In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Soror Virgo: Revising the Identities of the Horiatii

Foerster 1

Carolyn Foerster

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Soror Virgo: Revising the Identities of the Horiatii

Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, itself an act of selective memory,

emphasizes the way in which remembrance and forgetfulness of

one’s identity has direct implications on life, death, and

justice. Forgetting who one is, or who one is supposed to

be, may be a fatal mistake, as Horatia learns in Book I at

the tip of her brother’s sword. Horatia is oblita—unmindful,

forgetful, or heedless— of her proper identity within her

family and fails to perform her role as a dutiful and

patriotic sister. She foolishly mourns for her dead fiancé,

one of the Curiatii, instead of grieving for her two fallen

brothers or celebrating Horatius in the throes of his

victory. Horatius, as he cuts her down in the sight of a

huge crowd, commits a similar act of forgetfulness in that

he has wielded a power that does not yet belong to him. He

has forgotten due to the strength of his anger that, as a

filius, he does not yet possess the power of a pater familias that

would allow him to execute her legally. His crime is that of

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perduellio, a violent breach of his filial contract with his

father. Both siblings forget themselves, literally, and

perform identities they do not properly possess. Ultimately,

it falls to their faither Publius Horatius to re-identify

his daughter and son in such a manner that Horatia’s death

is justified and Horatius is not put to death. Publius

secures the unstable identities of his children by appealing

to the judges to remember selectively. Once their proper

roles have been restored in the gens Horatii and in Rome at

large, there can be peace.

Though the carnage itself covers only a brief section

in I.26, Horatia nevertheless manages to occupy and perform

four separate roles, those of soror virgo, desponsa, premature

uxor, and puella:

Princeps Horatius ibat, trigemina spolia prae se gerens; cui soror virgo, quae desponsa, uni ex Curiatiis fuerat, obvia ante portam Capenam fuit, cognitoque super umeros fratris paludamento sponsi quod ipsa confecerat, solvit crines et flebiliter nomine sponsum mortuum appellat. movet feroci iuveni animum comploratio sororis in victoria sua tantoque gaudio publico. Stricto itaque gladio simul verbis increpans transfigit puellam. "Abi hinc cum immaturo amore ad sponsum," inquit, "oblita fratrum mortuorum vivique, oblita patriae. Sic eat quaecumque Romana lugebit hostem."

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The leader Horatius was going along, bearing the three-fold spoils ahead of him. His unmarried sister, who hadbeen engaged to one of the Curiatii, was standing in the road in front of the Capene gate, and recognizing the cloak of her fiancé, which she herself had made, above the shoulders of her brother, she tore at her hair and, sobbing, called the name of her dead fiancé. The lamentation of his sister spurred the spirit of thehot-tempered young man, in the midst of his victory andsuch public rejoicing. Accordingly, having drawn his sword, he ran the girl through, at the same time berating her with words: “Begone from here with your untimely love toward your fiancé,” he said, “unmindful of your brothers living and dead, unmindful of your country. Thus may it be for whatever Roman woman who will mourn an enemy.”

Horatia is condemned and executed for being oblita, that is,

forgetful in the sense that she is unmindful and thoughtless

with regard to which identity she should perform. It is not

exaggerating to say that Horatia has been blinded by grief:

oblita carries with it connotations of being physically

overcome by darkness or blindness so that one cannot

metaphorically see. One’s mind is so clouded that one

becomes unable to perceive what one ought to do. Horatia’s

blindness is to her familial obligations, a blindness she

makes visible when she publically mourns for her fiancé

instead of applauding her brother. Her temporary memory loss

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or “blindness” is incomplete. Horatia is by no means out of

her mind, neither demens nor amens. She is instead

hyperaware, for she recognizes the cloak draped over her

brother’s shoulders as her own handiwork from a distance

(cogitoque super umeros fratris paludamento sponsi quod ipsa confecerat).

She however interprets it as a symbol that alludes to her

fiancé’s death, not her brother’s victory. She still

remembers her affection for her fiancé but selectively if

inadvertently drives all thought of her other identities and

allegiances from her mind.

Horatia has four identities in all: she is a soror virgo,

a desponsa, a puella, and ultimately a filia. Her identities,

however, are not truly hers. They are projected upon her,

along with attendant expectations of public conduct, by her

male relatives. When she becomes oblita because she is

effectively blinded by grief, she unthinkingly adopts and

performs the identity of an uxor. As she is yet unmarried,

she should not have this role in her repertoire, but should

instead have acted as a soror virgo, a desponsa, and a filia. Her

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brother, upon witnessing her thoughtless display of grief

for the wrong man, slays her for what her performance

demonstrates, namely that she has prematurely transferred

her allegiance to her future family.

