Roman women (and other topics in

social history)
 Questions

Citation issues!
 Correct citations: Livy 34.4; Livy 39.8; Senatus Consultum
de Baccanalibus


“Women didn’t truly acquire any form of rights until
somewhat recently, however in the past female religious
figures, nuns, teachers, saints, etc. have acquired significant
respect and influence, did this occur in Rome as well?”

“In Sparta, which was also a military-heavy country, women
were treated equally as men (except for voting rights)[...]
How come Rome did not have the same attitude towards
women? “
 Questions
 “It is interesting to see how ‘Roman values’ changed over time. A lot of
times, when Rome comes into mind, one thinks of the excessive
hedonism of the Late Empire, to which the Bacchanalia seems
comparatively tame.”
 “The decree states that there cannot be a place for festivals of
Bacchus to be held unless those who wish for a festival to be held talk
to the senate and are granted permission to hold it (Livy 39.20). Was
anyone ever granted permission to hold such a festival? If so, was the
festival the same as those before or different? Were there certain
requirements the Senate had to see fulfilled to grant the festival goers
permission? What were they?”
 “Was the seized property sold by the state and did the magistrates
take advantage of the properties for their personal gains?”
 “How does income work? They talk about women’s lavish spendings,
but where do they get the money from?”
Roman women (and other topics in
social history)
 Women:
sources
• How to get at women’s
history?
• (Women writers)
• Male writers who
include women
“To the spirits of the dead: for Volusia
• Artistic depictions Romana, pious mother (lived 70 years).
Bononius Syntrophes and Volusius
• Inscriptions Asclepiades made [this monument] for
themselves and their relatives. 8 feet in
• Much more evidence depth, 9 feet in frontage [i.e, the size of
for imperial period burial plot]”

• Class issues
 Women writers
• Literacy among women?
• Sulpicia, Augustan period
• Elegiac poetry
 Family life and marriage
• Patria potestas
• Concept: production of children
and/or financial transaction
(dowry)
• Minimum age: 12 for women, 14
for men
• Average age at first marriage
– Elite: men around 20, women in
their teens
– Sub-elite: men in late 20s/early
30s, women in their late teens
 Manus
• Literally, ‘hand’
• Theoretical power of head of
household over everyone in it
• Three ways for a woman to come
under her husband’s manus:
confarreatio, coemptio, usus
• Most women were not under their
husband’s manus by the Late Republic
– remained part of father’s family
• Theoretical rights vs independence in
practice
• ‘Right of three children’ in Augustan
period
• Divorce
 Women’s legal position
Gaius, Institutes:
“(144) Where the head of a family has children in his power he is allowed to appoint
guardians for them by will. That is, for males while under puberty but for females
however old they are, even when they are married. For it was the wish of the old
lawyers that women, even those of full age, should be in guardianship as being
scatterbrained. (145) And so if someone appoints a guardian in his will for his son and
his daughter and both of them reach puberty, the son ceases to have a guardian but
the daughter still continues in guardianship. It is only under the Julian and Papian-
Poppaean Acts that women are released from guardianship by the privilege of
children. We speak, however, with the exception of the Vestal Virgins, whom even the
old lawyers wished to be free of restraint in recognition of their priesthood; this is also
provided in the Twelve Tables. [….] (190) There seems, on the other hand, to have
been no very worthwhile reason why women who have reached the age of maturity
should be in guardianship; for the argument which is commonly believed, that because
they are scatterbrained they are frequently subject to deception and that it was
proper for them to be under guardians' authority, seems to be specious rather than
true. For women of full age deal with their own affairs for themselves, and while in
certain instances that guardian interposes his authorisation for form's sake, he is often
compelled by the praetor to give authorisation, even against his wishes.”
 Women in public
• Vestal Virgins
• Women-only religious
ceremonies
• Presence at meals
• Presence at festivals,
entertainment and in
public spaces
• Presence at baths
• Involvement of lower-
class women in work
 Demography
• Very difficult to do – estimates
based on existing funerary
data, skeletons; comparison to
other better-studied societies
• Chance of a child surviving to
the age of 5 – a little more
than 50%
• High rates of maternal “Cosconia Callityche lived 18
years; she was given over to
mortality death on the day before the
• Replacement birth rates would Ides of July [July 14]; she was
buried on the Ides [July 15]
be somewhere 6-9 children when Iullus Antonius and
per surviving woman [Fabius Maximus] Africanus
were consuls [10 BC].”
• Lower in upper classes
 Medicine and birth control
• Midwives, including some
quotations
• Infanticide, exposure
• Some forms of birth control?
• Abortion: negative perception
but present in medical texts,
indications it was a concern of
women’s medical practices
– Why negative? Given
presence of infanticide in
culture, most likely danger to
the pregnant person
 Attitudes towards women
Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus (2nd c BCE, speech read out by Augustus):
“If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that
nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with
them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation
rather than for our temporary pleasure.”

Musonius Rufus, Stoic philosopher (1st c CE):

“When he was asked whether women ought to study philosophy, he began to answer
the question approximately as follows. Women have received from the gods the same
ability to reason that men have. We men employ reasoning in our relations with
others and so far as possible in everything we do, whether it is good or bad, or noble
or shameful. Likewise women have the same senses as men, sight, hearing, smell, and
all the rest. Likewise each has the same parts of the body, and neither sex has more
than the other. In addition, it is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural
inclination towards virtue, but women also. Women are pleased no less than men by
noble and just deeds, and reject the opposite of such actions. Since that is so, why is it
appropriate for men to seek out and examine how they might live well, that is, to
practise philosophy, but not women? Is it fitting for men to be good, but not women?”
 Women as exempla in Roman
history/myth
• Lucretia
• Cloelia
 Rescues hostages in
early Livy
• Claudia Quinta
 Transported Magna
Mater
 Women in the Late Republic
• Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi
 Writing?
 Cultural pursuits?
• Women of Cicero’s family –
Terentia, Tullia
• Clodia (Metelli)
 Cicero’s Pro Caelio
 Catullus?
• Fulvia
 Conclusions

• Difficulty recovering
women’s experiences
• Wide variety of
experiences based on
class and location