ROMAN WOMEN

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ROMAN WOMEN

• Valeria Arpa
• Christina Bazzo
• Lilianna Colella
• Ross Colins
• Bruna Gaglioreli

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Cornelia

• " In the old days, every child born to a
  respectable mother was brought up not in the room
  of a bought nurse but at his mother's knee. It
  was her particular honor to care for the home and
  serve her childrenand no one dared do or say
  anything improper in front of her. She supervised
  not only the boys' studies but also their
  recreation and games with piety and modesty.
  Thus, tradition has it, Cornelia, mother of the
  Gracchi, Aurelia, mother of Julius Caesar, and
  Atia, mother of Augustus, brought up their sons
  and produced princes. " 
• Tacitus, Dialogue 28, quoted in Women's Life in
  Greece and Rome, Lefkowitz,Fant, 191

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Women as Slaves
Forty percent of the Italian peninsular
population was enslaved. Wealthy women
enjoyed hundreds of slaves, while poorer
women would only have a few slaves.
Slaves would carry out domestic duties,
entertaining and creating supplement
income. Women were often spared some of the
worst physical horrors of Roman slavery,
including the mortal dangers of mines and
galleys.
A female slave could, in time, save up the
modest amounts paid to her to the point of
purchasing her own freedom, and sometimes the
freedom of a husband or son. Slave-status
derived from the mother thus the children of
a female slave were also enslaved. Roman
society was, however, somewhat flexible in
the ability to purchase individual freedom
and then, over time, in the status of
children and grandchildren to rise above the
freedwoman's limitations and even attain rank
and wealth.
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Women in Trade

• Women worked with men in innumerable trades as
  Romans by the tens of thousands moved to the
  cities throughout Italy in taverns, poultry
  shops (both the cashier and the assistant and
  their stock, above), laundries and fuller-shops.
  
• The poor lived crowded into insulae, multistory
  housing blocks which were apparently frequently
  overcrowded and usually ramshackle. Often the
  lower stories operated small shops. The daily
  danger of fires (the Great Fire of Nero's reign
  was only one of dozens of Roman conflagrations
  throughout the Empire) could wipe out a family's
  possessions and its small business in one blaze.

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Imperial Women

• Our perceptions of Imperial women are also
  influenced by the fact that, for hundreds of
  years in the West, the alleged "decadence" of
  Imperial Rome has created its own evergreen
  tradition, in which women, as well as men, were
  sexually perverse and morally bankrupt. The more
  sensational tales of historians such as Plutarch
  and Suetonius and legends of women like Messalina
  and Agrippina have created the image of female
  depravity that artists have delighted to portray
  (such as Couture's painting in which the
  "abandoned" woman is the centerpiece of the
  painting, embodying Rome's fall from moral
  grace.) Obviously the Romans themselves viewed
  the increasing emancipation of their women with
  deep and abiding doubts.

The Romans of the Decadence, Couture, 1847.
Image courtesy of Thomas Couture.
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Tablets from Murecine, near Pompeii

• The first were excavated in 1875-6 from the
  house of the banker Lucius Caecilius Jucundus. A
  cabinet with 154 tablets comprising receipts for
  various payments and colonial taxes was found in
  a room at the back of the inner courtyard.
  Financial activities had been recorded up to the
  year of the earthquake.

• Here is one from AD 56
• Umbricia Januaria declares that she has received
  from Lucius Caecilius Jucundus 11,039 sesterces,
  which sum came into the hands of Lucius Caecilius
  Jucundus by agreement as the proceeds of an
  auction sale for Umbricia Januaria, the
  commission due him having been deducted. Done at
  Pompeii, on the 12th of December, in the
  consulship of Lucius Duvius and Publius Clodius.

The waxed tablets of the archive of the Sulpicii
were found in 1959 at Murecine, about 600 metres
(1,970 feet) from one of Pompeii's gates,
during the construction of a highway. The texts,
170 of which have been published, range in date
from AD 26 to 61, and originated with the
Sulpicii firm of financiers, all of whom were
freedmen. They lent huge sums either as money
lenders or as bankers to local businessmen.
The building-complex at Murecine in AD 79. The
tablets were found in a wicker basket in
triclinium B (De Simone and Ciro Nappo 2000)
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Bibliography Apuleius, The Golden Ass,
translated by P.G. Walsh, Oxford University
Press. Cicero, Murder Trials, translated by
Michael Grant, Penguin. London, England,
1975 Cross, Suzanne. Feminae Romanae The
Women of Ancient Rome (2001-2004). 5 Mar. 2004
http//www.dominae.fws1.com/Influence/Index.htm/
Jones, Peter and Sidwell, Keith, ed., The World
of Rome An Introduction to Roman Culture.
Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom,
1997 Muller. Widows in a Slave Society.
Chapter 4 (unpublished) Pliny, The Letters of
the Younger Pliny, translated by Betty Radice,
Penguin. London, England, 1963 Plutarch, Fall
of the Roman Republic, translated by Rex Warner,
Penguin. London, England, 1958 Plutarch,
Marriage Advice (Moralia) 138A-146A (abridged)
From LCL in Roman Civilization The Empire, ed.
Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, New
York Columbia University Press,
p.344-45 Propertius, Elegies book IV, no. 11
in Roman Civilization The Empire, ed. Naphtali
Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, New York Columbia
University Press, p. 351
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