Horatia first appears as soror virgo, an identity soon

complicated by the fact that she is also betrothed—desponsa.

She occupies the interstitial space between maidenhood and

matrimony, which Welsh refers to as “not-yet-ness” (Welsh,

187). Horatia looks to her new husband but still moves

within the boundaries erected by her father (Welsh, 187).1

Women who suffer from “not-yet-ness” “function as objects in

the marriage transaction enacted among men and as subjects

in those relationships who may perceive their identities

differently from how those identities are perceived by

others” (Welsh, 169). The instability of a woman’s identity

is essential but inherently dangerous, for she must be able

to shift allegiances, though this very ability renders her

1 This is obviously an oversimplification of the ways in which Roman marriage could proceed; whether or not she was to be married in manu or not, however, is beside the point. What is significant is that regardless of the style of marriage, before the ceremony even takes place she has transferred her loyalty and affection to her husband, and by extension his family and country.

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susceptible to disloyalty. Her male relations expect her to

act in a certain way until she is married, but Horatia

struggles with juggling her present status as desponsa with

her future role as a wife. Regardless of what inner

confusion she may be experiencing, she must always be

mindful of her proper allegiance to her family, and make her

preeminent identity that of a sister or daughter. Upon her

marriage, her loyalty must shift immediately to her husband,

a sort of shift of attention from one identity to another as

she puts away her childish identity and takes up a child-

bearing one.

Horatia’s “not-yet-ness” is complicated by the war

between Rome and Alba. She is doubly invested in the

outcome. If her brother(s) win, that is, survive, she will

have lost her fiancé; if her fiancé emerges (possibly

accompanied by his brother(s)) from the bloody conflict, her

brothers will have died. Horatia will have someone to mourn

regardless of the outcome, but she may also have reason to

be happy, given that, if the Curiatii kill her brothers, her

fiancé may yet survive. She can see herself in both

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positions depending on her interpretation of her identity,

yet given her “not-yet-ness” can only properly perform the

duties of the daughter. She must not allow her competing

affections to muddle the barriers between her present self

and the self she will be.

Horatia’s ἁμαρτία lies in her inability to maintain her

mindfulness of her proper identity and enact the behaviors

associated with that identity. When she is tested by severe

emotional turmoil, the Horatia that emerges from the inner

fray is a Horatia that does not yet exist. This Horatia

performs the mourning duties of an uxor though she is in

reality only desponsa. Even worse, she manifests her failure

to remember what her identity should be in front of a crowd

of joyful Romans who bear witness to her infidelity when

they should be celebrating her brother. She is an actress

performing the wrong role in the wrong play.

Horatia ostensibly suffers the shift of her identity

because she loves her fiancé with an “already” love instead

of an “almost love”. She has already transferred the bulk of

her loyalty to the Curiatii as she would when she married

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into their family. Unfortunately, soror and desponsa can only

coexist so long as the woman maintains the superiority of

her bond to her birth family over the potential bond to her

future husband’s family. Soror and uxor, however, present

with mutually exclusive requirements of fidelity: one cannot

embody both identities. Her loyalty must belong absolutely

to one family or absolutely to the other.

Moreover, if Horatia had married into the Curiatii

after all, she would have also transferred her patriotic

sentiments to Alba from Rome. She may be doubly invested in

the outcome of the battle between her brothers and her

fiancé on a personal, emotional level, but she also must

remember that they meet on the battlefield as absolute

adversaries. She runs the risk along with every other Roman

that Rome will lose its imperium to Alba, and her loyalty

cannot be questioned in such a perilous time. And, in a way,

her loyalty is not interrogated: she makes it perfectly

clear by crying out her fiancé’s name that on an emotional

level she has already transferred her allegiance to a

foreign man, which by necessity means that she has also

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transferred her allegiance to a foreign nation. She earns

herself the death sentence that accompanies forgetting who

she is as a sister, a daughter, and as a Roman woman, the

death of a traitor, all because she mourns for the enemy.

