Roman Women
1. Pomeroy, pp. 149-204
1. Women and Law in Roman society
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•
•
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Guardianship
Marriage
Augustan marriage laws
Inheritance
2. Women’s Public Lives: Education,
Politics
Roman Empire
The Roman Matron of the Late
Republic and Early Empire
• Pomeroy, “The momentum of
social change in the Hellenistic
world combined with Roman
elements to produce the
emancipated, but respected,
upper-class woman….wealthy
aristocratic women who played
high politics and presided over
literary salons were
nevertheless expected to be
able to spin and weave as
though they were living in the
days when Rome was young.”
(149)
What was creating this tension
between the ideal and real?
From Hellenistic age:
• Shrewd politically
powerful princesses
• Expanding cultural
opportunities for ♀
• Search for sexual
fulfillment
• Individual
assertiveness
From Roman Republic:
• Enormous wealth
• Aristocratic
indulgence and
display
• pragmatism
Cornelia – Paragon of Virtue
• Lived in 2nd century BCE
• Wife of Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus
• Mother of twelve
• Exercised influence on
Roman politics
• Letters published
• Educated
• Famed and honored, even
with rumors of ruthlessness
• Typical woman of Rome?
Cornelia Refuses the Crown of Ptolemai
Legal Conditions Affecting Women: change
and continuity between Rome and Greece
Guardianship – does this
formal supervision over
women increase or
decrease during the late
Republic and early Empire?
Marriage – what are the
legal and moreal issues at
stake in terms of children,
divorce, death of husband
(eg. what is the univira?)
Augustan Marriage Laws –
how did his laws affect
women and which women?
1.
2.
3.
•
•
The idea behind this was
“pro-natalist”. Did it work?
How did political,
philosophical and medical
men react to these issues of
Roman Law – how do we know so
much about it?
• Jurisprudence 101: “codified” simply means “collection of
written laws”; it implies something else. (eg. Hammurabi
and Solon, from this course). In Rome’s case, it comes
from the Twelve Tablets of Law.
• Because it is written down, it reflects more static
principles than “common law” or the “oral law” of tribes
(consider the code Napoleon)
• In the Roman case of women, the concept of women in
law is “weakness and light-mindedness” (infirmitus sexus
and levitus animi)
Marlon Brando – it just seemed
right to be openly presentist
Stanley (to Stella): How about a few more
details on that subject...Let's cop a gander at
the bill of sale...What do you mean? She
didn't show you no papers, no deed of sale or
nothin' like that?...Well then, what was it then?
Given away to charity?...Oh I don't care if she
hears me. Now let's see the papers...Now
listen. Did you ever hear of the Napoleonic
code, Stella?...Now just let me enlighten you
on a point or two...Now we got here in the
state of Louisiana what's known as the
Napoleonic code. You see, now according to
that, what belongs to the wife belongs to the
husband also, and vice versa...It looks to me
like you've been swindled baby. And when you
get swindled under Napoleonic code, I get
swindled too and I don't like to get
swindled...Where's the money if the place was
sold?
Streetcar Named Desire 1951.
GUARDIANSHIP: Latin Phrases 101 - power and
exclusive rights in Roman private law
• the power of a father, (pater familias
or patriarch,) over his children (patria
potestas) “life or death power”
– Paterfamilias means “master of slaves”
• of the husband over his wife (manus)
• of an owner over his property including slaves (dominium)
• of a freedman over another by
contract (mancipium.)
A positive French
portrayal of the
household in Roman
times
GUARDIANSHIP: Familia – all members
remain under the patriarch until his death
•In the early Republic, only the pater familias - oldest male
ascendant of the familia, had rights before the law to buy,
hold or sell property.
•The patriarch owned as agent and trustee all the property
of the extended family and held most absolute power over
persons within his extended household.
•He held the power of life, death, enslavement (servitus)
and bondage (mancipium).
•The father and mother, their house and land and property,
their children, married sons; grandchildren by these sons;
daughters-in-law, slaves and clients constituted the Roman
familia - an assembly of "owned" persons and things
subject to the pater familias' exclusive right of use or
disposition (dominium) John Crook, Law and Life of Rome,
1967.
GUARDIANSHIP – “The Godfather”?
•On the level of the "familia," wives,
grown sons, daughters-in-law,
children, grandchildren, slaves of the
patriarch were his property.
•These "properties" had no voice in
the Curiae (wards or districts of the
Republic), yet were subject to its
decisions and laws, as well as to the
decisions and laws made on the
family level by the patriarch.
