Women and Gender

• Women are represented either in how they inspired other women or we see the consequences of their vices.
• The story of the Rape of the Sabine women frames women as the connecting part of a family, binding them together.
• Livy’s account of the story described ‘grandchildren on the one side, children on the other’
• Women were related to men as part of their role.
• Patriarchal naming practices had men with 3 names (praenomen, nomen, cognomen) while women were called a feminine version of their family name.
• Women were represented in two ideals of being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ which usually correlated with her sexual purity.
• Women were valued across the periods with statues made of Cloelia (6th Cent.) for her ‘bravery and patriotism’ and Cornelia as the ideal mother (daughter of Scipio Africanus, thus this may be part of a political ideology as well).
• The rape of Lucretia represented Roman morality in the case of female chastity.
• Other rape stories include Verginia, in which her father kills her to prevent her suffering a loss of status and abduction.
• There was a necessity for women to work their way up the social ladder.
• Women could own property in their own right from at least this period.
• Those who were musicians worked as musical prostitutes and were given little respect.
• Labourers needed a wife to have a happy and managed life.
• Women in the lower classes of society generally worked in hospitality and entertainment.
• Rural slaves assisted with manual labour and suffered sexual exploitation.
• Women had equal inheritance rights to men, as shown in the 2PW with heavy losses and the growth of a base of independent women.
• Women had access to education, with the daughters of rhetoricians and legal experts having access to rhetorical and legal education and even religious lore.
• The principle of equal inheritance rights for daughters and sons was recognised.
• Roman male writers were often critical of wealthy women, framing them as difficult.
• Women had to have a male ‘tutor’ to conduct their legal and business affairs, a practice known as Tutela muilerum perpetua.
• Some did so by associating with elite male friends.
• When women were independent/behaved out of traditional expectations the men around them were criticised for not controlling them sufficiently.
• The woman serves as a reflection of the masculinity and virtue of their husband/father.
• Roman commercial activities were not separated by socioeconomic status thus women of all classes could interact.
• Wealthier woman preferred carriages or being surrounded by maids to interacting with the lower classes.
• In terms of birth control, exposure was the father’s decision.
• The woman had access to birth control in the form of abortion.
• There were economic reasons to limit births.
• Abortion via herbal remedies (consumed orally or via the vagina)
• Abortion via insertion into the uterus: fatal bleeding/infection, presumably this was more effective otherwise why risk it????
• Augustus actually tried to increase birth rates in the late republic.
• Legislation to reward marriage and reproduction was enacted.
• The idea of a ‘conventional wife’ was working wool.
• Some Roman state religious rites were restricted to women, largely due to gendered behaviours and the Roman ideology of women being responsible and pious.
• Livy describes ‘secret rites performed by night’, suggesting that the liberal and ecstatic behaviour of elite women would have threatened the standard gendered behaviour of the time.
• Vestals interceded with Sulla on behalf of Julius Caesar’s life and property.
• Inscriptions recall how the worship of Bona Dea crossed all boundaries of class and status, indicating its popularity and widespread acceptance.
• The Cult of Bona Dea was conventional and largely acceptable.
• Livy’s depiction of the cults attributes to their negative reception, portraying them as ‘lustful, criminal and murderous’.
• Hortensia demonstrated that the sanctity of a Vestal surpassed the veto of a tribune by clinging to her father, Claudius.