page_title: Roman Charity
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Charity / History
caption_attribution_description: English: An unnamed Roman girl breastfeeds her mother who has been sentenced to death by starvation.
context_page_description: Roman Charity is the exemplary story of a woman, Pero, who secretly breastfeeds her father, Cimon, after he is incarcerated and sentenced to death by starvation.
context_section_description: The story is recorded in Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium (Nine Books of Memorable Acts and Sayings of the Ancient Romans) by the ancient Roman historian Valerius Maximus, and was presented as a great act of pietas (i.e., filial piety) and Roman honour. A painting in the Temple of Pietas depicted the scene. Additionally, wall paintings and terracotta statues from the first century excavated in Pompeii suggest that visual representations of Pero and Cimon were common, however it is difficult to say whether these existed in response to Maximus’s anecdote or preceded – inspired – his story. Among Romans, the theme had mythological echoes in Juno's breastfeeding of the adult Hercules, an Etruscan myth.
  [[Affresco romano - Pompei - Micon e Pero.jpg|Fresco from Pompeii]]Maximus’s anecdote of Pero and Cimon posits the following ekphrastic challenge: 
  “Men’s eyes are riveted in amazement when they see the painting of this act and renew the features of the long bygone incident in astonishment at the spectacle now before them, believing that in those silent outlines of limbs they see living and breathing bodies. This must needs happen to the mind also, admonished to remember things long past as though they were recent by painting, which is considerably more effective than literary memorials.”
  
  The story of Cimon is accompanied by an almost identical story recorded by Roman historian Valerius Maximus, later retold by Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), of a jailed plebeian woman who was nursed by her daughter. Reporting this to the judicial authorities the mother’s sentence is remitted. While the guard does hesitate and wonder if perhaps what he saw was against nature (an act of lesbianism), he concludes that in fact it is an example of the first law of nature, which is to love one’s own parents.
caption: Guercino, The Daughter Who Breastfeeds her Mother (c. before 1661)
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