The Trial of Pomponia Graecina, A.D. 57
Pomponia Graecina, a woman of high rank (the wife of Aulus Plautius, who, as I have mentioned, was granted an ovation for his British campaign), was accused of foreign superstition and handed over to her husband for trial. He followed ancient precedent in hearing a case which involved his wife’s legal status and her honor in the presence of members of the family, and pronounced her innocent. Pomponia’s long life was passed in unbroken sadness; for, after the death of Julia, Drusus’s daughter, she lived forty years in the dress of mourning with only sorrow in her heart. This escaped punishment in Claudius’s reign, and thereafter was turned to her glory.
Annales, xiii. 32
[The surmise that the 'foreign superstition' was Christianity is supported by third-century Christian inscriptions commemorating the members of the gens Pomponia. And 'the retirements and sobriety of a Christian might well appear a kind of perpetual mourning to the dissolute society of the Neronian period' (Furneaux, Tac. Ann. ad. loc.).]
Documents of the Christian Church, Ed. Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 1961.
Pomponia Graecina, a woman of high rank (the wife of Aulus Plautius, who, as I have mentioned, was granted an ovation for his British campaign), was accused of foreign superstition and handed over to her husband for trial. He followed ancient precedent in hearing a case which involved his wife’s legal status and her honor in the presence of members of the family, and pronounced her innocent. Pomponia’s long life was passed in unbroken sadness; for, after the death of Julia, Drusus’s daughter, she lived forty years in the dress of mourning with only sorrow in her heart. This escaped punishment in Claudius’s reign, and thereafter was turned to her glory.
Annales, xiii. 32
[The surmise that the 'foreign superstition' was Christianity is supported by third-century Christian inscriptions commemorating the members of the gens Pomponia. And 'the retirements and sobriety of a Christian might well appear a kind of perpetual mourning to the dissolute society of the Neronian period' (Furneaux, Tac. Ann. ad. loc.).]
Documents of the Christian Church, Ed. Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 1961.
Last edited: