Beyond The Legionary: How Women Can Portray Romans in Living History
When you walk through our camp at an event there should be much more happening than military drill. Someone might be grinding grain for the evening meal or spinning wool into thread. Food is being prepared, clothing repaired, goods exchanged, children are underfoot, and conversations carry on while soldiers go about their duties. While the Roman army is fascinating, and soldiers make up an important part of Roman living history they are only part of a larger story. Roman society was filled with women. They were mothers and daughters, wives and widows, enslaved people and freedwomen, merchants, craftspeople, religious participants and members of wealthy households. Women lived in the towns and settlements that developed around military installations, and growing archaeological evidence shows just how closely women and families were connected with Roman military communities. For women interested in Roman living history, that creates an enormous range of historically grounded portrayals that go far beyond simply standing in the background while the soldiers marched.
The Roman Army Did Not Exist in Isolation
A Roman fort was a military installation, but the world surrounding it was anything but exclusively military. Settlements developed around forts and fortresses throughout the Empire. These communities included merchants, craftspeople, families (unofficially of course), laborers, and others whose livelihoods were connected to the soldiers nearby. Women were a massive part of this world. Older interpretations sometimes treated Roman military sites almost as entirely male spaces. Archaeology has made that picture increasingly difficult to maintain. Studies of Roman military communities have identified evidence for women and children through objects such as footwear, jewelry, hairpins, spindle whorls, and other finds. Exactly where women lived within individual forts remains debated, and archaeologists rightly warn against automatically labeling every small object as “male” or female.” What is no longer seriously in doubt, however, is that women and families formed part of the wider military community. That is important for living history. Someone portraying a woman in a Roman military setting is not an extra character we have invented to make modern reenacting more inclusive. Women actually belonged to this world.
Women at Vindolanda
One of the best glimpses we have into the lives of women connected with the Roman army comes from Vindolanda in northern Britain. Around AD 100, Claudia Severa sent a letter to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of the commanding officer Flavius Cerialis. Severa invited Lepidina to attend her birthday celebration and sent greetings to her husband and children. Most of the surviving invitation was probably written by a scribe, but Severa appears to have added a personal closing in her own hand. It is an extraordinary little document because instead of describing a battle or an emperor, it captures a friendship between two women living on Rome’s northern frontier. But reenactors should not assume every Roman woman was wealthy. Roman women were not a single social group. Their experiences differed dramatically according to wealth, legal status, location, age, family and where they were free, freed, or enslaved. Scholars studying Roman Britain specifically caution against treating “Roman women” as though they all lived the same way. That variety gives a reenactor plenty to work with.
What Can a Woman Portray?
A civilian impression can be built around everyday activities rather than military rank. Textile production is especially useful for demonstrations. Spinning and other forms of textile work were closely associated with women in Roman society, and spindle whorls appear among the archaeological evidence when studying women around military sites. A reenactor demonstrating spinning can talk about where clothing came from, how fibers became thread, and just how much labor went into producing the tunics and other garments people wore.
Food preparation offers another possibility. A civilian interpreter can demonstrate Roman ingredients, grinding grain, preparing herbs, baking bread, or discussing recipes and food preservation. Instead of merely displaying Roman food on a table, the interpreter becomes someone actively explaining how a household functioned.
Women can also portray merchants or craftspeople associated with communities surrounding military installations. Recent scholarship emphasizes that women’s roles in military communities could include commercial and social activities, not simply being someone’s wife.
Religion provides another avenue. Women participated in Roman religious life, made dedications, worshipped Roman and local deities and took part in the religious communities of the provinces. In Roman Britain, inscriptions provide direct evidence of women participating in public religious practices.
A portrayal might therefore, center around a respectable household woman, an officer’s wife, a merchant, a craftswoman, or other historically supportable person. The important thing is the same standard we apply to military impressions, start with evidence and build outward from it.
Clothing is Only the Beginning
One mistake in civilian reenacting is thinking that an impression is complete once the clothing looks right. Clothing matters, of course, but putting on a tunica and stola and sitting beside the camp does not teach the public very much. A good civilian impression should have a story. What would this person do during the day? What would she eat, or what objects would she use throughout her waking hours. Could she read and write, or what was her legal status? Did she own the shop she worked at, or what other relationships could she have had with the soldiers stationed nearby?
These questions turn a costume into living history. They also give visitors opportunities to see aspects of Roman life that soldiers simply cannot demonstrate. A legionary can explain the pilum and gladius. Someone portraying civilian life can explain how their clothing was produced, where the food came from, and what happened in the settlement outside of the fort. They can also discuss what family life looked like along the frontier. Both stories belong together.
Women and Families in Legio XIIII GMV
At Legio XIIII GMV Cohort II, we want women and families to know that Roman living history has a place for them. You do not need to wear armor or march in formation to make an important contribution to our interpretation. In fact, developing our civilian side makes the entire Roman camp more historically complete. We welcome women who are interested in researching and developing civilian impressions, whether their interests are Roman clothing, cooking, textile work, religion, medicine, trade family life or another aspect of first century society. Just like our military impressions, we want those portrayals to grow from historical and archaeological evidence.
Families are welcome as well. Children existed in Roman military communities, and archaeological and documentary evidence increasingly allows historians to explore their presence alongside soldiers and their families. For modern families, that means living history can become something they experience together rather than a hobby that takes one family member away for the weekend.
Telling the Rest of Rome’s Story
Roman history was never just the story of soldiers and emperors. The legionary standing behind his shield represents one part of an enormous society. Behind him were families, and a vast network of support systems and communities that made the Roman world function. Women were part of that world everywhere Rome went. Bringing those stories into living history does not take anything away from the military side of reenacting. It does quite the opposite. It gives the soldier a world to exist in. A Roman camp filled only with soldiers can demonstrate an army. A Roman camp filled with soldiers, civilians, women, children and everyday activities can begin to demonstrate a society, and that is when living history starts to come alive.
Legio XIIII, Protinus!
