sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Angela Hug: Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome

Angela Hug's Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome (2023) is a deep cultural history of fecunditas - a women's virtue encompassing our modern concepts of fecundity (ability to conceive and bear children), fertility (number of children born), and more. Using evidence from literature, inscriptions, papyri, and coins, Hug persuasively argues for the centrality of fecunditas to the Roman family and state, concentrating on the period from 100 BCE to 300 CE. The nature of the sources means that much of the book focuses on the elite, but Hug makes efforts to discuss the impacts of what she calls Rome's "fecunditas project" (188) on people at various socio-economic levels. This book is both a much-needed examination of an understudied topic and a critical reevaluation of assumptions about the Roman family, Augustan politics, and dynastic succession.

One claim Hug develops throughout the book is that for Roman citizen women fecunditas was valued second only to pudicitia - essentially, women's chastity and modesty within a legitimate marriage. A lack of pudicitia, she argues, precluded fecunditas, since it was only within such bounds that women's fecundity could benefit men.

Hug also breathes new life into debates over the Augustan marriage legislation - in brief, a series of social, legal, and financial incentives implemented by the emperor Augustus to encourage citizens to marry and produce legitimate children. She argues that this legislation represented neither a sea change nor a response to a reproductive crisis among Rome's elite. Rather, she argues, it was a continuation of values and anxieties that had existed since the time of Rome's founding and was, at its root, a centralized response to a moral panic among Rome's elite, brought on by the destabilizing shift from Republic to Empire.

In Chapter One, Hug pairs ancient literary sources with demographic studies to reinforce her argument there was no fertility crisis at the turn of the first century CE. Rather, moralizing rhetoric about birth control and abortion evinced men's anxieties about women's control of reproduction. The reality, she argues, was that Romans wanted children and worked hard to have them. Hug takes the view that the Romans lacked reliable means of family planning, though her approach is more tempered than some in this camp as she acknowledges, for example, that breastfeeding could work to increase the interval between births. Other scholars have been more optimistic about the options available for fertility management and planning. [1] But Hug is convincing that birth rates among Rome's elite were not declining.

In Chapter Two, Hug complicates the definition of fecunditas. It was more than getting pregnant. A woman had to carry to term, give birth to, and, crucially, raise children (ideally more boys than girls) who were not a disappointment. As Hug puts it, "a woman's fecunditas was only truly safe from criticism once all of her children had died after living long and virtuous lives." (82) Fecunditas was something that had to be just right. Not only too few but also too many children were concerning - they could cause financial strain or even portend disaster for the Roman state.

Chapter Three examines in detail the relationship between pudicitia and fecunditas. The highest proof that a woman excelled at both was that she gave birth to children resembling their father. Here, sex workers, who were expected to be unmarried and to restrain their fertility, operate as foils to citizen women. Even if they had children, sex workers did not have fecunditas, since to "count," (91) Hug shows, fecunditas had to be tied to pudicitia. This chapter also includes an excellent discussion - complemented by a useful appendix of translations at the back of the book - of the seventeen Latin inscriptions for women who died while pregnant or giving birth. These uncommon inscriptions, Hug argues, expressed grief not only for lost women but for the husbands' loss of their wives' future fecunditas.

In Chapter Four, Hug evaluates the options for infertility, including adoption, substitute children (such as enslaved children in the household), and divorce and remarriage. These alternatives, she argues, were not neat solutions to childlessness. Adoption, for one, which usually occurred when the adoptee was an adult, did not provide the social capitol or tangible rewards of fecunditas; it merely solved the problem of an heir.

In the final two chapters, Hug pans out to evaluate the role of fecunditas in the Roman state and the imperial household. She shows how the quality of the emperor was thought to impact individual Romans' reproductive decisions. As she puts it, "one difference between a 'good' emperor and a 'bad' one was ... the willingness of men and women to raise children during his reign." (152) Indeed, women were praised for not birthing children under tyrants. Here, she also demonstrates the reach of the Augustan legislation into the provinces through expert analysis of inscriptional and papyrological evidence.

In the sixth and final chapter, Hug uses literary and, especially, numismatic evidence to show how fecunditas was exploited in imperial propaganda. Here, Hug's expertise in court studies shines. On the question of who was designing and minting the imperial coins and to what purpose, Hug argues that impositions by scholars of "sharp divisions between power groups like the Senate or the 'inner circle' create artificial boundaries." (191) That is, we do not have to know precisely who was designing the imperial coinage to understand that it was advertising the values of the regime.

Hug argues contra scholarly assumption that the use of adoption as a dynastic succession strategy among childless emperors did not render the reproductive abilities of imperial women moot. Rather, as Hug shows, adoption practices followed connections through the female line. So, for instance, Antoninus Pius not only adopted Marcus Aurelius, but he also married him to his daughter, Faustina the Younger. Hug also shows that Rome was unusual, in the context of world monarchies, for not viewing illegitimate sons as viable successors. This omission, Hug argues, emanated from the Augustan legislation, which emphasized and rewarded only the production of children within legitimate marriages. Thus, we see that the legislation was successful at setting the social and sexual mores of marriage, parentage, and succession through at least the first three hundred years of the Roman Empire.

Each individual chapter and the book as a whole are rounded out by well-written conclusions that act as clear guides through the book's major arguments. The scholarship is rich and Hug's interpretations are fresh and persuasive. This is a must read for anyone interested in the cultural and political history of the Roman Empire.

Note:

[1] For example see Rebecca Flemming: Fertility Control in Ancient Rome, in: Women's History Review 30, no. 6 (2021), 896-914.