Horatia’s bereavement is not in and of itself a

problem. If she were to have mourned for her slain brothers

in public, it would be laudable as well within the purview

of a virtuous woman’s role as a sister and daughter. Perhaps

Horatius would interpret her sorrow as untimely—after all,

this should be an occasion of celebration in light of his

victory (in victoria sua tantoque gaudio publico)—but her tears would

not be treacherous. If she had only sobbed, even wailed

inarticulately, Horatius could have interpreted her tears as

shed in remembrance of her brothers. Because Horatia

commemorates her fiancé by calling his name and weeping

(flebiter nomine sponsum mortuum appellat), Horatius can have no

doubt. It is not her grief but the misdirection of her grief

that brands her a traitor, for her sympathies lie with his

enemies and the enemies of Rome.

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Though it is Horatia’s forgetfulness of her sisterly

duties that alters Horatius to her infidelity and incites

him to execute her, she does not die as his soror. Instead,

he stabs a girl: transfigit puellam. A rather simple statement,

it would seem, but her sudden reidentification as a girl is

neither coincidental nor ideologically neutral. Horatius

also redefines Curiatius, whom Livy has referred to as unus

ex Curiatiis and a sponsus, as a hostis in his speech warning

future Roman women not to mourn the enemy. He spins the

identity of both the bride and the bridegroom to be: they

are just a girl and an enemy, not a sister and a future

brother-in-law. As a puella, Horatia is excommunicated from

her family, effectively disowned through her own murder. She

is no sister of Horatius’ but instead just a foolish girl,

undisciplined and emotionally treacherous.

While Horatius may have a point in declaring that

Horatia has been unfaithful to her family and her country,

he has no right to redefine her identity and position her as

an exemplum for future Roman women. He is only her frater, and

has no right to execute her. The pater familias is permitted to

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exercise deadly force, but P. Horatius did not wield the

sword nor delegate her execution to his son. Horatia’s

performance of mistaken identity due to her unmindfulness is

dishonorable, perhaps unforgivable, but Horatius’ hasty

dispatching of her is positively horrific. This is no honor

killing. He, too, has confused his present identity with his

future identity, for he has claimed the power of the pater

familias while only a filius.

While Horatia was oblita, Horatius is accused of perduellio

before the duumvires, a court convened especially for this

matter. Both Merrill and Watson define perduellio with

reference to its etymology, per + duellio. Merrill renders it

“wicked warfare”, Watson as “either particularly fierce war

or particularly wicked war” (35; 438). In Horatius’ case,

his indictment on the charge of perduellio is the equivalent

of his accusing Horatia of being oblita. Horatius is not

simply oblitus, however, because in his heedless state he

slaughtered his sister. In this instance, perduellio as

mindless violence is roughly equivalent to mindlessness or

being oblitus. Though perduellio is often translated “treason”,

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it can incorporate broader meanings that extend to one’s

proper duties as befit one’s identity in relation to a

superior or inferior. Merrill argues that the word is

“naturally figurative. It seizes upon the most striking

element of similarity in the varying aspect of the offenses

seen to partake of a common character, and fixes it with a

convenient term…” (440). Instead of an equivalent of

maiestas, perduellio encompasses all instances of extreme

violence or injustice.

In accordance with Merrill, Watson interprets perduellio

in light of the conception of treason as “a serious breach

of obligation by a citizen to the state (or king) or by a

cliens to a patronous,” which he extends to include

…another situation where there was a particular duty of obligation between one private citizen andanother, where a vital part of the relationship was the subordination of one to the other, and where serious breach, never given a name in the sources, gave rise to a sacral penalty of death. What I have in mind is, of course, a serious offence by a member of the household against the paterfamilias (440).

Horatius, then, seems indubitably guilty of perduellio. He has

committed a terrible crime against his father in forgetting

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his place and murdering his sister, for he performed the

role of pater familias without actually being a pater familias.

Filicide would be permitted; sororcide is not.

Horatius’ defense falls to his father, P. Horatius, who

advances a two-pronged argument. As an entire crowd of

people had observed Horatia’s death, making his crime caedes

manifesta, there can be no question of Horatius’

responsibility. His performance of mistaken identity and

unauthorized behavior was just as clear as was Horatia’s.

Accordingly, “the only line of defense open was what the

rhetoricians called consitutio iuridicalis, the argument that the

deed was just. Of this there were two forms: the pleader

could either argue that the deed in itself was just or

defend the deed by reference to something extraneous”

(Solodow, 304-305). P. Horatius utilizes both. He first

asserts that he believes Horatia’s death was just and then

reminds the Roman people (as though they could have

forgotten) of Horatius’ recent display of outstanding virtus.

