Gioielli e figli: le armi delle donne

Jewellery and children were the weapons of Roman women. Ornamenta muliebria were a proof (spy) of their ‘richness’ and carried a greater value: ancestry, status, the capacity to partake in religious cults. In Rome it appears that jewellery had an intended line of transmission from woman to woman. +e matronae, particularly attached to these symbols of social integration, defended them strenuously against the lex Oppia which had forbidden public displays of wealth. Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, never received her mother’s precious objects and presented her children as jewels. From the !rst imperial age in Roman discourse children took the place of jewellery as display of status bringing the problems of lineage and legacy to new heights and complexities. +e children, on whom women had no power, became no longer just the expression of the mother’s prestige, but a ‘common guarantee of the spouses’. In Latin the word,pignus!simultaneously indicates the pledge, intended as a precious object guaranteeing a pact or a relation, and the child, as a living presence guaranteeing the marriage.