even in restrictive circumstances.