Pomponia Graecina

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Pomponia Graecina (* in the 1st century; † after 83) was the wife of Aulus Plautius and possibly one of the first Christian women known by name in Rome .

Life

Pomponia came from the plebeian family of Pomponiers . Possibly she was the daughter or granddaughter of the suffect consul of 16 Gaius Pomponius Graecinus , a friend of Ovid . His wife Asinia was the daughter of Vipsania Agrippina from her second marriage to Gaius Asinius Gallus , granddaughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and great-granddaughter of Titus Pomponius Atticus , and thus related to the Julio-Claudian imperial family. Pomponia was married to Aulus Plautius, who had been a suffect consul in AD 29, conquered Britain in AD 43 and received an ovatio for this in 47 . The young Aulus Plautius whom Nero had executed was possibly her son.

Pomponia is best known for Tacitus ' report , according to which she was accused in 57 of " superstitionis externae rea", the exercise of a foreign superstition. In the same context, Tacitus mentions that Pomponia had mourned for forty years after the death of her friend or distant relative Julia , the daughter of the younger Drusus, who was executed in 43 at the instigation of Messalina . Because women in ancient Rome were under the jurisdiction of their pater familias , the case was referred to their husband, who acquitted them.

Since the term “superstitio” was also used for the emerging Christianity since Nero , it was concluded that Pomponia was a Christian. She would be the first known Christian from a senatorial family . Giovanni Battista de Rossi identified her as Saint Lucina . According to the Liber Pontificalis, this wealthy woman had Pope Saint Cornelius buried in a crypt on her land . Rossi thought he could recognize this burial place by means of grave inscriptions in the oldest part of the Calixtus catacomb he discovered . Peter Lampe interprets her allegedly decades of mourning as the early Christian lifestyle, withdrawn from public and private amusement. Accordingly, Pomponia would have successfully kept her Christian faith secret from her peers. Rather, her behavior, which also represented a snub to the emperor Claudius , who had allowed his cousin to be executed, did her credit. Wandinger argues that Pomponia's mourning during the absence of her husband in 43–47 AD - not out of personal piety - could have served as protection from the machinations of Messalina; for a long time, however, the mourning for a distant relative was very unusual. In the later years Pomponia was therefore most likely a Christian with the approval of her husband.

Literary representation

In the novel Quo vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz , Pomponia and Plautius appear as the adoptive parents of the main character, the young Christian Lygia.

literature

  • Peter Lampe: The urban Roman Christians in the first two centuries: Studies on social history . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1989, especially pp. 164-165.
  • Corbinian Wandinger: Pomponia Graecina Tac. Ann. XIII. 32 . Munich 1873 ( archive.org ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto ("Letters from the Pontus") 1, 6; 2, 6; 4, 9
  2. ^ Suetonius : Nero 35, 4
  3. ^ Tacitus: Annales 13, 32
  4. ↑ See e.g. B. Tacitus: Annales 15, 44; Suetonius: Nero 16, 2
  5. ^ Lamp: The urban Roman Christians. P. 296.
  6. ^ Giovanni Battista de Rossi: La Roma sotterranea cristiana. Volume II, Rome 1864, p. 282.
  7. ^ Lamp: The urban Roman Christians. P. 165.
  8. ^ Tacitus: Annales 13:33
  9. ^ Wandinger: Pomponia Graecina. Pp. 40-42.
  10. ^ Wandinger: Pomponia Graecina. P. 66f.
personal data
SURNAME Pomponia Graecina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graecina, Pomponia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman Christian and wife of Aulus Plautius
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century
DATE OF DEATH after 83