Feminam et arma cano

This is a study of the role of gender in the literary construction of Roman identity in war-centred epic of the early Principate. I examine how gender subjectivity, gender difference and gender likeness are used in war epic as means of expressing and constructing ideas concerning Romanitas. The important historical factors are, on the one hand, the aftermath of the civil wars and, on the other, the imperial ideology and multicultural atmosphere of the Empire. These factors define the social and political atmosphere of the early Principate. In poetry of the period, they both reflect and construct the ideology of their time. Roman war-centred epic is often considered to be a masculine genre that reflects and constructs male Roman identity. This study calls into question the prevalent idea that the Subject of Roman war epic is self-evidently male, and that the genre s idea of Roman-ness is constructed exclusively through male exempla. I demonstrate that female subject position has a considerable significance in the war epics definition of Romanitas. Moreover, in the poems of Julio-Claudian and Flavian era, women are repeatedly used as both positive and negative exempla, even when it is possible to use a male exemplum instead. Femaleness is not a phenomenon that merely reflects or contradicts the ideal of male Roman-ness, but has a function of its own in the identity discourse. It is both independent of the masculinity of war epic and complementary to it.