Reading intimate partner violence in Latin controversiae

Abstract

Intimate partner violence—any behaviour within a current or former intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm—is a public health issue of global proportions. It disproportionately affects women: one in three women report having experienced a form of physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner during their life (World Health Organization 2021). So too intimate partner violence was prevalent in the Roman world. This article argues that intimate partner violence plays a significant role in Latin pedagogical exercises of the controversia, by which students came to learn persuasive oratory. It asserts that reading intimate partner violence in the controversiae provides an insight into the foundations of a ubiquitous Roman misogyny that underpins gender-based violence. It also briefly considers how education would have affected the mental outlook of an adolescent and what it meant to be educated in and with intimate partner violence.