P. Horatius’ identification of Horatia as his daughter, not

his son’s sister, is of great import. As a daughter, her

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death may be interpreted as an execution instead of a cold-

blooded slaughter, and after her identity is solidified as a

daughter in death, Publius can move to argue that Horatius’

identity as defender of the state should override his crime,

at least to the extent that Horatius evades capital

punishment.

In order to justify Horatia’s death, Horatius’ father

invokes his right as pater familias to put his children to death

if he deems it necessary. This line of argument garners a

favorable reaction from the crowd: Moti hominess sunt in eo iudicio

maxime P. Horatio patre proclamante se filiam iure caesam iudicare; ni ita esset,

patrio iure in filium animadversurum fuisse (The men were moved in

this trial mainly by P. Horatius as father having declared

that he himself judged his daughter rightfully slain; unless

it was thus, he would have punished his son with his

paternal right). Though Horatius breached legal boundaries,

this does not automatically mean that he simultaneously

dissevered his bond of filial piety, nor has his father any

wish to effect such a division. Publius adopts the role of

judge himself and retrojectively condemns his daughter while

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absolving his son of murder, using language that places him

as a figure of authority in these proceedings (proclamante se

filiam iure caesam iudicare). He also provides proof for his

belief in his son’s innocence of perduellio in that he has not

exercised his right as a father to punish his son.

Yet this is not quite enough to absolve Horatius or to

save him from punishmen. P. Horatius must make the Roman

people and the duumvires see Horatia and her death

differently by providing them with new characterizations of

the players in the spectacle of grief and death. He

identifies himself both as a pater familias endowed with all the

attendant powers of that position and as a father who has

just lost the majority of his children and would like to

retain the remaining one, thank you very much. In order to

do so, he reinvents and re-presents Horatia’s death as the

death of a treacherous daughter, manipulating her identity

in order to transform her from a soror virgo into a filia. While

she was of course still a filia at the time of her death,

Horatia died for her sisterly sins. When Publius

reidentifies her as a filia and not only a soror, he reminds

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the crowd and judges that, as her father, her could have put

her to death himself. This is a matter of a filia and a filius,

not of a soror and a frater.

The interpretation of Horatia’s death as murder is

contingent upon her primary identity as soror and Horatius’

primary identity as frater. A brother does not have the right

to kill his sister. However, when Horatia’s death becomes a

matter of filia and pater, when the identity of the victim and

the identity of the perpetrator are reimagined, while there

may be a bloodied body, there is no crime. Watson’s

understanding of perduellio is particularly compelling here,

for a flagrant and violent breach of obligation between the

pater familias and the filius could constitute perduellio. In

declaring Horatia’s death just, Publius Horatius legitimizes

the killing, effectively transferring his potestas as pater

familias to his filius in retrospect. Horatius was not oblitus

enough to earn himself the charge of perduellio or the same

fate as Horatia.

Within the realm of familial justice, the father

pardons his son, thus presenting a model for the duumvires to

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follow, a proto-exemplum of sorts. When he reinterprets and

re-presents the characters in the tragedy, the performance

of retribution and death can cease. P. Horatius also forces

another image into the minds of the judges and the onlooking

crowd by exhorting them to wonder whether or not they could

condemn his son, who is also the defender of their country,

to death. In an ekphrastic speech delivered beneath the

spoils his son had retrieved from the Curiatii, he unravels

the graphic proceedings of Horatius’ execution if it were to

come to pass and manipulates his identity in order to make

the crowd sympathetic to his case:

Inter haec senex iuvenem amplexus, spolia Curiatorum fixa eo loco qui nunc Pila Horatia appellatur ostentans, “Huncine,” aiebat, “quem modo decoratum ouantemque Victoria incedentem vidistis, Quirites, eum sub furca vinctum inter verbera et cruciatus videre potestis? Quod vix Albanorum oculi tam derome specatculum ferre possent. I, lictor, colliga manus, quae Paulo ante armatae imperium populo Romano pepererunt. I, caput obnube liberatoris urbis huius; arbore infelici suspende; verbera vel intra pomerium, modo inter illa pila et spolia hostium, vel extra pomerium, modo inter sepulcra Curiatiorum; quo enim ducere hunc iuvenem potestis ubi non sua decora eum a tanta foeditate supplicii vindicent?

