42 Workshop 3
GENDER & SEXUALITY IN ANCIENT ROME
CLAS 112 — Pomona College, fall 2020
WORKSHOP THREE 9/8/20: ANCIENT ROMAN PATRIARCHY
General Instructions:
For this workshop, you’ll be organized in a Zoom Breakout Room with a group of approximately four students. Select a person to be the timekeeper. This person should keep the group moving along according to the time allotments on the worksheet. This job is crucial, since without it, the group will not complete the experience which the worksheet is designed to bring about. Please select a volunteer reporter. Everyone should make notes of their own reflections. The reporter’s job is to record the group’s conclusions and report these out.
This workshop has two parts and is designed for 1 hour. There is 10-minute moveable part scheduled in, which will allow time for the faculty to pop in for a chat. Please note the start: _________ and end:__________ times before beginning.
Although we must use the internet in order to meet, please refrain from using a search engine (e.g. Google) to look up answers to questions. If a question arises during discussion that you cannot answer without external research, please bring your question back to the seminar for discussion and/or use it as a writing prompt and do your research outside of class.
Part 0: Moveable Part (10 Minutes) Jody will pop in for a 10-minute visit.
Part I: Roman patres, Roman patriarchy (20 minutes)
The etymology, or history, of the word patriarchy begins in Greek and extends through Latin before landing in English:
From Latin patriarchia, from Byzantine Greek πατριαρχία (patriarkhía), from Koine Greek πατριάρχης (patriárkhēs, “patriarch”), from Ancient Greek πατρία (patría) and ἄρχω (árkhō).
Here’s the relevant entry from a chart of related Indo-Eurpean root words (Proto-Indo-European – PIE – is the name given to a hypothesized proto-language whence all the languages in this chart derived):
| PIE | English | Gothic | Latin | Ancient Greek | Sanskrit | Iranian | Slavic | Baltic | Celtic | Armenian | Albanian | Tocharian | Hittite |
| *pH₂tér- “father” | father (< OE fæder) | fadar“father” | pater “father” | patḗr “father” | pitṛ́ “father” | Av pitar-(nom. also pta, ta), OPers pita“father”, NPerspadar | OIr athir“father”; Welshedrydd | hayr“father” | A pācar, B pācer“father” | *pH₂tér- “father” |
Scanning through the two chapters from Shultz et al., (try control or command + f to search), work together to analyze the conceptual and discursive category: pater. (Maybe a diagram would help?)
Part II: Understanding Roman Relationships (30 minutes)
Chapter 4 in Shultz et al. begins: “To understand Roman history, it is necessary to understand the nature of Roman personal and social relations and the religious and ethical frameworks within which they functioned.” Taking the information provided in this chapter, work together to summarize, in your own words, or to create a diagram (or multiple diagrams) illustrating Roman familial and political relationships and hierarchies. As part of your project, contemplate the meaning of the Latin word/Roman concept of familia as well as pater (from Part I). Consider intersectional vectors of subjectivity: class, status (including slave/free), gender, ethnicity/race.