This article reinterprets an incident that Livy (8.18.4–11) and derivative later sources place in the year 331 BCE: a wave of poisonings whose perpetrators are brought to light after an enslaved woman contacts a Roman magistrate. Its main objectives are to show that the incident is best understood in connection with the transmission of novel—or perceived as novel—pharmacological knowledge, and in conjunction with shifts in the institution of slavery at Rome that were set in motion by the Republic’s expansion; that a key figure in the mythological encoding of this transmission was the legendary Circe; and that moving away from previous scholarship’s concern with the matronae alleged to have carried out the poisonings and focusing instead on “la servant délatrice” (Jean-Marie Pailler) opens up new corridors into the cultural history of this period.
Pharmapolitics and the Early Roman Expansion: Gender, Slavery, and Ecology in 331 BCE*
Toni Morrison’s Circe (Song of Solomon) burrowed itself so deeply into my mind that it took instruction from Farah Jasmine Griffin’s Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021) to remind me of this project’s origins. First stirring its limbs in the shadows of a 2019 conference that I co-organized with Lisa Mignone and Seth Bernard (and receiving a boost from junior paper supervisions with Joonho Jo, Princeton Class of 2021), this paper came to life for Zoom audiences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Society of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, who plied me with suggestions and bibliography. Special thanks to Hannah Gołąb, Laura McClure, Grant Nelsestuen, Eric Orlin, Amy Richlin (2x!), and Ben Breen. Seth Bernard commented on an early draft; Fábio Duarte Joly and Christopher Smith shared offprints; and time in the company of Joseph Howley’s students recharged my reading of Livy. CA’s anonymous reviewers were supportive and generous with their feedback, and Mario Telò and Joshua Benjamins a wonderful editorial team.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta; Pharmapolitics and the Early Roman Expansion: Gender, Slavery, and Ecology in 331 BCE. Classical Antiquity 1 April 2023; 42 (1): 159–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2023.42.1.159
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University of California Press