Umbricia Fortunata

Last updated
Umbricia Fortunata
Born1st century AD
Died79 AD [ citation needed ]
Pompeii
OccupationBusinesswomen (garum producer)

Umbricia Fortunata (1st century AD) was a businesswoman known from the Roman city of Pompeii. She produced the popular seasoning garum, a fermented fish sauce. [1]

Life and career

Few details of Umbricia Fortunata's life can be established with any certainty, however, she is known from three tituli picti on the jars of urceus type. [2] In Latin, she was a liquaminarium (from the generic Latin term, liquamen for fish sauces) by trade. [3]

She was an employee of Umbricius Scarus, a major producer of garum in Pompeii. [4] Scaurus owned a number of workshops in Pompeii, run by employed managers, whose names and roles are identified in inscriptions found on urcei , vessels that contained the sauce. One of these workshops was managed by Umbricia Fortunata. [5] She is an excellent example of a Roman woman entrusted to manage the business of another.

Umbricia Fortunata was possibly Scaurus's freedwoman. It has been established that Umbricius Scarus normally employed his freedmen to manage his workshops, and the cognomen Fortunata, considered as cognomen servile, also makes this likely. [6] However, some scholars have pointed out that she may also have been the Pompeian producer's relative — possibly his wife or sister. [7]

She is one of several businesswomen identified in ancient Pompeii, contributing to information about Roman businesswomen; other examples of Pompeii businesswomen mentioned alongside her are Eumachia, Julia Felix, the freedwoman trader Naevoleia Tyche and the freedwomen moneylenders Poppaea Note and Dicidia Margaris. Recent scholarship, notably work by Piotr Berdowski of the University of Rzeszów, has identified a fuller range of trades and commercial activities involving businesswomen, including brick and tile production, pottery and ceramics, food production, cloth manufacture, commerce and finance. [7]

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Aulus Umbricis Scaurus was a Pompeiian manufacturer-merchant, known for the production of garum and liquamen, a staple of Roman cuisine. He was active in Pompeii between c. 25-35 CE and 79 CE. Scholars believe that A. Umbricius Scaurus was Pompeii's leading fish sauce manufacturer. His products were traded across the Mediterranean in the first century.

The gens Umbricia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but they had achieved senatorial rank by the second century. The most famous of the Umbricii are probably the haruspex Gaius Umbricius Melior, who served the emperors of the middle first century, and Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, a merchant of Pompeii whose fish sauces were widely distributed. Quintus Umbricius Proculus was a second-century governor of Hispania Citerior. Many other Umbricii are known from inscriptions.

References

  1. Dobbins, J. J. and Foss P. W., The World of Pompeii, Routledge: London and New York, 2008
  2. Berdowski, Piotr (2008). "Roman Businesswomen. I: The case of the producers and distributors of garum in Pompeii". Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia (3): 251–271. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
  3. Corcoran, T.H., "Roman Fish Sauces", The Classical Journal, Vol. 58, No. 5 (Feb., 1963), pp 204-210, Online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3295259
  4. Berdowski, P., "Roman Businesswomen. I: The case of the producers and distributors of garum in Pompei", Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia, tom 3, 2008, pp 251-272 Online: http://www.archeologia.univ.rzeszow.pl/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/analecta_3/08_Berdowski.pdf
  5. Curtis, R.I., Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1991, p. 92; Corcoran, T.H., "Roman Fish Sauces", The Classical Journal, Vol. 58, No. 5, 1963, pp. 204-210
  6. Cooley, A.E. & Cooley, M.G.L., Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook, Routledge, 2013, p. 250
  7. 1 2 Berdowski, P., "Some remarks on the economic activity of women in the Roman Empire: a research problem", in P. Berdowski, B. Blahaczek (eds), Haec mihi in animis vestris templa: Studia Classica in Memory of Professor Lesław Morawiecki, Rzeszów, 2007, pp 283-298