Women in ancient Rome

The educated and well-traveled Vibia Sabina (c. 136 AD) was a grand-niece of the emperor Trajan and became the wife of his successor Hadrian. [1]

Freeborn women in ancient Rome were citizens (cives),[2] but could not vote or hold political office.[3] Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct political power, those from wealthy or powerful families could and did exert influence through private negotiations.[4] Exceptional women who left an undeniable mark on history include Lucretia and Claudia Quinta, whose stories took on mythic significance; fierce Republican-era women such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Fulvia, who commanded an army and issued coins bearing her image; women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, most prominently Livia (58 BC – AD 29) and Agrippina the Younger (15–59 AD), who contributed to the formation of Imperial mores; and the empress Helena (c.250–330 AD), a driving force in promoting Christianity.[5]

As is the case with male members of society, elite women and their politically significant deeds eclipse those of lower status in the historical record. Inscriptions and especially epitaphs document the names of a wide range of women throughout the Roman Empire, but often tell little else about them. Some vivid snapshots of daily life are preserved in Latin literary genres such as comedy, satire, and poetry, particularly the poems of Catullus and Ovid, which offer glimpses of women in Roman dining rooms and boudoirs, at sporting and theatrical events, shopping, putting on makeup, practicing magic, worrying about pregnancy—all, however, through male eyes.[6] The published letters of Cicero, for instance, reveal informally how the self-proclaimed great man interacted on the domestic front with his wife Terentia and daughter Tullia, as his speeches demonstrate through disparagement the various ways Roman women could enjoy a free-spirited sexual and social life.[7]

The one major public role reserved solely for women was in the sphere of religion: the priestly office of the Vestals. Forbidden from marriage or sex for a period of thirty years, the Vestals devoted themselves to the study and correct observance of rituals which were deemed necessary for the security and survival of Rome but which could not be performed by the male colleges of priests.[8]

  1. ^ Jasper Burns, "Sabina," in Great Women of Imperial Rome: Mothers and Wives of the Caesars (Routledge, 2007), pp. 124–140.
  2. ^ The form of Roman marriage called conubium, for instance, requires that both spouses be citizens; like men from towns granted civitas sine suffragio, women (at least those eligible for conubium) were citizens without suffrage. The legal status of a mother as a citizen affected her son's citizenship. All Roman citizens recognized as such by law did not hold equal rights and privileges, particularly in regard to holding high office. See A Casebook on Roman Family Law following, and A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 211 and 268 (on male citizenship as it relates to marrying citizen women) et passim. ("children born of two Roman citizens") indicates that a Roman woman was regarded as having citizen status, in specific contrast to a peregrina.
  3. ^ Bruce W. Frier and Thomas A.J. McGinn, A Casebook on Roman Family Law (Oxford University Press: American Philological Association, 2004), pp. 31–32, 457, et passim.
  4. ^ Kristina Milnor, "Women in Roman Historiography," in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 278; Ann Ellis Hanson, "The Restructuring of Female Physiology at Rome," in Les écoles médicales à Rome: Actes du 2ème Colloque international sur les textes médicaux latins antiques, Lausanne, septembre 1986 (Université de Nantes, 1991), p. 256.
  5. ^ Unless otherwise noted, this introductory overview is based on Beryl Rawson, "Finding Roman Women," in A Companion to the Roman Republic (Blackwell, 2010), p. 325.
  6. ^ Kelly Olson, "The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl," in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 139.
  7. ^ In reference to his character assassination of the notorious Clodia; see Pro Caelio.
  8. ^ For an extensive modern consideration of the Vestals, see Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (Routledge, 1998).