Women in Late Republican Rome

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Women in Late Republican Rome

• Communal and Family Power

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Political Upheaval and Social Change

• Punic Wars 218-202 BCE
• Italy invaded and occupied
• Husbands/sons serving in the military
• Hard times, impact on small farms
• Civil disturbances 120s-27 BCE
• Extensive infighting and proscriptions among the
  elite
• Marriage and divorce increasingly as political
  tools
• Women in positions of mediation between families
  and factions

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Sources

• Livy Historian, c. 30 BCE
• Writes a standard history of Rome from its
  foundation
• Republican sentiments embroidered with Livys
  reconstruction of events (influenced by values
  common in his time)
• Polybius, c. 120 BCE
• Greek historian, writing an inclusive history,
  lived for a long time in Rome
• Other historians
• Surviving mainly in fragments

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Sources

• Inscriptions
• Often funerary
• Show conventional values
• Specifics of lives
• Comedy
• Plautus, Terence
• Based on Greek originals but with ideas specific
  to Roman experience
• An exaggerated, comic view but must relate to
  real concerns

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Marriage and Dowry

• What were a wifes or husbands legal rights over
  her dowry?
• Women apparently retained control over it, as we
  have references to loans or gifts to husbands
• Husbands did typically use it and manage it, as
  evidence references to husbands who had a hard
  time replacing it when divorced
• Children had a legal right to it, 1/6 per child
  in the event of divorce
• Legal mediations may have favored the husbands,
  but fathers also had an interest in the outcome,
  so perhaps not.

The arbitrator in a divorce has the authority
to impose what seems good to him, if the woman
has acted in any wrong or dishonorable fashion.
She is fined if she drinks wine if she has had a
dishonorable relationship with another man, she
is condemned. Gellius, quoting Cato
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Economic Life
Women engaged in marketing as a regular thing
both free and slave
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Economic Life

• Professions
• Pedagogue
• Personal secretary
• Hairdresser
• Fishmonger
• Grocer (in business with her husband)
• Porter

An unusual female slave profession gladiators.
This plaque commemmorates the freedom of Achillea
and Amazonia.
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Economic Life

• Wool-weigher (market position)
• Seamstress Weaver

• Actress
• Musician

• Fuller some of the slaves shown are children

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Slaves and Freedwomen
Womens personal slaves are predominantly female
and female slaves are often portrayed doing
typically feminine tasks.
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But most slaves described or referred to, even
domestics, are male.
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Slaves and Freedwomen
Catos Instructions to a slave overseer,
regarding the hosuekeeper See that the
housekeeper perform all her duties. If the master
has given her to you as a wife, keep yourself
only to her. Make her stand in awe of you.
Restrain her from extravagance. She must visit
the neighboring and other women very seldom, and
not have them either in the house or in her part
of it. She must not go out to meals or be a
gadabout. She must not engage in religious
worship herself or get others to engage in it for
her without the orders of the master or
mistress. She must be neat herself and and keep
the farmstead neat and clean.
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Slaves and Freedwomen
Slaves were not allowed to marry, though they
could live in marriage-like relationships. A
slaves partner was called a contubernalis,
essentially, roommate. Slaves had no rights
over their children, and at any point either
partner or children could be sold away from the
other.
As Catos passge reveals, masters could reward
male slaves with wives, niether slave having
much choice in the matter. Masters had sexual
rights to their slaves. Though social disapproval
and family issues were factors limiting this in
some cases.
dominus ancillae suae
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Slaves and Freedwomen
One measure of status in Rome was the large
numbers of slaves the elite had attending and
serving them. Elite women, as well as elite men,
participated in this sort of display. Domestic
slaves in rich households might have light duties
but little personal space, and be subject to the
whims of their master or mistress.
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Slaves and Freedwomen
Slaves attending their mistress and her daughter
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Slaves and Freedwomen
Funerary monuments of freedmen and freedwomen
often emphasize mainstream family values.
Slaves could be manumitted, either for a price or
otherwise, and could buy the freedom of their
children if the masters cooperated. Freedmen
(and freedwomen) sometimes became wealthy, but
most commonly lived ordinary lives.
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Slaves and Freedwomen
Lucius Aurelius Hermia, freedman of Lucius, a
butcher of the Viminal Hill. She who went before
me in death, my one and only wife, chaste in
body, a loving woman of my heart possessed, lived
faithful to her faithful man in fondness equal
to her other virtues, never during bitter times
did she shrink from loving duties.
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Slaves and Freedwomen
In life, I was named Aurelia Philematium, a woman
chaste and modest, knowing not the crowd,
faithful to her man.  My man was a
fellow-freedman he was also in very truth over
and above a father to me and alas, I have lost
him.  Seven years old was I when he, even he,
took me to his bosom forty years old - and I am
in the power of violent death.  He through my
constant loving duties flourished at all seasons
. . .
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Adornment Personal and Political

• Limiting womens display
• The Lex Oppia, imposed during the Punic wars,
  restricted womens finery and withdrew the
  privilege of riding in carriages
• Taxes were imposed on wealthy womens property in
  particular (as individual rather than precisely
  related to the patriarchal concerns of the family
  line)
• Were these limitations practical or did they have
  (also or instead) a symbolic meaning?

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Adornment Personal and Political
Women cannot hold magistracies or priesthoods or
triumphs or military decorations or awards or
spoils of war. Cosmetics and adornments are
womens decorations. They delight and boast of
them and this is what our ancestors called
womens estate. (Valerius, in Livy 34.7.8)
The Lex Oppia, instituted in the Punic War, was
protested by women afterward
What view of womens value in society and the
outside world emerges here?
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Adornment Personal and Political
Whenever Aemelia left her house to partake in
womens processions, it had been her habit to
appear in great state, as befitted a woman who
had shared the life of the great Africanus , , ,
Apart from the magnificence of her personal
attire and the decoration of her carriage, all
the . . . sacrificial essels and utensils were
made of gold or silver, and were carried in her
train in such ceremonial occasions . . .
The ancient Trophy wife
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Adornment Personal and Political
If you will let them unbind each element of
social control and finally be raised level with
men, do you think that they will be tolerable?
As soon as they begin to be our equals, they will
be our masters . . . Speech attributed to Cato,
Livy 34.3.2
Sumptuary and morality legislation often focuses
on women, and is often an issue in conservative
declarations of socal control Solons
restrictions on Athenian womens display in
mourning Islamic fundamentalism Morality
legistlation in the USA?
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Elite Women

• Political marriages
• Roles as mediators
• Julia
• Cornelia
• Servilia
• Octavia
• Education
• Moral guidance
• Fame (usually through deeds of her sons)

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Finis
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Slaves and Freedwomen
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