On a tile high in the roof of a temple in Pietrabbondante in Italy, there are two messages. One is in Latin and the other in the ancient language of Oscan, but in English they read:
Detfri slave of Herennius Sattius
Signed with a footprint
Amica slave of Herennius
Signed when
We were placing the tile
The women’s footprints, and these inscriptions, are the only trace that they ever existed.
Amy Richlin includes this trace in her book, Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women, because for most Roman women all we have is silence. And not just Roman women. Janina Ramirez’s new book Femina sets out to tell the history of the Middle Ages, “through”, as the subtitle puts it, “the women written out of it” — or never written in. The vast majority of people who have ever lived were illiterate and disenfranchised: they left no autographical sign of their existence and were simply not powerful or privileged enough to have their perspective represented in the documentary sources that survive. This is especially true of women.
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