Pandora’s Story
She Opened Her Jar
Time: 500 BC
Characters: Pandora, Anesidora, Romulus, Hersilia wife of Romulus, Tatia
Main points:
rape
consent
marriage
control of bodies
women as property
loss of sovereignty
Genetic code of colonization
Sit quietly for this story. My mothers migrated out of Africa 150,000 years ago, then to Yemen, then Turkey, then Greece, then the fertile plains of Latium. The global population was large by now, and people divided seeking different paths out of the fertile crescent. The 6000 years since Defne life’s in Çatalhöyük brought many previously unknown forms of hardship—new ice age—for many, basic survival became the central priority again and the move to explore the new territories they had heard about as trade routes extended. Some, like the ancestors of my friend Tanya began a long trek east into what we now call Asia then north to Siberia with Haplogroup C and crossed the frozen lands into what we now call the Americas around 35,000 years ago. Others went east and south hugging the bodies of water into South east Asia, then Australia. Another friend Lindsay is K2a, the group that departed from the fertile crescent west toward Iberia.
My mother Pandora was born in the mountain tribal state of the Sabine people near the Aniene River. Pandora’s mother’s mothers had migrated from Turkey to Greece—hence their Greek names. Pandora and Anesidora had both survived childbirth and Pandora grew up with wondrous pride in her mothers’ traditions. Her mother raised her in the Red Tent from infancy, where she observed all the rituals and wonders of women. In the Red Tent, she learned to tell Time. When Pandora was 14, her mother took her to the festival of Thesmodphoria in the nearby mountains (1100-1000 bc). In Greece This annual festival celebrated Demeter, the goddess of corn, grain, and the harvest. Anesidora brought the festival into Latium. The people believed that Demeter made the crops grow each year; thus the first loaf of bread made from the annual harvest was offered to her in gratitude at the festival. She was the goddess of the earth, of agriculture, and of fertility in general, fertility of plants, animals, and women. The women thanked Demeter at time of harvest for her gifts of Sacred abundance and prayed for Peace.
With the arrival of horses from the Kurgan raids warring had become part of culture to the Sabines. And warrioring became a skill. Initially both men and women trained to fight and the warrior women of the northern steps had been fierce, as legend has it. But the introduction of rape as a battle weapon gave the advantage to men. The various tribal states in the Latium region in general worked cooperatively creating a sustainable system of trade that stabilized the region. Still, while paternity was yet unknown and men aligned not with their lovers but with their Mothers and sisters, men were beginning to divide their Mothers lands into clan property, taking charge of the lucrative practice of animal breeding.
In this context the women-only Thesmodphoria festival to fertility was a force that gave women tremendous power. For three days the women were together in a safe sacred space—joy was the emotion of the retreat from daily demands--dancing, drinking, making love, praying to the Great Mother, however they felt like expressing their gratitude to Demeter.
Later, Patriarchal accounts of this festival called it the festival of Divine Madness.
This was before the birth of Rome. It’s a long story, but as warrioring became a fulltime job, wandering bands of soldiers organized to travel with horses and weapons to steal the lands of others, even to capture and enslave settled peoples. The vision of empire grew as all had witnessed the waves of Kurgan attacks from the still nomadic regions of the northern Caucus mountains. Throughout the entire Middle East people had heard of the Caucasions rampaging through towns and cities, stealing supplies, raping women, and killing men. They left destruction rather than taking control. Those clans who learned from the Kurgan raids knew that accumulated wealth could pay for bands of soldiers to go on adventures and bring back wealth—jewels and people to be enslaved as property.
A grouping of these wandering soldiers decided to settle in Latium and build a city that would become a central hub of trade. They would call it Rome. Lead by Romulus, they had a real problem: there were no women in Rome. Central to their plan to build a new modern city was what we now might call a “genetic code of colonization.” Stealing lands and building a population and culture anything like that of the Greeks required new concepts of governance—that is, how can one group of people subordinate another, and call it justice according to the law?
So, when the Roman soldiers wanted women, Romulus demanded of the surrounding tribal states that they freely contribute women to build the population of Rome. What? The Romans offered guarantees of sovereignty in exchange for the women. What? The Sabines, the Aequians, the Hernicans had all learned lessons from the Caucasian/Kurgan assault. They did not want to be colonies of an empire. And their cultures still recognized that women were the heads of families not the slaves of men. Despite his ambition, Titus Tatius, leader of the Sabine people along with the other peoples leaders responded with a resounding “NO!” he said, “We claim our sovereignty and the sanctity of our women.”
Romulus was furious, as a Roman colonist would be, envisioning his future Roman legal system that required consent in order for expropriation, , and oppression to operate. His fury was matched by his deceit—and he planned a regional festival of Neptune Equester he called Consualia to which he invited all surrounding states to show the unity of the region thereby drawing these neighboring peoples into the central market place. Everyone was dancing, playing ball, watching magic tricks. The story is told by Ovid in his diaries. Suddenly, at the surprise of many, Roman men charged and grabbed every woman that they saw and raped them mercilessly. Chaos ensued:
"Some tore their hair; some swooned away; some wept in silence; some called vainly for their mothers; some sobbed aloud; others seemed stupefied with fear; some stood transfixed; others tried to flee."
