Voice in the Wind: An Interlude with Decimus and Phoebe

Voice in the Wind, pp. 212-215

I want to start by quoting a comment from last week’s section:

In the text, Marcus shows up and orders everyone around and says that all Claudius’s money is now the Valerians’. Since Rivers made such a BIG DEAL about the special kind of marriage Julia had, I feel compelled to point out that in this special kind of marriage, Julia’s and Claudius’s property would NOT go to the Valerians. Since Julia is in the complete legal power of her husband, her and his property stays in the husband’s family. Claudius’s brother would became her guardian, or his adult son if he had one by his first marriage. If he was completely alone in the world or didn’t like his relatives, he would appoint a guardian for Julia and manager of the property in his will. This could theoretically be Decimus, but could just as easily be a more distant relative, a friend, or a trusted freed slave. He could even specify that Julia could choose her own guardian…

In evangelical culture, when a woman marries she passes from the headship of her father to the headship of her husband. However, by 70 A.D., when this book is set, this is not how Roman marriage typically occurred. Most commonly, marriage was “sine manu,” meaning that the woman remained under her father’s guardianship even after she married. Rivers did not want this, and had Julia married “cum manu,” such that she passed from her father’s guardianship to her husband’s.

Rivers seems to have grouped Roman marriage into “easy divorce” and “no divorce” without considering how the type of marriage effected where Julia would go after her husband’s death. Julia would have been able to inherit from her husband under a “cum manu” marriage, as part of his family, but she would not have transferred back to her father’s guardianship as she had legally become part of her husband’s family. Rivers never addresses this, treating it as a matter of course that Julia would inherit all of her husband’s property, and that her father and brother would take financial control of that property.

This chapter opens with Decimus musing:

Why had he worked so hard all these years? To what purpose? His life seemed so futile, his accomplishments empty.

Decimus is approaching the world the way evangelicals believe all nonbelievers do—he feels a meaningless, empty void. Do you know what is starting to bother me? In Roman society, there was religion and there was philosophy. A man like Decimus would have worshipped certain gods, but, had he felt need for a more comprehensive sense of meaning, he likely would have also adopted a philosophy. It is a common evangelical assumption that non-Christian societies do not offer people meaning, leaving them with a void, but it is simply not accurate. Decimus would have had a variety of philosophical traditions to draw from to find purpose and meaning even in the face of his children turning out differently than he had intended.

At this point Rivers describes the latest “confrontation” between Decimus and Julia:

Phoebe lowered her head, remembering the latest confrontation between Julia and Decimus. Julia had wanted to attend the games, and Decimus had refused permission, reminding her that she was in mourning for Claudius. The ensuing scene had shocked Phoebe as much as Decimus. Julia had cried out that she didn’t care about Claudius, and why should she mourn a fool who couldn’t sit a horse? Decimus had slapped her, and Julia stood for a moment in stunned silence, staring at him. Then her expression had altered so dramatically that she was scarcely recognizable. It was as though thwarting her desires had roused some dark presence within her, and her eyes had burned with such wild fury that Phoebe was afraid.

“It’s your fault Claudius is dead,” Julia hissed at her father. “You mourn him, for I will not. I’m glad he’s dead. Do you hear me? I rejoice that I’m free of him. By the gods, I’d like to be free of you as well!” She ran from the peristyle and remained in her chambers for the rest of the morning.

Oh good god. It’s interesting that, in Pheobe’s telling, Julia asked “why she should mourn a fool who couldn’t sit on a horse.” This is Rivers trying to make Julia, a child bride who endured forced marriage and rape, appear selfish and unsympathetic. There’s something else here as well, though. As we shall see going forward, Pheobe’s interpretation and memory of Julia’s actions is not always trustworthy or accurate, though I’m not sure how conscious Rivers is of this—or of how this willingness to view Julia through an overly negative lens makes Pheobe’s description of outbursts like this untrustworthy.

At this point, Decimus slapped Julia. By the way, I had thought Julia might be as old as 17 at this point, but Rivers later reveals that Marcus is only 23, only one year older than he was at the beginning of the book. That makes Julia 15, approaching 16. Consider what Julia has been through already. She was forcibly married to a 50-year-old man who regularly raped her and, when she turned out not to be a clone of his ex-wife, ignored her needs completely. After he died in a freak accident, Julia spent three days in a panic, blaming herself for the accident and afraid his servants would poison her for what she had done. Now she is back in the home of the same father her forced her into a child marriage, and on the receiving end of domestic violence at his hands.

