She was a contemporary of great women such as Aurelia and Acia who influenced the education of their children, just like Cornelia did a century before. But her profile corresponds more to that of Fulvia or Servilia, women who knew how to pull the strings in politics, and also with that of Sulpicia, who freely expressed her feelings.
Reseña
Claudia, born ca. 95 BC in a patrician family, took the plebeian name of Clodia. She was a woman of strong personality and exquisite beauty who received a good education. She married Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer at the age of 18, but she lived away from conventions. The poet Catullus, a jilted lover, viciously attacked her in his verses and Cicero, a political enemy of her brother Clodius, defamed her, accusing her of being a courtesan, incestuous and a murderer. Because she defended her freedom, she was ahead of her time and was erased from history.
España > Cultura Clásica > 3º ESO > Raíces clásicas del mundo actual. Vida cotidiana
Justificaciones
A wealthy and educated woman.
She showed her political views.
She went one step further with the role assigned to midwives and, consequently, was humiliated and silenced.
Biografía
A woman of strong personality and exquisite beauty, born ca. 95 BC, a troubled era marked by strong political disputes in a dying republic. Clodia did not abide by the rules of conduct dictated to midwives. She had her own ideas about how she wanted to live and she would not be persuaded otherwise. Married at the age of 18 to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, she came to a kind of cordial understanding whereby each one enjoyed their own space. Surely Clodia – the “plebeian” form of her patrician name, Claudia, – would not have left any significant mark of her passage through the world had it not been for a series of unfavorable circumstances for her. The first one, arousing the love of a young poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus. He gave her the name of Lesbia, dedicated beautiful verses to her but when she became a widower and things did not turn out as he expected, he turned against Clodia and attacked her with fury in his verses, giving a terrible and extremely unfair image of her. On the other hand, the problematic atmosphere of the moment also affected her: being very close to her brother Clodio, his political enemies used her as a weapon against him. For this purpose, Cicero, one of his fiercest detractors, used all his skill. Clodia's drama was not only having to suffer in her flesh all that defamation and enduring it daily; the injustice has lasted for centuries since both the poems of Catullus and the speeches of Cicero have passed through two millennia without being questioned as far as it is concerned. Thus, Clodia, for defending her own freedom, for being ahead of her time and living without the restraints to which other women were subjected, suffered a brutal punishment that lasts to this day.
- López, Aurora (2004).” Lesbia, un ideal poético en la Roma de César”, en Jesús de laVilla (Ed.), Mujeres de la Antigüedad. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, pp. 141-165.
-Pavón Pilar (dir.) (2022). "Exposición Virtual: 250 mujeres de la antigua Roma" in Conditio feminae I: Marginación y visibilidad de la mujer en el Imperio Romano. University of Seville, (retrieved on 21/11/2022),<https://grupo.us.es/conditiofeminae/index.php/2022/03/01/28-clodia/>
Enfoque Didáctico
- CUC: Block Classical roots of today's world. History and socio-political evolution; Block Classical roots of today's world. Everyday life.
- Latin 4 ESO: Block The present of Latin civilisation.
-Latin Baccalaureate: Block Ancient Rome.
- History 1 ESO: Block Societies and territories, referring to Rome.