THE MOMENTUM of social change in the Hellenistic world combined with Roman elements to produce the emancipated, but respected, upper-class woman.1 The Roman matron of the late Republic must be viewed against the background of shrewd and politically powerful Hellenistic princesses, expanding cultural opportunities for women, the search for sexual fulfillment in the context of a declining birthrate, and the individual assertiveness characteristic of the Hellenistic period. The rest of the picture is Roman: enormous wealth, aristocratic indulgence and display, pragmatism permitting women to exercise leadership during the absence of men on military and governmental missions of long duration; and, as a final element, a past preceding the influence of the Greeks—a heritage so idealized by the Romans that historical events were scarcely distinguishable from legends, and the legends of the founding of Rome and the early Republic were employed in the late Republic and early Empire for moral instruction and propaganda. The result was that 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. These social myths set up a tension between the ideal and the real Roman matron, and were responsible for the praise awarded a woman like Cornelia, who lived in the second century B.C.
Among Roman matrons, Cornelia was a paragon. We are told that she turned down an offer of marriage from a Ptolemy. A widow, she remained faithful to the memory of her husband, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, to whom she had borne twelve children. She continued to manage her household and was praised for her devotion to her children’s education. Only three of her children survived to adulthood, but through her two sons, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Cornelia exercised a profound influence on Roman politics. Some say that she goaded her sons to excessive political zeal by insisting that she was famous as the daughter of Scipio Africanus—conqueror of Hannibal—rather than as the mother of the Gracchi. It was even rumored, though much after the fact, that, with the aid of her daughter Sempronia, Cornelia suffocated Scipio Aemilianus, Sempronia’s husband, because he opposed the legislation of Tiberius Gracchus. This allegation did not tarnish Cornelia’s reputation. She endured the assassination of both her adult sons with fortitude, and continued to entertain foreign and learned guests at her home in Misenum. She was herself educated, and her letters were published. A bronze portrait statue inscribed “Cornelia, daughter of Africanus, mother of the Gracchi,” was erected in her honor by the Romans and restored by the Emperor Augustus.2
Looking beyond the picture of Cornelia—independent, cultured, self-assured even in her widowhood—we find a long history of Roman legislation affecting women, especially in the areas of guardianship, marriage, and inheritance.
The weakness and light-mindedness of the female sex (infirmitas sexus and levitas animi) were the underlying principles of Roman legal theory that mandated all women to be under the custody of males. In childhood, a daughter fell under the sway of the eldest male ascendant in her family, the pater familias. The power of the pater familias was without parallel in Greek law; it extended to the determination of life or death for all members of the household. Male offspring of any age were also subject to the authority of the pater familias, but as adults they were automatically emancipated upon his death, and the earliest Roman law code, the XII Tables (traditionally 451–450 B.C.), stated that a son who had been sold into slavery three times by his father thereby gained his freedom. Among females, however, the only automatic legal exemption from the power of the pater familias was accorded those who became Vestal Virgins, a cultic role reserved for a very few.
Upon the death of the pater familias, the custody over daughters (and prepubertal sons) passed to the nearest male relative (agnate), unless the father had designated another guardian in his will. Guardianship over females was theoretically in force until the time of Diocletian (reigned A.D. 285–305), but this power was gradually diminished by legal devices and ruses and by the assertiveness of some women interested in managing their own concerns. A guardian was required when a woman performed important transactions, such as accepting an inheritance, making a testament, or assuming a contractual obligation, and all transactions requiring mancipatio (a ritual form of sale), including selling land and manumitting a slave. But if the guardian withheld approval, a woman could apply to the magistrate to have his assent forced, or to have a different guardian appointed.
By the late Republic, tutelage over women was a burden to the men acting as guardians, but only a slight disability to women. The virtuous Cornelia managed a large household and is not reported to have consulted any male guardian even in her decision to turn down Ptolemy Physcon’s proposal of marriage. Similarly, a century later, much is said about the financial transactions of Terentia, Cicero’s wife, but nothing about her guardian.
The legislation of Augustus provided a way for women to free themselves of the formal supervision by male guardians. According to the “right of three or four children” (jus liberorum), a freeborn woman who bore three children and a freedwoman who bore four children were exempt from guardianship. This provision incidentally impaired the juridical doctrine of the weakness of the female sex, by expressing the notion that at least those women who had demonstrated responsible behavior by bearing the children Rome needed could be deemed capable of acting without a male guardian.
The right of three children was not a response to demands from liberated women yearning to free themselves from male domination, nor did it act as much of an incentive. As we have seen, the famous women of Roman society who had wanted to be free of the influence of guardians had managed to do so before the reign of Augustus, and without the tedious preliminary of bearing three children. Moreover, papyri from Roman Egypt, where women were less sophisticated, show a large number of women proudly announcing that they have gained the jus liberorum, but nevertheless availing themselves of male assistance when they transact legal business.3 Even after a law of Claudius in the first century A.D. abolished automatic guardianship of agnates over women, the majority of guardians or men who were present at transactions of women possessing the jus liberorum and who signed documents in behalf of illiterate women continued to be male relatives.4
The laws of guardianship indicate that the powers of the pater familias surpassed those of the husband. The pater familias decided whether his daughter would remain in his power, or would be emancipated from his power to that of another man, and if so, who would be her guardian. The guardian was not necessarily a relative, nor was the married daughter inevitably in the power of her husband. The pater familias decided whether or not she would be married according to a legal form that would release her from the authority of her father and transfer her to the power (manus) of her husband. If the marriage was contracted with manus, the bride became part of her husband’s family, as though she were his daughter, as far as property rights were concerned.
A wife could become subject to a husband’s manus in three ways: either by the two formal marriage ceremonies known as confarreatio (sharing of spelt—a coarse grain), and coemptio (pretended sale), or by usus (continuous cohabitation for a year). In ancient times, a vital feature of manus marriage for the bride was the change in domestic religions.5 A family’s religion was transmitted through males, and the pater familias was the chief priest. Upon marriage, a girl renounced her father’s religion and worshiped instead at her husband’s hearth. His ancestors became hers. The guardian spirit of the pater familias (known as the genius) and that of the mater familias (the juno) were worshiped by the household. Conversely, the woman married without manus was not a member of the husband’s agnatic family, and hence theoretically excluded from the rites celebrated by her husband and children. In that case, she would continue to participate in her father’s cult.
The pater familias, as we have noted, held the power of life and death over his daughters. Two stories from the history of early Rome related by Livy—who lived during the time of the Emperor Augustus—give a glimpse of the stern judgments inflicted upon daughters because of their fathers’ expectations of moral behavior. One tale concerns Horatia, who was engaged to one of the Curiatii. When her three brothers fought the Curiatii, killing all three of them at the expense of two of their own number, Horatia grieved at the death of her fiancé. Hearing this, her surviving brother stabbed her, declaring, “Thus perish every Roman woman who mourns an enemy [of Rome.]” 6 Though the brother was forced to do penance for his impulsive act, his father affirmed that if his son had not slain Horatia, he would have killed her himself by the authority allowed fathers. In another story, from 449 B.C., Appius Claudius—one of the decemvirs who had published the XII Tables—was seized with desire for a young woman named Verginia. After exhausting his efforts to keep Verginia from falling into the hands of Appius Claudius, her father slew her—announcing later that because she could not have lived chastely, his act provided her with an honorable, though pitiful, death.7
It is fairly certain that the guardian did not have such authority over the person of his ward.8 Whether the husband in a manus marriage held absolute power over the wife is unclear. In early Rome, we are told, all wives were subject to their husbands’ authority, and marriages were stable and women virtuous. Cato the Censor claimed that husbands did have an unlimited right to judge their wives and could inflict the death penalty for drinking or adultery. One such incident took place in the days of Romulus himself. A husband cudgeled his wife to death because she drank wine. He was not censured because people believed that she had set a bad example.9
Our source for the statement on the powers of the husband is the report by Aulus Gellius of one of Cato’s orations.10 This passage is preceded by a paragraph where Gellius mentions that women were customarily kissed on the mouth by their male blood relations in order to determine if they had alcohol on their breath.11 There is a slight inconsistency in this report of the blood relatives’ remaining involved when a woman was supposedly under her husband’s authority.