As for Julia’s “I’m glad he’s dead” outburst, can we all take a moment to remember that we’re talking about the middle aged man she was forced to marry, as a 15-year-old child, and who regularly raped her? Of course she’s glad he’s dead! Rivers is not doing a very good job of making Julia unsympathetic. Rivers is writing Julia as a “rebellious” and “wayward” teen, but all I can read is a traumatized young girl who has already endured a child marriage and now faces domestic violence at the hands of her controlling and abusive father. Julia wants out, wants freedom—and it’s no wonder.

In thinking about Julia’s outburst, Decimus concludes that Julia hates him:

She hated him, hated him enough to wish him dead. It was an appalling realization that the child he had created and loved so much held in contempt both him and all he held sacred.

This is manifestly not true. Decimus has not taken the time to even try to get to know his daughter. What’s more interesting is to ask whether Rivers thinks this is true. Rivers believes the second sentence is true, that Julia holds Decimus’ values in contempt. Does she believe it is true, also, that Julia wishes Decimus dead? We’ll come back to this in a minute.

Decimus tells Phoebe that Marcus and Julia are “opposed to all we believe in” and wonders what “has happened to virtue and honor and ideals.” He declares that Marcus and Julia “haven’t the smallest fiber of moral character.”

“I am afraid for them, Phoebe. What happens to a society when all restraints are removed. I see our children consumed with watching blood be spilled in the arena. I see them seeking an unending diet of sensual pleasure. Where does it all lead? How can intemperate minds be free when they’re slaves to their own passions?”

Again, here is the missed opportunity to discuss various philosophical schools, because the Romans did have answers to these questions. In Rivers’ hands, Decimus is only asking these questions because he’s a proto-Christian who will, over the course of the book, be converted, but in actual reality many Romans asked these questions, and formed a variety of satisfactory (though often very different) answers. Decimus seems to be musing in a historical vacuum.

Phoebe, Good Wife that she is, tries to talk Decimus down, while not disagreeing with him. Phoebe doesn’t say much of anything in this section, except to urge Decimus not to “judge them so harshly” and to lay the blame on “the world they live in.”

He and Phoebe wandered along the pathway, passing a young couple worshiping Eros beneath a flowering tree. A little farther along two men were kissing on a bench. Decimus’ countenance was rigid with revulsion. Greek influence permeated Roman society, encouraging homosexuality and making it acceptable. While Decimus didn’t condemn the behavior, he didn’t want his face rubbed in it, either.

Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display.

What had happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences?

This passage is amazing. It’s just so very evangelical, transplanted into Ancient Rome virtually without revision. There’s the claim that Decimus doesn’t condemn homosexual behavior, he simply doesn’t want his face “rubbed in” it, combined with the statement that “those with moral virtues” could no longer roam in public “without having to witness a revolting display.” It is good, upstanding citizens who don’t want to have to watch two men kissing who are the true victims here. Notice that Decimus didn’t have a problem with the “young couple worshiping Eros beneath a flowering tree”—straight kissing is fine, gay kissing is revolting. But Decimus totally doesn’t condemn the behavior! Um, right.

In addition to mapping evangelical rhetoric onto Decimus, Rivers also maps modern same-sex relations onto Ancient Rome. This is not how it works. Several years ago I took a graduate seminar on the history of sex and sexuality. It was beyond fascinating. We tend to assume that our ideas about sex, marriage, and sexuality are universal and in some sense unchanging, but this is not at all the case. Same-sex relations existed in Ancient Rome, yes. However, these relations did not tend to occur between two equal adult male partners.

As I am not an expert on the history of sex or on sex in Ancient Rome, I am not going to try to sort through sources and paint a comprehensive picture of same-sex relations in Ancient Rome. My understanding is that same-sex relations tended to occur between a freeborn male and a youth who was also a slave or prostitute. At the time, the important thing, for a freeborn male, was to be in the dominant position—for sex to be penetrative—and for a freeborn male to consent to being in the woman’s position—i.e. being penetrated—would have been shameful. It is in part for this reason that same-sex relations would not typically have taken place between two equal partners, as today.

This section has only lessened what little sympathy I had for Decimus. And really, I didn’t have much. One of the most puzzling things about this book is considering where we are expected to show sympathy—and how Rivers believes she is portraying her characters. I am fairly certain Decimus and Phoebe are supposed to be sympathetic while Julia is not. I read this book as a teen, and I remember feeling drawn to Hadassah and royally annoyed by Julia. On this read-through, though, I have little but sympathy for Julia. For me, she has become the center of this book, the heroine in a twisted tragedy, struggling against the author for control of her narrative—and her life.

Next week, Julia seizes that control.