https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/909 Entrées d’index fr 0 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/908 In the late 2nd century CE, Marcia, a “god-loving woman” and the principal concubine of the Roman Emperor Commodus, interceded with her lover to free a number of Christian prisoners who had been sentenced to slave labor in the mines of Sardinia (Hippolytus, Philosophumena, 9.2.12.). Such an act of charity and clemency might have been expected to earn her a place among the Catholic saints. On the other hand, Marcia’s patronage of a persecuted and despised minority might have led to her public execution in the Roman arena. However, Marcia was neither particularly honored by the Christians nor condemned by the Roman authorities for her actions. This devaluation of Marcia in both pagan and Christian sources reveals its own story about the nature of early church politics, the complex intrigues of an Emperor’s court at the end of the high empire, and the ability of a lowly concubine to exert political influence and change the course of Western history. mar., 14 juin 2022 12:32:19 +0200 ven., 24 févr. 2023 15:41:25 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/908 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1177 Perpetua’s Passio, a prison diary or narrative, tells the remarkable story of a young Roman Christian woman awaiting martyrdom in the arena in Carthage. This article focuses on the gender ambiguities and fluctuations in the Passio, both in language and in narrative structure. With a particular focus on Perpetua’s fourth vision, in which she “becomes male” (masculus), the article explores the gendered language of the text, the implications of Perpetua’s brief transformation into a male body, the different gender choices made by Perpetua and by her editor, and the role that gender plays as a structuring narratological device. lun., 20 juin 2022 11:47:26 +0200 lun., 27 juin 2022 15:41:08 +0200 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1177