Uncertain Beginnings: Childbirth and Risk in the Roman World

Abstract

Most Romans understood childbearing as a woman's telos, her end purpose, as well as the greatest threat to her wellbeing. This double valuation prompts questions about how Romans responded to the risks of giving birth. Mistakes, misfortunes, and interventions in the process of human generation were seen to have far-reaching consequences, reverberating for generations, altering the course of people's lives, their family history, and even the fate of an empire. In this dissertation, I examine how the risks of childbirth were constructed, understood, and mitigated in the Roman world, and how they were subject to intense debate and a variety of techniques, often sharing assumptions about the female body. The project focuses on approximately the first three centuries of the common era.

I argue that the unseen process of generation - and its risks - were often understood through analogies and metaphors drawn from phenomena in the non-human environment. This viewpoint can help us understand the variable network of actors involved in the birth process and approaches to mitigating its dangers and uncertainties. Along with the complex relationship of the maternal-fetal pair, I move between the dynamics of the birthing chamber on the micro scale to demographic trends and Roman pronatalist ideology, setting the stage for close studies of medical approaches to the risks of childbearing, how amulets were understood to disrupt and affect childbirth, and perceptions of fortune, fate, and divine intervention. The dissertation offers a multifaceted perspective on what it meant to give birth in the Roman world - a key process in the generative cycle that shaped and defined the lives of the vast majority of women living under the empire.