The Roman soldiers set aside the women they designated as “most beautiful” to be reserved for high officials. Women they determined had “extraordinary beauty” were raped by Senators.
Legend is now inscribed in hundreds of graphic depictions. The men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other cities in the region. One high-ranking soldier had his gang capture a ravishing woman carrying her off to be untouched by anyone but Thalassius himself—they shouted in unison a war cry as they carried her to protect her presumed virginity, this later became known as “the wedding cry.”
The Sabine men, their lives and culture destroyed, returned to their land to regroup for their future. A year later they were ready to return to Rome and rescue their mothers, sisters, lovers, daughters. They rode into Rome with the advantage of surprise and where winning the battle when, according to the myth of Livy, the women intervened to stop the battle.
Tituts Livius Patavinus in his Books from the Foundation of the City of Rome in which he rewrites the myth some years later. In it he quotes Tatia, daughter of SabIne leader Titus Tatius. She had been abducted by Numa Pompilius (the powerful politician who would become Romulus's successor), and, having been a virgin when he raped her, gained the status of ‘wife’. Romulus’ had taken a wife Hersilia, and she persuaded him to give legal standing to all the women who had been abducted and raped.
When the battle ensued, Tatia rushed in between her father and her new husband who were about to kill each other—she put her new born baby on the ground. In a famous passive Livy gives Tatia voice. Speaking to these men, she takes the blame, and therefore, puts shame, onto the women:
“If you regret the relationship that unites you, if you regret the marriage tie, turn your anger against us [women], we are the cause of war, and the cause of wounds, and even death to both our husbands and our fathers. It will be better for us to perish than to live, lacking either of you, as widows or as orphans.”
According to Livy, the children of the rape now made legitimate became the force of consent. Every party was thrilled to be able suddenly to exchange war for peace. Livy’s father Titus Tatius was invited to rule along side Romulus. All rejoiced.
So why was my mother Pandora unhappy? She had escaped the abduction, had risen to priestess status in the Sabine state. She spent much of her time working on tribal agreements that would enable sustainable governance of her people, protect their sovereignty and cultivate and protect their lands and for women to secure their own property.
Her sister had been abducted and made a wife. Wasn’t her sister happy with her Roman legal status? Well, She lost control of her body and became a Roman’s property. The Roman Marriage Laws were aimed at destroying matriliny and institutionalizing patriarchy—the ultimate goal was to make the Roman empire the patriarch who would own and control all people as far as the mind could imagine—establishing the legal right of imperial domination over nations and peoples and the accumulation and concentration of wealth in the hands of an imperial ruling class. But in that one historical moment, the seemingly beneficial device of marriage and the status of wife, and the legitimacy of children, became the lever which once pulled brought down the historical power of women and established the domestic realm as a hidden realm of invisible free labor.
In order to appropriate this free labor, patriarchal social structure defined status of genders based on a “family.” In this family heterosexual monogamy is required of the “wife.” A patrilineal passage of property ownership from father to son (which at the time was not a scientifically established consanguine relationship) requires a social norm of heterosexuality and monogamy for women—by definition, a woman who is socially-designated as “monogamous” (whether she is or not in practice) is also designated as “heterosexual: (whether she is or not). The social norm of monogamy also designates the male as “having chosen monogamy,” but his behavior of promiscuity as the dominator of his property (wife) is accepted as contrary to his chosen designation.
From then on, men owned their wives and the offspring of their wives. Inheritence would follow the presumed paternity of the male line, and in addition to making women and children property and establishing the legal right for husbands to control their wife’s bodies, the accumulation of property would be totally controlled by the patriarch—be he the head of a small family, the owner of an obsidian mine, or the head of state.
And how did this new legal social order arise? Through the rape of the Sabine women and the institution of Roman Marriage Law.
Titus Tatius died five years later. And the Sabine people were completely conquered while granted the promise of suffrage--civitas sine suffragio.
My mother Pandora lamented the so-called unification. She gathered women in secret sacred circles. She taught any young woman who would listen how to tell Time. With her sister friends she learned to ‘speak bitterness’ in this protected space and to help each other organize strategies of resistance to the consent demanded of the status wife. They helped each other understand that they really were not themselves guilty of the great Sabine concession. They loved each other. And Pandora’s daughter Gaea taught the women how to remember. Then she recited,
I am Gaea, daughter of
Pandora, daughter of
Anesidora who is the daughter of
Kalifa
Bahati
Amare
And the counting always ended with
and I am the daughter of Eva—who survived the Big Death!
And the chorus:
“She Survived! She lived! She thrived!
And so lived her daughter and her daughter’s daughters.
“May she never go hungry. May she never thirst.
“Many she live to lead us forward on our journey of life!