The testimony on the issue of the husband’s powers in comparison with those of the blood relatives varies. Dionysius of Halicarnassus—who, like Livy, wrote during the reign of the Emperor Augustus—states that, according to the laws of Romulus, married women were obliged to conform themselves to their husbands, since they had no other refuge, while husbands ruled over their wives as possessions.12 Plutarch gives the additional information that, according to the regulations of Romulus, only the husband could initiate a divorce, and then only on the grounds that his wife had committed adultery, poisoned his children, or counterfeited his keys. If he divorced his wife for another reason, she took half his property; the other half was consecrated to the goddess Ceres.13
Dionysius of Halicarnassus further confuses the question by stating that her husband, after taking counsel with a woman’s relations, could inflict capital punishment on a wife guilty of adultery, or of drinking, since drinking inspired adultery.14 The elder Pliny relates that a married woman was forced by her family to starve herself to death because she had stolen the keys to the wine cellar, but it is not clear whether “family” refers to the husband or blood relatives.15
So it is uncertain whether the husband had the right to kill the wife, or merely to divorce her, or to kill her only with the agreement of her male relatives. In 186 B.C., when thousands of men and women were sentenced to death for participating in Bacchic rites, the women were handed over to their blood relatives or to those who had authority (manus) over them to be executed in private. But here, each husband merely carried out the execution ordered by the state. He did not himself condemn her.16
What does emerge from this investigation is the concept that when “wives had no other refuge,” as Dionysius puts it, or when they were totally under the authority of their husbands, as envisioned by Cato, marriages were more enduring. This power of husbands over wives—if, in fact, it had ever been prevalent in early Rome—was idealized and became an element in the marriage propaganda of Stoics and Augustan authors, both concerned with promoting marriage among their contemporaries.
What is also striking to anyone who lives in a society where a father’s control over a daughter terminates when she reaches the age of majority, but where certain other laws make the wife subordinate to the husband, is that the situation may have been reversed at Rome, and the husband’s authority more ephemeral than that of the father and blood kin. Thus, even in manus marriage, the bride’s blood relatives continued to be involved in her guidance and welfare. The surveillance over her drinking is only one aspect of this. Some legends point to continued involvement by fathers of married women: among them are the raped Lucretia’s appeal to both her father and husband and their joint vengeance in her behalf, and the story of the Sabine fathers who, when coming to reclaim their pregnant married daughters, were told by them that they did not want to be forced to choose between their fathers and husbands.
The marriage without manus has a long history. The XII Tables already provide for marriage without manus, and by the late Republic it was the common form, although marriage with manus was still occasionally found. It has been thought that because marriage with manus gave the wife some rights to her husband’s property, the groom’s family would stipulate a marriage arrangement without manus. Similarly, when the wife was wealthy, her family was likely to prefer a marriage arrangement without manus so that her property remained in her family of birth. Thus there may be a connection between the increase in wealth among the Romans in the second century B.C. and the decrease in manus marriage in the same period. The marriage without manus was a tentative arrangement, and was largely responsible for the instability of marriage evident in the late Republic. The concept ascribed to Romulus that wives were more obliging when they had “no other refuge” had a true converse. A wife who could readily return to her father for refuge was less amenable to the control of her husband.
The marriage without manus gave a woman more freedom. She was under the authority of a father or guardian who lived in a different household, while her husband, whose daily surveillance was available, had no formal authority over her. Moreover, even if she were married with manus, the abiding involvement of the father and other blood relatives can be viewed positively as a means of protecting the wife and her dowry against the abuses of a husband. Plutarch, pondering why Roman—unlike Greek—women did not marry close relatives, suggested that women needed protectors; if their husbands wronged them, then their kinsmen could aid them.17 Aside from considerations of affection and protection, men could continue to reap profit from their female blood relatives, since their ties were not irrevocably severed by marriage.
As was true at the Hellenistic courts, betrothals, marriages, and divorces among the upper class were usually arranged between men for the political and financial profit of the families involved, rather than for sentimental reasons. The more children a man had, the greater the number of potential connections with other families. No doubt Ptolemy’s proposal to Cornelia was motivated by a desire to form an alliance with some influential Roman families. Betrothals were broken or divorces were dictated when alliances between men became animosities. Pompey divorced his first wife to marry Sulla’s stepdaughter Aemilia.18 She was at that time pregnant and living with a husband. She died in childbirth soon after her marriage to Pompey.
Large numbers of connubial alliances in the late Republic are reported. When Caesar tried to gain the favor of Pompey, he betrothed his daughter Julia to him. Julia had been previously betrothed to a Servilius Caepio. In compensation, Pompey offered his daughter to Servilius Caepio, although she too was not free but was engaged to Faustus, the son of Sulla. (In the end, Pompeia did marry Faustus.) Caesar himself married Calpurnia and arranged for her father, L. Piso, to be made consul.19 Cato, although he had used his wife to further his friendship with Hortensius, protested against using women to cement political alliances.20 Nevertheless, the practice continued after the assassination of Caesar with the formation of the triumvirate of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian.
Octavian broke his engagement to Servilia when he became engaged to Marc Antony’s stepdaughter Clodia. But he broke this engagement as well in order to marry Scribonia, who was related to his onetime opponent Sextus Pompey, although it is not clear that this was part of the peace arrangements between them. Octavian, in turn, had arranged a marriage between his sister Octavia and Marc Antony. When Antony became his adversary. Octavian urged his sister to divorce her husband. She disobeyed him, and after Antony’s death even took care of his children by his first wife and by Cleopatra. If the situation was not entirely a political game, then Octavia’s show of disobedience to Octavian may indicate that she no longer wanted to be used as a tool in her brother’s diplomacy, or that she felt some affection for Antony. Plutarch faithfully reports dynastic marriages, and sometimes describes a great affection developing between wife and husband, possibly because he can scarcely resist the temptation to praise marriage. It is likely that Virgil in the Aeneid comes closer to the truth when he shows Aeneas losing his first wife. Creusa, at Troy, and abandoning Dido (whom, it is true, he did not formally wed) to suicide, in order to find a dynastic marriage with Lavinia—the daughter of a king in Italy—who cares nothing for him.
Men’s use of their female relatives to procure political allies was nothing new in the ancient world. Homeric kings. Greek tyrants of the Archaic period, and Hellenistic monarchs did the same. But among the Romans there is a new phenomenon: women in the late Republic at times initiated marriage alliances and chose lovers carefully, with a view to benefiting their own families. One of these ambitious women was the aristocrat Valeria, who captivated the dictator Sulla when they were both attending a gladiatorial spectacle.
As she passed behind Sulla she leaned on him with her hand and picked off a bit of lint from his cloak. Then she went to her own seat. Sulla looked at her in surprise. “It is nothing. Dictator,” she said, “but I merely wish to share a little in your good fortune.” Sulla was not displeased when he heard this, for he was clearly aroused. He sent to find out her name, her family, and her background. After that, they exchanged gazes, kept on turning their heads to look at each other, interchanged smiles, and finally there was a formal proposal of marriage.21
This marriage brought about a dramatic improvement in the fortunes of Valeria’s family.22
When political situations were more stable, and. we presume, among people whose ambitions were not served by marriage alliances, there seem to have been fewer divorces. However, marital arrangements continued to be an acute problem where imperial succession was involved. Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, was betrothed when she was one year old to Lucius Silanus, a desirable partner since he was the great-great-grandson of Augustus. The turbulent events of the early Empire resulted in the suicide of Silanus and Octavia’s marriage at the age of thirteen to Nero, who was then sixteen.
The consent of both partners was necessary for the betrothal and marriage, but the bride was allowed to refuse only if she could prove that the proposed husband was morally unfit.23 It is unlikely that girls of twelve (the minimum age for marriage determined by Augustus) were in fact able to resist a proposed marriage. Some women, as they grew older, and their fathers were distant or dead, actually chose their own husbands. Cicero arranged two marriages for his daughter Tullia; but the third husband, the charming, degenerate Dolabella, was selected by Tullia and her mother in Cicero’s absence. The marriage was legal, but a disgruntled Cicero contemplated dissolving it by not paying the installments on his daughter’s dowry.
Divorce was easily accomplished, theoretically at the initiation of either or both parties to the marriage. Beginning in the late Republic, a few women are notorious for independently divorcing their husbands, but, for the most part, these arrangement were in the hands of men. As we have seen, divorce could be initiated by fathers whose married children were not emancipated from their authority. We may note a parallel to Classical Athenian law, where the father retained the right to dissolve his daughter’s marriage (see this page). Not until the reign of Antoninus Pius was it made illegal for fathers to break up harmonious marriages.24 If the marriage had involved manus, then the manus had to be dissolved, but this situation was infrequent. The major concern was the return of the dowry, as it had been in Classical Athens and Hellenistic Egypt. If the husband were divorcing the wife for immoral conduct, he had the right to retain a portion of her dowry; the fraction varied according to the gravity of her offense. A few husbands did attempt to profit by this procedure.25
In divorce, children remained with their fathers, since they were agnatically related to him, but. as we have seen in our discussion of manus, blood relationship was an important bond. Thirty-seven years after her divorce from Augustus, Scribonia voluntarily accompanied her daughter Julia into exile.26 After his parents had been divorced, and he himself adopted into another family, Scipio Aemilianus shared his wealth with his mother.27 Marcia had been divorced by the younger Cato because he wanted to let his friend Hortensius breed children with her. Nevertheless, after the death of Hortensius she remarried Cato, probably motivated by a wish to look after her daughters by him while Cato went off to join Pompey.28 After her divorce from Claudius Nero to marry Augustus, Livia’s children by her first marriage lived with their father, but following his death they joined their mother.
Most of the divorces we read about were prompted by political or personal considerations. No reason was legally required, but sterility of the marriage was often a cause, and a barren marriage was considered to be due to the wife. Sulla divorced Cloelia for alleged infertility.29 However, a woman who died at the end of the first century B.C. won extravagant praise from her husband for offering him a divorce after a barren marriage that had lasted forty-three years. She is called “Turia,” though her name is not definitely known.30 Her funerary encomium describes her heroism in her husband’s behalf during the civil wars, and then praises her self-effacing offer to divorce her husband on the condition that she—with her fortune—would continue to stay with him and be as a sister, and treat his future children as though they were her own. Her husband indignantly turned her down, preferring to remain married although his family line would thereby become extinct. This is one of the many interesting aspects of the document. The husband regards his preference for his wife and married life over his duties to perpetuate his family line as untraditional, yet by this period morally acceptable, indeed commendable.
Some men divorced their wives for flagrant adultery. Thus, Pompey divorced Mucia, and Lucullus divorced Claudia; Caesar divorced Pompeia because her notorious involvement with Publius Clodius at the rites of the Bona Dea, which were supposed to be confined to women, created a scandal. Caesar was High Priest at the time, and proclaimed that “the High Priest’s wife must be above suspicion.” We have little information on wives’ divorcing husbands for adultery. This may have been due to a double standard, or to the discretion of some adulterous husbands, or to the upper-class men’s opportunities for involvement with women of lower social classes—liaisons that were accepted as not threatening to legitimate marriages.
Augustus declared adultery a public offense only in women. Consistent with the powers of the pater familias, the father of the adulteress was permitted to kill her if she had not been emancipated from his power.31 The husband’s role, as we have seen in other areas of Roman law, was more limited than the father’s. The husband was obliged to divorce his wife, and he or someone else was to bring her to trial.32 If convicted, she lost half her dowry, the adulterer was fined a portion of his property, and both were separately exiled. According to the Augustan legislation, a wife could divorce her husband for adultery, but she was not obliged to, and he was not liable for criminal prosecution. The law may have been more stringent than the real situation, for the jurist Ulpian later commented: “It is very unjust for a husband to require from a wife a level of morality that he does not himself achieve.” 33 Stoic theory as well condemned adultery in either man or wife.34 The younger Cato, a man of Stoic and Roman principles, carried the doctrine still further: he believed that sexual intercourse was only for the purpose of begetting children. Since he had a sufficient number of children and Marcia was worn out by childbearing, his second marriage to her was chaste.35 No doubt the long absences from home imposed by the civil wars facilitated Cato’s continence in his relations with his wife during the five-year duration of the remarriage.
Like the Augustan rule on adultery, the regulation on criminal fornication (stuprum) perpetuated a double standard. No man was allowed to have sexual relations with an unmarried or widowed upper-class woman, but he could have relations with prostitutes, whereas upper-class women were not allowed to have any relations outside of marriage.36 Under some emperors, the penalties for breaking these laws were very severe. Augustus himself exiled both his daughter and granddaughter for illicit intercourse and forbade their burial in his tomb.37 Some upper-class women protested against the curtailment of their freedom by registering with the aediles (magistrates whose duties included supervision of the markets and trade) as prostitutes. Then the laws of stuprum would not apply to them, but such women were excluded from legacies and inheritance. In any case, this legal dodge was eliminated when Augustus’ successor, Tiberius, forbade women whose fathers, grandfathers, or husbands were Roman knights or senators to register as prostitutes.38
Rape could be prosecuted—under the legal headings of criminal wrong (iniuria) or violence (vis)—by the man under whose authority the wronged woman fell. Constantine was explicit about the guilt of the victim. In his decision on raped virgins, he distinguished between girls who were willing and those who were forced against their will. If the girl had been willing, her penalty was to be burned to death. If she had been unwilling, she was still punished, although her penalty was lighter, for she should have screamed and brought neighbors to her assistance.39 Constantine also specified capital punishment for a free woman who had intercourse with a slave, and burning for the slave himself. This penalty was the outcome of a perpetual concern that free women would take the same liberties with slaves as men did. These liaisons were a real possibility, since unlike Athens, where women lived in separate quarters, in Rome wealthy women were attended by numerous male slaves, often chosen for their attractive appearance. The legendary virtuous Lucretia, according to the Augustan historian Livy, was so intimidated by Tarquin’s threat that he would kill her and a naked slave side by side in bed that she submitted to Tarquin’s lust. Though raped, she was technically an adulteress; therefore she made the honorable decision to commit suicide.40
Augustan legislation encouraged widows, like divorcées, to remarry. There was some tension between the emperor’s concern that women bear as many children as possible and the traditional Roman idealization of the woman like Cornelia who remained faithful to her dead husband. The epitaphs continue to praise the women who died having known only one husband (univira), some of whom easily earned this recognition by dying young. The ideal of the univira and the eternal marriage was strictly Roman, and without counterpart in Greece. Two lengthy encomia of upper-class women of the Augustan period—one of “Turia,” the other of Cornelia, wife of Lucius Aemilius Paullus—stress this ideal. In both cases, the women predeceased their husbands, who composed or commissioned the encomia.41 Even Livia, the widow of Augustus, although she had had a previous husband, was praised for not remarrying. Virgil, writing the national Roman epic, depicts a disastrous climax to Dido’s decision not to remain faithful to her dead husband. In Rome, unlike Athens, a woman could lead an interesting life without a husband, as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, did in entertaining guests and pursuing her intellectual interests. But Cornelia earned praise because she bore twelve children first, and then chose not to remarry.
A further refinement of the ideal-wife motif stresses that not only should a woman have only one husband, but she ought not to survive him—especially if he has been the victim of political persecution. Thus Arria, the wife of A. Caecina Paetus, upbraided the wife of another member of her husband’s political faction for daring to continue to live after seeing her own husband murdered in her arms. She also advised her own daughter to commit suicide if her husband predeceased her. When Arria’s own husband was invited to commit suicide during the reign of Claudius, she plunged the dagger into her own breast to set an example, and spoke her celebrated last words, “It does not hurt, Paetus.” 42
Roman law regulated the succession to property in great detail. Often the same regulation was passed again and again, with little change in the wording, because people either ignored the law or had found a loophole through which to evade it. Despite the continuous redefinition of the laws, room remained for interpretation, resulting in voluminous commentary on the legislation from antiquity to the present. During the Republic, when jurisdiction over women was mainly in the hands of their male relatives, their succession to property was the only major area in which they were subject to public law. The Roman woman’s rights to inherit and bequeath property are not excluded from debate, but the following information seems plausible. According to the XII Tables, daughters and sons shared equally in the estate of a father who died intestate. A daughter married without manus would likewise share in her father’s estate, but if married with manus she would share in her husband’s estate as though she were his daughter. Until the legislation of Hadrian, Roman women could make wills only by a very complicated procedure, and they were not permitted to make legacies to female infants. Only in A.D. 178, according to the law entitled Senatusconsultum Orfitianum, could mothers inherit from children and children from mothers in intestacy. Thus preference concerning her inheritance was given to a woman’s children over her sisters, brothers, and other agnates. Taken together with the legislation forbidding the father of the bride from dissolving her marriage against her will, it is evident that the second century A.D. was a period of change from the identification of a woman as a member of her father’s family to the recognition of her as belonging to the same family as her husband and children.
The Voconian Law of 169 B.C. had restricted the wealth that could be inherited by upper-class women. In cases of intestacy, the only female agnates allowed to succeed were sisters of the deceased, and a woman could not be designated as heir to a large patrimony. She could receive property as a legacy, but in an amount not to exceed what was left to the heir or joint heirs. The previously existing provisions for equal inheritance by daughters in the XII Tables and the freedom to write wills favoring women, combined with a growing trend toward small families, had allowed a great deal of wealth to fall into the hands of women. Moreover, the second century B.C. was a period of increased luxury and wealth for the upper class, among women as well as men. Polybius relates that Aemilia, Cornelia’s mother, became rich by sharing the prosperity of her husband Scipio Africanus, and describes her ostentation when she went out to participate in ceremonies that women attend:
Apart from the adornments she wore, and the decoration of her chariot, all the baskets, cups, and other implements for the sacrifice were either silver or gold, and were carried in her train on solemn occasions. The crowd of female and male slaves in attendance was suitably large.43
Aemilia would not have been embarrassed to have her assets compared not only with those of her husband but with those of her brother. When her brother died in 160 B.C., he left 60 talents, and when his two sons wished to return their mother’s dowry of 25 talents—since they rightly regarded her dowry as her property—they were hard pressed to find the money immediately.44 On the other hand, when Aemilia herself died in 162 B.C., she left so much wealth, probably including liquid assets, that her heir, Publius Scipio Aemilianus, was able within ten months to pay out the 25 talents each outstanding on the dowries of his two adoptive aunts. The dowry of each aunt was 50 talents, and they probably owned additional property on a par with the luxurious villa at Misenum on the bay of Naples where Cornelia, mother of the Gracci, lived.45
Despite restrictive legislation, the female members of wealthy families continued to possess large amounts of property and to display it. Cornelia’s lack of pretension was unusual enough for people to ask her why she did not wear jewels, to which she gave the now proverbial response that her children were her jewels.46 The Romans found a number of legal loopholes by which wealth could be transmitted to women, and by which women could in turn bequeath their wealth. By the late Republic and thereafter, some women were in actual fact independently controlling large amounts of property, although the laws formally in force said that this was not permissible. For instance, the fortune of a woman like Lollia Paulina in the first century A.D. was so immense that her banishment at the instigation of Agrippina, mother of Nero, may have been prompted by the desire to confiscate her property.47 Under the Augustan marriage legislation, childlessness reduced the amount that could be inherited, while motherhood increased it.
Marriage and motherhood were the traditional expectation of well-to-do women in Rome, as they had been in Greece. The rarity of spinsters indicates that most women married at least once, although afterward a number chose to remain divorcées or widows.
Augustus established the minimum age for marriage at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys. The first marriage of most girls took place between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Since menarche typically occurred at thirteen or fourteen, prepubescent marriages took place.48 Moreover, sometimes the future bride lived with the groom before she had reached the legal minimum for marriage, and it was not unusual for these unions to be consummated. Marriages of young girls took place because of the desire of the families involved not to delay the profit from a political or financial alliance and, beginning with the reign of Augustus, so that the bride and groom could reap the rewards of the marital legislation, although some of the benefits could be anticipated during the engagement. Sometimes one motive outweighed another. Thus there are cases of dowerless daughters of the upper class who nevertheless found social-climbing men so eager to marry them that the husbands surreptitiously provided the dowry, to save the pride of the girl’s family.49 Another factor which we have traced back to Hesiod was the desire to find a bride who was still virginal.
Most upper-class Roman women were able to find husbands, not only for first marriages but for successive remarriages. One reason for this, apparently, was that there were fewer females than males among their social peers.50 As in Greece, this disproportion was the result of the shorter lifespan of females, whose numbers fell off sharply once the childbearing years were reached. There were the additional factors of the selective infanticide and exposure of female infants and, probably more important, a subtle but pervasive attitude that gave preferential treatment to boys (see this page). This can be surmised from a law attributed to Romulus that required a father to raise all male children but only the first-born female. This so-called law of Romulus—while not to be accepted at face value as evidence that every father regularly raised only one daughter—is nevertheless indicative of official policy and foreshadows later legislation favoring the rearing of boys over girls. The attitude may be criticized as short-sighted in face of the manpower shortage continually threatening Rome; the policy of Sparta, where potential childbearers were considered as valuable as warriors, should be compared.
The law of Romulus incidentally shows that it was not inconvenient for a daughter to be automatically called by the feminine form of her father’s name (nomen). But it was awkward when the father decided to raise two daughters, who thus had the same name, like Cornelia and her sister Cornelia. The Romans solved the problem with the addition of “the elder” (maior) or “the younger” (minor). In families where several daughters were raised, numerals, which in earlier times may have been indicative of order of birth, were added (e.g., Claudia Tertia and Claudia Quinta).51 A wealthy father might decide to dispose of an infant because of the desire not to divide the family property among too many offspring and thereby reduce the individual wealth of the members of the next generation. Christian authors such as Justin Martyr doubtless exaggerate the extent to which contemporary pagans engaged in infanticide,52 but, on the other hand, it is clear that this method of family planning was practiced without much fanfare in antiquity. An infant of either sex who appeared weak might be exposed; in his Gynecology Soranus, a physician of the second century A.D., gives a list of criteria by which midwives were to recognize which newborns should be discarded and which were worth rearing. In deciding to expose a daughter, the provision of a dowry was an additional consideration. However, there was enough of a demand for brides, as we have mentioned, to make even the occasional dowerless bride acceptable.
Additional evidence for a dearth of females in the upper classes is that in the late Republic some men were marrying women of the lower classes. We know of no spinsters, yet upper-class women are not known to have taken husbands from the lower classes. Studies of tombstones generally show far more males than females.53 This disproportion is usually explained away by the comment that males were deemed more deserving of commemoration.54 Such a factor might discourage the erection of tombstones for those low on the social scale, but at least among the wealthier classes—the very group where small families were the trend—we could expect that, once having decided to raise a daughter, her parents would commemorate her death. In our present state of knowledge we cannot finally say that women were actually present in Rome in the numbers one expects in an average pre-industrial society, and that their lack of adequate representation in the sepulchral inscriptions is totally ascribable to their social invisibility; but it should be noted that the existence of masses of women who are not recorded by the inscriptions is, at most, hypothetical.
The traditional doctrine, enforced by Roman censors, was that men should marry, and that the purpose of marriage was the rearing of children.55 The example of Hellenistic Greece, where men were refusing to marry and consequently children were not being raised (see this page), had a subversive influence on the ideal, although Stoicism affirmed it. A decrease in fecundity is discernible as early as the second century B.C., a time when the production of twelve children by Cornelia became a prodigy—probably because her son Gaius harped on it—although only three lived to adulthood Metellus Macedonicus, censor in 131 B.C., made a speech urging men to marry and procreate, although he recognized that wives were troublesome creatures. The speech was read out to the Senate by Augustus as evidence that he was merely reviving Roman traditions with his legislation.56
Augustus’ legislation was designed to keep as many women as possible in the married state and bearing children. The penalties for nonmarriage and childlessness began for women at age twenty, for men at twenty-five. Divorce was not explicitly frowned upon, provided that each successive husband was recruited from the approved social class. Failure to remarry was penalized, all with a view to not wasting the childbearing years. Women were not able to escape the penalties of the Augustan legislation as easily as men. A man who was betrothed to a girl of ten could enjoy the political and economic privileges accorded to married men, but a woman was not permitted to betroth herself to a prepubescent male.57
But the low birth rate continued, and the Augustan legislation on marriage was reinforced by Domitian and reenacted in the second and third centuries A.D. It appears that women as well as men were rebelling against biologically determined roles. One reason for the low birth rate was the practice of contraception.
Not only infanticide and neglect of infants, but contraception and abortion were used by the married Romans to limit their families, and by unmarried and adulterous women to prevent or terminate illegitimate pregnancies.58 Among the upper classes, the essential element in contraception—the wish not to have children—was present. Contraception was obviously preferable to abortion and infanticide, since the mother did not endure the burden and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. There was a long tradition of medical and scientific writing on contraception and abortion, but most of our evidence comes from authors of the early Empire, who collected earlier knowledge and added their own recommendations.
Techniques for contraception were numerous; some were effective, more not. Among the ineffective were potions drunk for temporary or permanent sterility, which could, of course, be administered to unsuspecting parties to render them infertile. Amulets and magic were recommended. Pliny gives a recipe for fabricating an amulet by cutting open the head of a hairy spider, removing the two little worms which were believed to be inside and tying them in deerskin. Aëtius recommends wearing the liver of a cat in a tube on the left foot, or part of a lioness’ womb in an ivory tube.59 It was also thought possible to transfer the qualities of the sterile willow or of sterile iron for contraception.
The rhythm method was also practiced, but this was ineffective since the medical writers believed that the most fertile time was just when menstruation was ending, as that is when the appetite was said to be strongest. Conversely, it was thought that conception was not likely to occur when the woman did not have a desire for intercourse. Among other contraceptive techniques mentioned are for the woman to hold her breath at ejaculation, and post-coitally to squat, sneeze, and drink something cold.60 Lucretius recommends that whores, but not wives, should wriggle their hips and so divert the plow and the seed.61
Mixed with ineffective techniques were effective methods, including the use of occlusive agents which blocked the os of the uterus. Oils, ointments, honey, and soft wool were employed.
Contraception was overwhelmingly left to women, but a few male techniques were recommended. Certain ointments smeared on the male genitals were thought to be effective as spermicides or as astringents to close the os of the uterus upon penetration. The bladder of a goat may have been used as an early version of a condom, although this item would have been costly.62 Whether men practiced coitus interruptus is debatable. The sources do not mention this technique. Two explanations for this omission are equally plausible, but mutually inconsistent: coitus interruptus is not mentioned either because it was not used, or, more likely, because it was so much used and so obvious that it needed no description.
Abortion is closely associated with contraception in the ancient sources, and sometimes confused with it.63 Keith Hopkins suggests that the reason for the blurring of abortion and contraception was the lack of precise knowledge of the period of gestation. Some Romans believed that children could be born seven to ten months after conception, but that eight-month babies were not possible. A contributing factor in the failure to distinguish between contraception and abortion was that some of the same drugs were recommended for both. Abortion was also accomplished by professional surgical instruments or by amateur methods. Ovid upbraids Corinna: “Why do you dig out your child with sharp instruments, and give harsh poisons to your unborn children.” 64
The musings of philosophers on when the foetus felt life and whether abortion was sanctionable will not be reviewed. In a society where newborns were exposed, the foetus cannot have had much right to life, although it is true that in the early Empire the execution of a pregnant woman was delayed until after the birth of her child. Literary testimony, including Seneca, Juvenal, and Ovid, shows both that some men were dismayed about abortions and that some upper-class women and courtesans had them.65 Not until the reign of Septimius Severus was any legislation enacted curtailing abortion, and this was merely to decree the punishment of exile for a divorced woman who has an abortion without her recent husband’s consent, since she has cheated him of his child.66 In the reign of Caracalla, the penalty of exile (and death if the patient died) was established for administering abortifacients, but this law was directed against those who traded in drugs and magic rather than against abortion itself.67
Medical writers were concerned as well with methods of promoting fertility in sterile women and with childbirth. The writings of Soranus, a physician of the second century A.D., cover a sophisticated range of gynecological and obstetrical topics. He did not adhere to the Hippocratic Oath which forbade administering abortifacients, but stated his preference for contraception. At a time when wealthy women usually employed wetnurses, Soranus declared that if the mother was in good health, it was better that she nurse the child, since it would foster the bonds of affection. Of interest are his recommendations for the alleviation of labor pains, his concern for the comfort of the mother, and his unequivocal decision that the welfare of the mother take precedence over that of the infant.68 In childbirth, most women who could afford professional assistance would summon a midwife, although if the procedure was beyond the midwife’s ability, and funds were available, a male physician would be employed. In Rome the skilled midwives, like the physicians, were likely to be Greek. Midwives not only delivered babies, but were involved in abortions and other gynecological procedures, and as we have mentioned, they were supposed to be able to recognize which infants were healthy enough to be worth rearing.
Women—even wealthy women with access to physicians—continued to die in childbirth. Early marriage, and the resultant bearing of children by immature females, was a contributing factor. Tombstones show a marked increase in female mortality in the fifteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old group. In a study of the sepulchral inscriptions, Keith Hopkins claims that death in childbirth is to some extent exaggerated by the reliance upon evidence from tombstones.69 He suggests that women dying between fifteen and twenty-nine were more likely to be commemorated, because their husbands were still alive to erect tombstones. In his sample he found that the median age for the death of wives was 34; of husbands, 46.5. J. Lawrence Angel’s study of skeletal remains in Greece under Roman domination shows an adult longevity of 34.3 years for women and 40.2 for men.70 Stepmothers are mentioned more than stepfathers, though this may reflect not only early death of mothers but the fact that children stayed with their father after divorce.
The wealthy Roman woman played a different role as wife and mother than her counterpart in Classical Athens. The fortunes of Romans were far greater, and they had not only more but more competent slaves. The tasks enumerated by Xenophon for the well-to-do Athenian wife were, even among the traditional-minded Romans, relegated to a slave, the chief steward’s wife (vilica).71Nevertheless, the Roman matron bore sole responsibility for the management of her town house, and although her work was mainly the supervision of slaves, she was expected to be able to perform such chores as spinning and weaving (see this page). Household duties did not hold a prominent place in a woman’s public image: the Roman matron could never be considered a housewife as could the Athenian. In fact, the writer Cornelius Nepos, who lived in the first century B.C., states in his “Preface” that the principal contrast between Greek and Roman women is that the former sit secluded in the interior parts of the house, while the latter accompany their husbands to dinner parties.
Freed from household routines, virtuous women could visit, go shopping, attend festivals and recitals, and supervise their children’s education. There was a tendency among authors of the early Empire to castigate the mothers of men whom they wished to present to posterity as thoroughly evil. Outstanding examples are the portraits in Tacitus of Livia, mother of Tiberius, and the younger Agrippina, mother of Nero. In contrast and (like Cornelia) an exemplar to all mothers was Julia Procilla, the mother of the venerable Agricola. She was credited by Tacitus with supervising his education so closely that she checked his enthusiasm when he became more interested in studying philosophy than was suitable for a Roman senator.72
Upper-class women were sufficiently cultivated to be able to participate in the intellectual life of their male associates. A little is known about how girls received their education. The story of Verginia (see this page) indicates that it was not unusual for the daughter of a lowly plebeian centurion to attend elementary school in the Forum. Both daughters and sons of well-to-do families had private tutors. Pliny the Younger, a senator and author active in government at the end of the first and the beginning of the second centuries A.D., included in his portrait of a girl who died at thirteen, just before she was to be married:
How she loved her nurses, her preceptors, and her teachers, each for the service given her. She studied her books with diligence and understanding.73
Unlike boys, girls did not study with philosophers or rhetoricians outside the home, for they were married at the age when boys were still involved in their pursuit of higher education. Some women were influenced by an intellectual atmosphere at home. Ancient authors give the credit to fathers of girls, as they had to mothers of talented boys. Cornelia, we are told, acquired her taste for literature from her father, Scipio Africanus, noted for his philhellenism. (Cornelia’s mother, as we have observed, was famous for her displays of wealth.) The eloquence of Laelia and Hortensia was a tribute to their fathers, who were leading orators.74
Intellectual and artistic achievements did not endanger a woman’s reputation; instead, education and accomplishments were thought to enhance her. Plutarch, in a lost work, discussed the education of women. He wrote in complimentary terms of many women: for example, of Cornelia, the last wife of Pompey, who was particularly charming because she was well read, could play the lyre, and was adept at geometry and philosophy.75 Pliny the Younger was pleased that his unsophisticated young wife was memorizing his writings, and was setting his verses to music and singing them to the accompaniment of the lyre.76 Quintilian recommended that for the good of the child both parents be as highly educated as possible.77The Stoic Musonius Rufus asserted that women should be given the same education as men, for the attributes of a good wife will appear in one who studies philosophy.78
Epictetus, a pupil of Musonius Rufus, reported that at Rome women were carrying around copies of Plato’s Republic because they supposed he prescribed communities of wives. Women, he noted, were quoting Plato to justify their own licentiousness, but they misinterpreted the philosopher in supposing that he bid people have monogamous marriages first and then practice promiscuous intercourse.79 Although the Romans saw no essential connection between freedom and education, it was obvious that many cultivated women were also enjoying sexual liberty. Sallust gives a detailed description of the aristocrat Sempronia, who is probably faulted as much for her connection with the conspirator Catiline as for her lack of inhibitions:
Now among these women was Sempronia, who had often committed many crimes of masculine daring. This woman was quite fortunate in her family and looks, and especially in her husband and children; she was well read in Greek and Latin literature, able to play the lyre and dance more adeptly than any respectable woman would have needed to, and talented in many other activities which are part and parcel of overindulgent living. But she cherished everything else more than she did propriety and morality; you would have a hard time time determining which she squandered more of, her money or her reputation; her sexual desires were so ardent that she took the initiative with men far more frequently than they did with her. Prior to the conspiracy shehad often broken her word, disavowed her debts, been involved in murder, and sunk to the depths of depravity as a result of high living and low funds. Yet she possessed intellectual strengths which are by no means laughable: the skill of writing verses, cracking jokes, speaking either modestly or tenderly or saucily—in a word, she had much wit and charm.80
The women addressed by the elegiac poets not only possessed the usual attractions of mistresses, but were learned as well. They could be of any class: courtesans or freedwomen or upper-class wives, widows, or divorcées. In any case, they were free to make liaisons with whomever they chose. The poets were drawn to women who would appreciate their work, which was crammed with erudite literary allusions. Catullus called his mistress by the pseudonym Lesbia, while Ovid’s poems are addressed to Corinna, both poets alluding to venerated Greek poetesses. Delia and Cynthia, the names given to their mistresses by Tibullus and Propertius, are suggestive of Apollonian inspiration and the Greek poetic tradition.
On the other hand, Juvenal’s criticisms make it clear that the bluestocking was not rare:
Still more exasperating is the woman who begs as soon as she sits down to dinner, to discourse on poets and poetry, comparing Virgil with Homer: professors, critics, lawyers, auctioneers—even another woman—can’t get a word in. She rattles on at such a rate that you’d think all the pots and pans in the kitchen were crashing to the floor or that every bell in town was clanging. All by herself she makes as much noise as some primitive tribe chasing away an eclipse. She should learn the philosophers’ lesson: “moderation is necessary even for intellectuals.” And, if she still wants to appear educated and eloquent, let her dress as a man, sacrifice to men’s gods, and bathe in the men’s baths. Wives shouldn’t try to be public speakers; they shouldn’t use rhetorical devices; they shouldn’t read all the classics—there ought to be some things women don’t understand. I myself can’t understand a woman who can quote the rules of grammar and never make a mistake and cites obscure, long-forgotten poets—as if men cared about such things. If she has to correct somebody, let her correct her girl friends and leave her husband alone.81
Some women were authors themselves. Among prose writers were Cornelia, whose letters were published (although the extant fragments are probably not genuine), and the younger Agrippina, who wrote her memoirs. Propertius reports that his beloved Cynthia was a poet comparable to Corinna. A certain Sulpicia, who was a contemporary of Martial, also wrote poetry, although the attribution to her of a satire on the expulsion of the philosophers from Rome under Domitian is questionable.82 Six love elegies totaling forty lines of another Sulpicia are preserved along with the works of Tibullus.
The latter Sulpicia was the daughter of Cicero’s friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus and the niece and ward of Messalla Corvinus, whose literary circle included Ovid and Tibullus. She composed her poetry in 15 or 14 B.C., when she was probably at most twenty years old. She was not a brilliant artist; her work is of interest only because the author is female.
Sulpicia combines the deliberate simplicity of Greek lyric poetesses with some conventions of the elegiac genre. It is not clear whether she was married when she wrote her elegies, but she scarcely hesitates to publicize her love.
Love has come to me, the kind I am far more ashamed
To conceal than to reveal to anyone.
Cytherea, won over by my Muses’ prayers,
Has brought him to me and placed him in my arms.
Venus has fulfilled her promises. Let my joys
Be told by those said to lack joys of their own.
I won’t entrust my thoughts to tablets under seal
For fear that someone may read them before he does.
But I’m glad I’ve erred; falsely posing disgusts me:
Let me be called worthy, him worthy as well.83
Like the mistresses of the male elegists, the beloved of Sulpicia has a Greek pseudonym, Cerinthus. His true identity has not been discovered, and he may be a literary fiction. Sulpicia’s poems do not describe him at all, but rather she reports her feelings about him in a straightforward style. Her only mythical allusions are obvious—Camenae (Muses) and Cytherea (Venus)—compared to the abstruse references of the male elegists. In the elegiac tradition, she speaks of the triumph of love, twice of her own birthday, and of illness, the sadness of separation, and love as slavery:
The day which gave you to me, Cerinthus, to me
Will be sacred, a holiday forever.
At your birth the Fates sang of new slavery for girls
And bestowed exalted kingdoms upon you.
More than others I burn. That I burn, Cerinthus,
Brings joy, if you too blaze with flame caught from me.
May you too feel love, by our sweet stolen moments,
By your eyes, by your Birth-spirit, I ask you.
Great Birth-spirit, take incense, heed my vows kindly—
If only he glows when thinking about me.
But if perchance he’s panting for other lovers,
Then, holy one, leave faithless altars, I pray.
And you, Venus, don’t be unfair: let both of us
Serve you in bondage, or lift off my shackles;
But rather let us both be bound by a strong chain
Which no day to come will be able to loose.
The boy wishes for what I do, though he wishes
In secret—it shames him to utter such words.
But you, Birth-spirit, since as a god you know all,
Grant this: what difference if he prays silently?84
Like all the elegists, she berates her beloved for infidelity and insists upon her own superiority, especially her noble lineage: “For you prefer the prostitute’s toga and a whore loaded with woolbaskets to Sulpicia, Servius’ daughter. My friends are greatly concerned lest I surrender my place to a baseborn mistress.” 85
Sulpicia and Cerinthus are also known through five elegies written by an anonymous poet who belonged to Messalla’s coterie. He does not mention Sulpicia’s poetry, but celebrates her beauty and claims that she is an inspiration for poets. Sometimes he writes as though he were Sulpicia, and he manages to express her sentiments at least as vividly as she did.
Lesbia, both Sulpicias, and the Empress Julia Domna (died A.D. 217) are known to have organized or been members of literary salons.86 This is one of the most important developments in women’s intellectual history: from Lesbia’s coterie of amateurish bohemian aristocrats of the late Republic, to the splendor and elegance characteristic of the court of the Flavian empresses, to the settled respectability, if not distinction, of the circle of Julia Domna. Though a continuous history for these literary salons cannot be documented, the few that are known were not considered eccentric, and we may therefore suppose that others existed.
Greek antiquity supplied precedents for female poets, but female orators were singularly Roman.87 Valerius Maximus gives three examples from the first century B.C. The first is Maesia Sentia, who, surrounded by a crowd, successfully defended herself against some unknown charge. Valerius labels her an “androgyne.” Afrania, wife of a senator, became infamous for her lack of modesty in pleading cases before the praetor. But Hortensia, the daughter of the famous orator, was praised for the speech she delivered in 42 B.C. She was one of the 1400 wealthy women whose male relatives had been proscribed and who were themselves being taxed to pay the expenses of the triumvirs. The women beseeched Octavian’s sister and mother and won them over, but failed to persuade Marc Antony’s wife Fulvia. Rudely repulsed by her, the women forced their way into the Forum and Hortensia spoke in their behalf. The speech she delivered was preserved, and earned the approbation of Quintilian, a literary critic of the first century.88 Appian, a second-century historian, purports to give her speech in a Greek translation. Though the speech as reported is most likely a rhetorical exercise of the second century, possibly incorporating some of the more memorable statements of Hortensia, it is of interest in that some of the themes reappear in the political speeches of modern women:
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 unsuitable to our birth, our way of life, and our female nature.
If we have done you any wrong, as you claimed our husbands have, proscribe us as you do them. But if we women have not voted any of you public enemies, nor torn down your house, nor destroyed your army, nor led another against you, nor prevented you from obtaining offices and honors, why do we share in the punishments when we did not participate in the crimes?
Why should we pay taxes when we do not share in the offices, honors, military commands, nor, in short, the government, for which you fight between yourselves with such harmful results? You say “because it is wartime.” When have there not been wars? When have taxes been imposed on women, whom nature sets apart from all men? Our mothers once went beyond what is natural and made a contribution during the war against the Carthaginians, when danger threatened your entire empire and Rome itself. But then they contributed willingly, not from their landed property, their fields, their dowries, or their houses, without which it is impossible for free women to live, but only from their jewelry.…
Let war with the Celts or Parthians come, we will not be inferior to our mothers when it is a question of common safety. But for civil wars, may we never contribute nor aid you against each other.89
Appian explains that the triumvirs were angry that women should dare hold a public meeting when men were silent, and that they should object to contributing money when men had to serve in the army. Nevertheless, the crowd seemed to support the women, and the following day the triumvirs reduced the number of women subject to taxation to 400, and imposed a tax on all men who possessed more than 100,000 drachmas.
Public gatherings of women like the one at which Hortensia supposedly spoke were not without precedent, in both fact and fiction. Groups of matrons were involved in political and religious action in the earliest events of Roman history, related principally by Livy. Roman women, in contrast to Athenian, were not sequestered, and it is not difficult to believe that the affairs of state were of interest to them. Moreover, they were accustomed to all-female gatherings for religious purposes. Whether all the events actually took place, or if they occurred as Livy relates, does not concern us here; even as social myth they are of value in considering the political influence of Roman women. Livy tells a number of stories about honorable women congregating at critical points in Roman history, and performing acts that were crucial to the safety of the state. The first group was the Sabine wives of the early Romans, whose intercession not only prevented war between their husbands and fathers but brought about a profitable alliance between the two. Then there are the stories about the deputation of women who persuaded the traitor Coriolanus not to make war on Rome, and the matrons in the Forum who supported Verginius in his fight against the tyrannical Appius Claudius. Often the women ask for and win the favor of the gods for the state’s benefit. Rarely, groups of women are shown to gather for malevolent purposes. However, in 331 B.C., 116 women were condemned for gathering to concoct charms or poisons.90 Women’s collective lamentations were disruptive in time of war, but that was forgivable, and Livy uses the women’s mourning to underline particular disasters. The women who gathered in 195 B.C. to demand the abrogation of the Oppian Law which had been in force for twenty years staged the first women’s demonstration.
At Trasimene and Cannae, in the two years preceding the passage of the Oppian Law, the Roman army had suffered the most debilitating defeats in its history. At the battle of Cannae alone, Hannibal destroyed so many men that, as Livy puts it, “There was not one matron who was not bereaved.” In 216 B.C. the annual rite of Ceres, which could be celebrated only by women, had to be cancelled, since mourners were not allowed to participate. Owing to the dearth of freeborn men, an emergency military levy was made of adolescents and 8000 slaves.91
Hannibal offered another 8000 Roman prisoners for ransom. Women entreated the Senate to ransom their sons, brothers, and kinsmen. Many upper-class men were among those lost, either through battle or through the Senate’s decision not to pay ransom. Many of the prisoners were related to the senators, and the next year the number of people eligible to pay the property tax was so diminished by the losses at Trasimene and Cannae that the tax was insufficient to meet the needs of the state.92
As the men died, we assume, their property was apportioned among the surviving members of the family. Women and children will have been numerous among the beneficiaries. Some Romans died intestate, and according to the laws of intestate succession sons and daughters shared equally.93 To put it crudely, when their fathers and brothers were eliminated by Hannibal, women’s portions of wealth increased.
One may consider whether the women availed themselves of the opportunity to flaunt any new-found wealth in the vulgar manner characteristic of Romans. As Plutarch remarks, “Most people think themselves deprived of wealth if they are prevented from showing off; the display is made in the superfluities, not the essentials of life.” 94 Women were certainly prone to this vice. As one example, we may consider that Papiria, the mother of Publius Scipio Aemilianus, did not hesitate long after Aemilia’s funeral to drive out in the dead woman’s carriage which her natural son, Aemilia’s heir, had given her.95
It could be argued that the specter of Hannibal and the general misery contributed to inhibit boisterous displays. On the other hand, this period is replete with queer portents and indications of hysteria. But in 215 B.C., the year following the battle of Cannae, the state not only took most of the women’s gold but deprived them of the opportunity to indulge in other displays of wealth. The Oppian Law was passed, limiting the amount of gold that each woman could possess to half an ounce, and forbidding women to wear dresses with purple trim or ride in carriages within a mile of Rome or in Roman country towns except on the occasions of religious festivals.96
Thus, although the state had curtailed the period of mourning and women were not to wear the sordid dress of the bereaved, they were to display the behavior and costume more appropriate to a dismal military situation. By this compromise, the requirements of religion and decorum could be met.
The next year all the funds of wards, single women, and widows were deposited with the state.97 And that was the end of the windfall of any woman or minor who had become rich up to that time through the intervention of Hannibal. We also note, in passing, that the state readily commandeered the wealth of all those without close male relatives to defend them. The war continued for thirteen years, and we assume that after the passage of the Oppian Law some women continued to be fortuitously and disproportionately enriched by the deaths of male members of the family.
Appian’s report of women’s patriotism during the Second Punic War is slightly inconsistent with Livy’s version. Hortensia states that women gave freely, but then only from their jewelry and not from their dowries and other possessions. One could suppose that, threatened by Hannibal, women would voluntarily make donations even from their dowries. Livy indicates that the women’s wealth was taken through taxes, and that in 207 B.C. they were forced to invade their dowries and make an offering to Juno Regina to elicit her aid. He also highlights the generous patriotism shown by men in 210 when the senators, followed spontaneously by the knights and the plebs, contributed almost all their gold, silver, and coined bronze; Each reserved only rings for himself and his wife, a bulla (a gold locket) for each son, and an ounce of gold each for his wife and daughters. These reports of competitive patriotic zeal are suspect, and almost certainly mask official confiscations, including women’s dowries and other possessions. Livy’s report brings to mind the anger of the triumvirs after Hortensia’s oration, when they thought that women were concerned about hoarding their money while men were actually serving in the army.98
One may wonder who exercised authority over the women when their male kin were deceased. Guardians were probably appointed, but, as we have noted, a guardian’s concern with a woman’s virtue is less than the concern of male relatives who regard female members of the family as extensions of themselves. Livy notes that “women’s servitude is never terminated while their males survive.” 99 Conversely, are there indications that their servitude was abated when their males were deceased? We remarked, in our discussion of the last phase of the Peloponnesian War, that women were less constrained in the absence of men. At Rome, too, they dared to mingle in the Forum with crowds of men, and even to make entreaties of the Senate.100
The loss of male relatives was conducive to the formation of irregular liaisons which the state attempted to punish or discourage. In 215 B.C. the cult of Venus Verticordia (Changer of Hearts [toward virtue]) was founded (see this page). In 213 B.C. a number of matrons who were charged by the tribunes with immoral conduct were driven to exile.101 These women should have been dealt with in domestic tribunals by their husbands and male relatives. Probably they had none left, and the tribunes did the job instead, hoping that the publicity would discourage future derelictions.
An incident toward the end of the war underlines the aspersions cast upon the moral character of even the highest born of Roman women. When the stone representing the Magna Mater, an Asian mother goddess, was brought to Rome, its transfer was assigned to the noble matrons. The patrician Claudia Quinta used the opportunity of moving the stone as an ordeal to prove her chastity, for she had been popularly charged with promiscuity though she had not been—and could not be—prosecuted. Her success in moving the stone was considered the testimony of the goddess to Claudia’s chastity.102 It was the turmoil of the war that led to suspicion of Claudia and that then provided her with an opportunity to make a public demonstration of her chastity.
