Perpetua: The Woman, the Martyr

Classicist Ruden (Vergil) revisits the 203 CE martyrdom of 22-year-old aristocrat and mother Vibia Perpetua, with a focus on her story’s ensuing notoriety via the publication of her diary, one of the earliest known first-person accounts authored by a woman. Perpetua’s tale comes from an early Christian text titled The Suffering of the Holy Perpetua and Felicitas, which includes Perpetua’s own “prison diary” as well as an account of her death in an arena game celebrating the emperor’s son’s birthday. Through close reading of the text, Ruden lays out what information can be discerned about Perpetua’s life—her education, her marriage—then offers some probing literary analysis of Perpetua’s writing style and her stardom, noting that “centuries before modern writers thought they were inventing it, she had the intimate literary voice down flawlessly.” This analysis includes deep reads of the religious visions Perpetua recounts in the text (“I will go through the dreams in order to show what they suggest about the dreamer”) and considerations of other versions of the story, including a “soap opera”–like retelling written in 1834. Though not every claim of Ruden’s lands—particularly not her labeling of Perpetua as “naive or melodramatic-sounding”—her jokey, colloquial interjections (she calls Perpetua the “imagined snuggle bunny of heavenly powers”) makes an ancient subject approachable. It’s a worthwhile introduction to a fascinating figure. (Sept.)