Women in ancient Rome, whether free or enslaved, played many roles: empress, priestess, goddess, merchant, midwife, prostitute, daughter, wife, and mother. But they had no voice in public life.
They also lacked a voice in the story. With few exceptions, such as the words of the poetess Sulpicia or the graffiti of a woman summoning her lover, found scrawled on the walls of Pompeii, what we know of them comes almost entirely from the writings of men in the most elite circles. from Rome.
As in many cultures, the value of women in ancient Rome was defined almost solely in relation to their fathers and husbands; the majority were married in their mid-teens. No Roman woman could vote, play a direct role in political or military affairs, or play an official role in the management of the republic and, later, the empire. Yet we can glimpse tantalizing signs of women – usually those with the most wealth, education and family status – finding ways to claim new powers and rights for themselves. Sometimes they did this by influencing the men in their lives, sometimes by claiming a religious role in society and more rarely by obtaining a certain legal and economic independence.
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What Ancient Roman Men Wrote About Women
“She is very intelligent and a prudent housewife, and her devotion to me is a sure sign of her virtue,” the scholar Pliny the Younger wrote in a letter from his teenage wife, Calpurnia – who, at around 15, was about 25 years younger. than him when they got married. Pliny also affectionately praised his wife’s ability to memorize his writings.
Others described the women much more scathingly. Ovid, the famous early empire poet, believed that women’s “primitive” libido made them irrational. Roman politician and lawyer Cicero reminded a jury that their ancestors placed women “in the power of guardians » (or guardians) because of infirmitas consilii, or poor judgment. Marcus Porcius Cato, one of Republican Rome’s most revered statesmen, warned his fellow Romans against the risks of treating a woman as an equal, saying that “from this moment on they will become your superiors”.
Perhaps the Roman satirist Juvenal offered the most scathing opinions in his famously misogynistic Sixth satire, written in the 2nd century AD. Among its complaints: Women shunned all risky but worthwhile undertakings. They were prone to promiscuity, and more annoying when they dared to display intellectual opinions. And heaven help the man whose mother-in-law has a pulse: “Any chance of domestic harmony is lost as long as your wife’s mother is alive.”
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The model Roman matron
According to Rome’s legal and social code – written and unwritten – the ideal Roman wife was a matron who spun her own cloth, supervised her family’s affairs, provided her husband with children, food and a well-managed household, and showed appropriate modesty. Women who challenged this stereotype often ended up being left out.
For much of ancient Roman history, women were not even allowed their own name, almost always taking a feminine version of their father’s surname. Thus, Gaius Julius or Marcus Terentius would have daughters named, respectively, Julia and Terentia. In the case of several daughters, they would be differentiated by a suffix: Julia Major for the eldest, Julia Minor for the next and Julia Tertia for the third.
Religion opens doors
The Election of a Vestal Virgin in Ancient Rome. To be allowed to enter the order, a girl had to be free from physical and mental defects, have two living parents, and be the daughter of a freeborn resident of Rome. Vestals were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. From Hutchinson’s History of the Nations, published 1915.
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While ancient Roman society was dominated by men, the pantheon of Roman gods was not. Of the three supreme deities worshiped by the ancient Romans, only one – Jupiter, the king of the gods – was male. The other two were Juno, main goddess and protector of the empire, and Minerva, daughter of Jupiter and goddess of wisdom and war.
The vestal virgins – or priestesses of Vesta – were among the most important residents of the city. Appointed before puberty and bound to remain chaste for 30 years, the six young women had sacred duties, such as keeping the hearth fire burning in the temple of Vesta (the belief was that if the fire died, Rome would too), and other important tasks, such as safeguarding the wills of the wealthiest and most prominent Romans, such as Julius Caesar. The priestesses’ religious significance gave them unusual power and influence – and they sometimes used it, such as when they intervened to save a young Caesar from dictator Sulla.
READ MORE: Did women fight as gladiators in ancient Rome?
Borrow male power
Extremely limited public lives haven’t stopped a series of shrewd ancient Roman women – all from the elite class – from carving out pockets of influence alongside their men.
One of the first influential female role models of the Roman republic was Cornelia, daughter of the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus. Well-educated and brought up in the household of a military and political leader, she emerged as an intelligent presence in Roman society during her marriage and as a young widow. She rejected offers of marriage (including one from the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy VIII), devoting herself instead to raising her three surviving children. When her two sons then embarked on populist reforms, she strongly supported them in public, while guiding and sometimes reprimanding them in her letters. “Let Jupiter not permit you for a moment to continue in these actions nor allow such madness to enter your mind,” she wrote to her youngest son, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. Both sons were murdered by a conservative Roman faction, but Cornelia retained a widespread fear and respect both for her learning and for her devotion to family and state.
For her part, Faustina the Younger was surrounded by imperial power: Daughter of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, she married the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius at the age of 15 and gave birth to 14 children, one of whom became the Emperor Commodus. One of the few women to be given the title of Augusta, the highest status a woman can receive, Faustina was revered by the military when she accompanied her husband on his campaigns – and seems to have been cherished by his husband, who named her Mater Castrorum, or “mother of the camp”. When she died, Marc-Aurèle mourned her, deified her and founded a series of schools for orphans in her name.
Powerful women face backlash
The more powerful the woman, the more likely she was to face negative reactions from men. (Faustina certainly had her share of detractors.) Livia, the wife of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, had a huge influence on her husband: a near-contemporary account by Suetonius relates that Augustus would compile careful lists of items on which he wanted his wife’s advice – advice that often took precedence over that of his advisers.
Despite her dedication to weaving and other women’s pursuits, Livia drew heavy criticism. The Roman historian Tacitus damned her for posterity in his Annals as “a veritable catastrophe for the nation” which exercised such control over an aging Augustus that he “exiled his only surviving grandson”. Soon she gained a reputation for not only poisoning Augustus’ grandsons, but also the emperor himself.
The powerful women around Emperor Nero fared even worse. Agrippina, his mother and ardent advocate, had skillfully maneuvered her way to power, mostly through marriage (and possibly murder), also receiving the revered title of Augusta. But after working to make young Nero an emperor (and acting as his regent), she took responsibility for the murders of her rival half-brother, Britannicus, and her stepfather, Emperor Claudius, her third husband. . Nero himself conspired to kill her, as well as his own wife, Poppea, who had also exercised a powerful influence over him.
Status changes
The Age of Augustus brought some of the most significant changes in the status of women. While unmarried women faced heavy penalties and laws punishing adulterous women were tightened, the Julian Laws also allowed women who bore three or more children to gain exemption from male guardianship.
Despite the masculine prism through which we know these women, their humanity and diversity emerge. Over the centuries, the women of ancient Rome increasingly emerged from the shadow cast by both their masculine society and the self-sacrificing feminine ideals. We may never know their names, but their stories emerge piecemeal from the fragments of letters and inscriptions they and their families left behind.