•A non-citizen, female, child, slave,
etc., when accused of a crime would
be brought to the pater familias for
judgment and punishment.
This coin depicts Brutus, the
first consul of Rome. He is
flanked by lictors armed with
fasces and possibly on his
way to the curiae of Rome
MARRIAGE: Laws and lives
1. cum manu marriage - wife passes into husband's family
1. assumes legal status of his child
2. dowry passes into husband's keeping
2. sine manu marriage - wife remains member of natal
family
1. natal family retains interest in dowry - if divorce or death occurs,
it must be repaid (one-fifth retained for each child)
2. wife and children belong to different families - consequences for
inheritance
3. demographic imbalances
1. legal obligation to raise only one daughter
2. intermarriage among free and freed, except for senators
4. marriage ages: 12 for girls, 14 for boys
5. sequential marriage and the ideal of the univira
Changes to the Law for women –
not all good
• Caesar Augustus instituted jus
liberorum
• “the right of three or four children” –
what right did that give these women,
and which women?
• But this is also lex Julia, restricted
divorce (which had been on the rise)
and made female adultery a felony
• Fathers could put their daughter and
lover to death; husbands had to
divorce their adulterous wife
INHERITANCE
1. Daughters' right to inherit equally recognized in law
2. Increasing wealth of women from 2nd century BCE
onward
3. Property confiscations and Oppian Law
4. Voconian Law of 169 BCE - regulated female
inheritance
– right of woman to inherit from senatorial class man, even if sole
child
– could not be executrix, only legatee
– could not receive more than the chief heir took
– possibly to discourage woman receiving both dowry and
bequest
Oppian Law – 215 BCE
• Like income tax, this was an emergency measure
passed in Rome, which taxed women’s use of expensive
goods
• According to Livy, the law stated:
– “no woman might own more than half an ounce of gold nor wear
a multicoloured dress nor ride in a carriage in the city or in a
town within a mile of it, unless there was a religious festival.”
• Twenty years after the conflict, the law was still in place,
and the women gathered in protest:
– “The matrons, whom neither counsel nor shame nor their
husbands' orders could keep at home, blockaded every street in
the city and every entrance to the Forum.”
Voconian Law
• Forbade instituting a woman as an heiress,
whether she was married or unmarried
• To Montesquieu: “The Voconian law was made
to hinder the women from growing too wealthy;
for this end it was necessary to deprive them of
large inheritances, and not of such as were
incapable of supporting luxury.” The Spirit of
Laws”
Women’s Lives: education
• Upper-class Roman
women not denied
education
• Some were published
writers (Agrippina, left
with her boy, Nero, before
he killed her)
• Others, particularly
Sulpicia, were noteworthy
poets
Women’s Lives: Private Salons/
Public Speeches
• Hortensia’s 15 minutes of fame (42 BCE,
after Julius Caesar’s death)
• “You have already deprived us of our
fathers, our sons, our husbands and our
brothers on the pretext that they wronged
you, but if, in addition, you take away our
property, you will reduce us to a condition
not suitable to our birth, our way of life,
and our female nature.”
• 1400 wealthy women, is this a class
argument, or gender?
Octavia
• Second wife to Marc
Antony
• Fulvia-his first wife (evil)
• Octavia (good)
• Cleopatra (unique)
• Octavia raised Fulvia’s,
Cleopatra’s and her own
children
• She was Octavian
Augustus sister as well
Livia: Princeps Femina
• She was Octavia’s
second wife, after she
and he both divorced
their first
• Octavian Augustus had
the senate declare both
Livia and Octavia (his
sister), sacrosanct (state
protection)
• Livia wore the traditional
stola robe of the matron
and kept her hair closecropped and conservative
Pomeroy on Roman matrons
• How do they compare with Greek citizen
women?
• How do they compare with their Roman
husbands, brothers, sons?
• What sort of political power did they have,
and what power did they not possess?
• Why do we know so much about their
“notorious” lives?
Women of the Roman Lower Classes
• What is her approach to this chapter?
(why is it so short, what are her sources?)
• What sort of guesswork does she do about
women slaves; eg. those from Greece?
• What differences in Roman economics
and engineering made slavery for women
in Rome different from Greece?
• What differences existed between male
and female slaves in Rome?
Women of the Roman Lower Classes
• “She kept house; she made wool”.
• Freewomen and working women in the main did
work that they had been trained to do as slaves
– but all women spun
• The records also indicate that many other
occupations were open to them, small-scale
merchants, tavern owners
• All in all, a weak chapter in Pomeroy’s book, to
my way of thinking