Amidst these things the old man embraced the young man,pointing to the spoils of the Curiatii affixed in that place which now is called the Horatian Spears, and said, “Is this the man whom just now you saw decorated and advancing triumphant in his victory, Quirites, and

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can you bear to see him bound beneath the fork, scourged, and tortured? This, so foul a scene, Alban eyes would scarcely be able to endure! Go, lictor, bindhis hand, which so little time before bore arms to givebirth to the imperium of the Roman people. Go, veil thehead of the liberator of this city; hang him from the wretched tree; beat him either within the pomerium, provided that it be between the spears and spoils of the enemy, or outside the pomerium, provided that it bebetween the tombs of the Curiatii. For where could you lead this young man where his honors would not vindicate him from so great a foulness of punishment?”

P. Horatius is evidently a good lawyer to have as a

defendant. He has made Horatius liberator inextricable from

Horatius damnatus, and linked his ever so public

demonstration of virtus not to Horatia’s gory end but to what

would be the public display of his execution. P. Horatius

advances that Horatius’ primary identity in the eyes of the

Romans should be that of liberator and filius, just as Horatia’s

should have been filia. He is urging his friends, Romans, and

countrymen to embrace the phenomenon of selective memory, to

remember Horatia as his daughter whom he executed through

his son and to remember Horatius as his son who saved the

res publica.

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Publius is, in a way, urging the judges not to be obliti

of Horatius’ deeds. They cannot be blinded to his virtue

because of his admittedly violent streak. They have the

opportunity to see the sight that a pater familias sees, and

they should capitalize upon that opportunity lest they be

forced to execute a virtuous, though not quite innocent,

son. Yet would not the judges be obliti if they were to erase

from their minds the image of Horatius frater slaying his

sister? Perhaps; but perhaps they have no choice but to

adopt Publius’ version of events. He positions Horatius’

image as liberator throughout the city, both within and

without the pomerium. They will always see Horatius, so can

they bear to see him scourged and hanged in the same place

where they see the evidence of his valor?

Apparently not: non tulit populus nec patris lacrimas nec ipsius

parem in omni periculo animum, absolveruntque admiratione magis virtutis

quam iure causae (The people could bear neither the tears of

the father nor the spirit of that one [Horatius], balanced

in every danger, and they acquitted [him] more out of

admiration of his excellence than because of the justice of

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the case). Their memory has already been altered, for they

already compare Horatius facing capital punishment with

Horatius facing down the three Curiatii on his own. Their

mental image of him as liberator overcomes their memory of him

as the perpetrator of caedes manifesta. Publius Horatius

solidifies their identities in the minds of the Romans as

filia and liberator, and in doing so makes it possible for Rome

to move beyond retribution to expiation. Horatius atones for

his sins publically by going beneath a beam as though

defeated, and his gens maintains a similar ritual up to

Livy’s day. The slaughter is not forgotten, but its effects

are mitigated by the recharacterization of the players by

the only man who can properly identify them, their father.

Publius’ success is both fascinating and disturbing,

for his reinterpretation of identities and narratives calls

into question Livy’s entire project as a historian. Who,

ultimately, is telling the story, and why is he telling it

as he is? Publius spins his daughter’s death at his son’s

hands in order to prevent his son from meeting the same fate

as his daughter. What does Livy accomplish? Whose memory are

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we permitting to enter our minds? It is not that there is an

objective version of the story, for memory is by necessity

always selective. No mind is disinterested. We must always

choose a side, a perspective, an identity with which to

primarily identify. We are all obliti in the end even as we

stare at his monument and plumb the depths of the collective

memory of the Roman state for exempla.

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Works Cited

Merrill, Elmer Truesdell. "Some Remarks on Cases of Treason in the Roman Commonwealth." Classical Philology 13.1 (1918): 34. JSTOR.

Solodow, J. B. "Livy and the Story of Horatius I.24-26." Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Livy. Ed. Jane D. Chaplin and Christina S. Kraus. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 297-320.

Titus Livius, H. E. Gould, and J. L. Whiteley. Titus Livius: BookOne. Bristol: Bristol Classical, 1987.

Watson, Alan. "The Death of Horatia." The Classical Quarterly 29.02 (1979): 436-47. JSTOR.

Welch, Tara. "Perspectives On and Of Livy's Tarpeia." EuGeStA 2 (2012): 169-200.