WOMEN IN BUSINESS?

In the rich material from the Archive of the Sulpicii, twenty-three tablets (24%) record legal transactions performed by women. This simple statistic already hints at the importance of women in the business life of Puteoli.

Serva, liberta, domina: our protagonists come from very different seg­ments of the population. Some of them are slaves and objects of contracts, like Fortunata in TPSulp. 90-3: Marcia Aucta, her owner, pledged her for a debt and the creditor put her up for auction after the debt fell due. We are well informed about this auction, for the announcement of it is recorded in several tablets. There are also several freedwomen contracting their own business with the Sulpicii. A good example is Patulcia Erotis, a liberta acting as domina auctionis (owner of the merchandise sold by the auctioneer).^[392] In the preserved document, Patulcia confirms that she has received 19,500 sestertii, the auction price for an unknown article owned by her (unfortu­nately the text is incomplete). This was a significant amount at that time: it could have been the price of 40 tons of grain or ten to forty slaves on the market (depending on their quality).^[393] A further example of a freedwoman in business is a certain Marcia Fausta taking a loan of 2,000 sestertii from the Sulpicii.^[394]

A freeborn lady, Caesia Priscilla (in TPSulp. 58 and 71), seems to have belonged to the upper-middle class of Puteoli. Her credit with the bank was remarkable too: her financial transactions (loans, remittances, deposits) amounted to 24,000 sestertii.

Finally, there were also distinguished ladies of high birth involved in Puteoli business life: Domitia Lepida and Lollia Saturnina, representatives of the Roman senatorial aristocracy, seem to be the most prominent of them.

Domitia was the owner of admired estates, among them a famous villa at Baiae and Ravenna with fishponds, and probably the horti Domitiae across the Tiber in Rome. She also owned some praedia (plots of land) in Puteoli, on which were built grain storehouses financed by private investors. TPSulp. 46 records the rent of a stall in this very storehouse (locatio conductio). Another tablet, TPSulp. 79, preserves a pledge of grain in a storehouse with Domitia’s name mentioned again as the owner of the location.

The wording of the documents makes it clear that the aristocratic Domitia Lepida was only the owner of the plots. It is very likely that an investor (who is of no consequence in this context) built storehouses on the grounds to let to tradesmen. The plot belonged further to Domitia Lepida who might have had a share in the profit.^[399] Nevertheless, neither Domitia herself nor one of her dependants took part in the business drawn up in the documents cited above. Her name (as owner of the plot) served merely for the correct identification of the location.

The other lady of high birth mentioned in the sources was Lollia Saturnina, the sister of the more famous Lollia Paulina, who was the wife of the Emperor Gaius (Caligula).^[400] Lollia Saturnina was married to D. Valerius Asiaticus, who also owned a pretty villa at Baiae.

Has Lollius perhaps been conducting some business on behalf of Lollia, acting as her agent, procurator? It is possible; then, for some reason, he was unable to carry through some necessary payment (for a debt which he incurred in his own name, but could recover from her later), so Lollia is having to intervene and pay directly, since, if Lollius was her mandatary, she was ultimately liable to provide the money to carry out the deal. However, given the evidence for Lollius' previous business difficulties and shaky credit rating, it is perhaps more likely that as his patroness she is helping out a needy client.^[402]

I do not agree with this reading of this short legal document. Gardner's interpretation seems rather hypothetical and does not convince. It seems more likely that the freedman Marcus Lollius Philippus maintained good connections with the household and staff of his former owner. The business connections might have remained despite the change of legal status. It is very likely that M. Lollius Philippus and Gnostus (who was a slave of Lollia Saturnina) were involved in some type of common business (Gnostus prob­ably using his peculium). The document delivers a good example of mixed activities between freedmen and their former ‘families'. Gnostus might have paid back a debt of M. Lollius Philippus to the bank of the Sulpicii - such money transactions were not rare and were done to avoid the disadvan­tages of cash payments. Lollia Saturnina, the high-born lady, might have had nothing to do with the whole affair - I do not see any evidence for a necessary personal involvement on her side.

As we see, the tablets of Puteoli indicate that members of the emperors' families and of the household of senators were investing money through the Sulpicii.^[403] It can be supposed that the slaves and freedmen acted as interme­diaries in these financial transactions. The loans agreed in this way were - as Andreau assumed - simply money investments, because the aristocracy was interested first of all in interest-bearing investments.^[404]

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