After the defeat of Hannibal in 201 B.C., Rome swiftly recovered. Men were allowed to display their prosperity. They wore purple, and their horses could be magnificently equipped. But the Oppian Law remained in effect, curtailing displays by women. The law was an irritant, despite some hints that it was not strictly enforced at all times.103 In 195 B.C. the repeal of this law was proposed, and women demonstrated in the streets.104 The issue, obviously, was of concern only to the wealthy, and presumably they alone were the demonstrators. This demonstration may have been orchestrated by men and have resulted from factional disputes among them. Men may have also wished to avail themselves once more of the opportunity of displaying wealth through the adornments of the female members of their families. But we cannot discount the idea that women were demonstrating in their own behalf. The Second Punic War had given them an opportunity to develop independence. Their pleas before the Senate more than twenty years earlier had been a rehearsal in political activism. At the time when they demonstrated for the repeal of the Oppian Law, some of them, having lost their fathers and husbands, may have been under the authority of a relatively uninterested guardian. These women will have been freer to mill around in the streets and make demands of the government.
We may speculate whether it was likely that all the women bereaved by the war found new husbands. The speech of Cato arguing against repeal of the Oppian Law cannot be taken as evidence for the actual situation in 195 B.C., for the words are Livy’s own, and there is no proof that Cato even spoke on the occasion. It is in this speech that Cato declares that the women’s husbands should have kept them in the house. After the loss in Roman manpower resulting from the Second Punic War, it does not seem likely that all women would have had husbands in 195 B.C. Two thousand Romans, whom Hannibal had sold into slavery in Greece, returned in 194 B.C.105 Did they find their wives remarried? To compare the situation at Rome with that of Russia after World War II, when virtually a generation of women could not find husbands, would be extreme, but we cannot assume that all the women had husbands.
The condition of women without husbands and fathers is considered in the speech that Livy represents as winning the repeal of the law. The Aristotelian view of the unequal relationship between women and men is recognizable. The argument is that women, even without the control of the Oppian Law, would not take advantage of the freedom they could enjoy, “for they abhor the freedom that loss of husbands and fathers provides.” The speaker also points out that even Roman men would be dismayed if they were not permitted to flaunt their wealth in the face of their Latin neighbors. Naturally, weak women, who become disturbed over the merest trifles, would be all the more upset over their lost opportunities.
The twenty-year period when the Oppian Law was in force offers an opportunity to consider the effects of prolonged war on women. The Second Punic War did not resemble the Trojan War. The city of Rome was never captured and Roman women were not sold into slavery, although deprivation, famine, and disease were suffered by army and civilians alike.106 The absence of men, which was an abiding feature of history as Rome conquered and governed distant territories, encouraged independence among women and unstable marriages.107 The parallel with Sparta, where men were constantly engaged in warfare, is pertinent here (see this page). At Sparta (as in Rome), women were left to manage domestic matters; by the Hellenistic period they were very wealthy and influenced affairs of state, although they could not hold office. Spartan women exhibited their wealth in frivolities such as race horses.108 Roman women sought status by dress and ownership of valuable slaves and costly vehicles. Roman men, of course, were no more restrained, but their lavish dinners and entertainments ultimately had the socially approved goal of furthering their political careers.
To the extent that a Roman woman was emancipated from the male members of her family, her display of wealth redounded to her own reputation among other women as well as men. Polybius’ report of Aemilia’s ostentation reflects that she grew wealthy as her husband became prosperous, and there is a hint that Aemilia’s own pride is at issue when she shows off. A little later it appears that Papiria wins compliments among women for her new-found magnificence, although they end by praising her son’s generosity. Livy also reports that there is a contest between women in displaying their finery, because they have no political offices, no priesthoods, no triumphs, no gifts, no spoils of war to give them prestige.109 Sumptuary legislation at Rome, then, unlike Athens, is to a small extent directed against independent wealthy women as well as against men. In 184 B.C. Cato, as Censor, imposed an assessment on obvious displays of luxury, including certain carriages, women’s adornments, costly slaves, and dinner plate.110 Later Cato supported the Lex Voconia, curtailing women’s inheritances, but, as we have noted, women continued to acquire wealth. The second century B.C. Saw additional sumptuary legislation aimed primarily at curbing men’s lavishness in dining, but no further attempt was made to limit women’s ostentation.
The explanation for the lack of further sumptuary legislation against women may be found in women’s increasing independence from male relatives. Wealthy upper-class women were considered less as appendages of men, and their displays of wealth brought them status in the eyes of women. But whatever women did independent of men was futile and, though potentially irritating to men, ultimately of minor importance to the state.
When men participated in status-seeking by means of the clothing of their women, then regulation was required. Wealthy women continued to parade their own wealth or that of their fathers or husbands until the eccentric Emperor Elagabalus, in the first quarter of the third century A.D., regulated the dress and etiquette appropriate to women belonging to various ranks. Daughters of senators or knights were classified according to their father’s rank and maintained their status even after marriage. A woman usually married a man of the same rank; but even if she married a man of lower status, the evidence, though inconclusive, shows that she tended to keep her father’s rank.111
According to an immensely amusing story—not to be accepted as factual—Elagabalus, prompted by his mother, Julia Soaemias, constituted a senate of women to decide what kind of clothing women of a particular rank could wear in public; who could ride in a chariot, on a horse, a pack animal, or an ass; who could be carried in a litter; who could use a litter made of leather or of bone; and other details. This senate was dissolved at the death of Elagabalus, though briefly revived by the Emperor Aurelian.112
Praising the female members of their family was another way that men used to gain status through women. Gaius Gracchus was criticized for using the name of his mother Cornelia with too much rhetoric, but he profited politically by it.113 Ever since the laudatio pronounced in 102 B.C. by Q. Lutatius Catulus (consul 78 B.C.) over his mother, it had become acceptable to pronounce funeral orations over elderly women,114 but the encomium delivered by Julius Caesar in 69 B.C. on the death of his aunt, the wife of Marius, marked a turning point in his political career. In the next year, Caesar’s wife died, and he became the first man to deliver a eulogy over a young woman, winning great favor with the multitudes by this action.115 At the precocious age of twelve, the boy who was destined to become the Emperor Augustus followed in the footsteps of his uncle Julius Caesar by delivering an oration in honor of his grandmother Julia. When Octavia, the sister of Augustus, died, she was honored by two orations, one delivered by Augustus himself and one by Nero Claudius Drusus, and public mourning was declared.116 This practice of honoring women of distinguished families after death was common, and some of the themes of such eulogies have been pointed out in our discussion of the eulogies of “Turia” and Cornelia, wife of Lucius Aemilius Paullus (this page).
In the Empire, women, both living and after death, were decreed magnificent honors. Those honored while alive enjoyed their privileges, to be sure. But, living or dead, the usual purpose of honoring women was to exalt the men to whom they were mothers, wives, or sisters. Imperial coinage clearly demonstrates that the women of the emperor’s family are viewed as his appendages, and their qualities are his. On the verso of an emperor’s coin, the portrait or figure of an imperial woman is often depicted as a personification of an attribute of the emperor or an aspect of his reign. Thus some women are shown as Concordia, Justitia, Pax, Securitas, or Fortuna, these qualities actually accruing to the emperor to whom she is related. Because these abstract qualities are denoted in Latin by nouns of the feminine gender, and were honored as female divinities, imperial women could impersonate them.
Imperial women were also flattered by honorific titles. After the death of Augustus, his widow Livia was termed Augusta (“venerable”), because by testamentary adoption Augustus had acknowledged the old custom that at times considered a wife an integral member of her husband’s family. Agrippina the Younger—wife of the Emperor Claudius—became the first to be so distinguished during her husband’s lifetime. Some of the titles were pro forma honors, but in the early third century A.D. “Mother of Augustus,” “Mother of the Army,” and “Mother of the Army and the Senate” referred to the real political power of two unusual women, Julia Soaemias and Julia Maesa.
The most extraordinary honors bestowed on the women of the imperial court were those implying that they were goddesses. In their lifetime both Livia and Julia, the wife and daughter of the first emperor, were termed divine in the provinces, and a temple was erected in honor of Livia and her son Tiberius by the cities of Asia.117 A number of empresses were deified after death in order to strengthen the belief that their descendants, the reigning emperors, were divine, and the consecration was commonly announced on coins. The assimilation of imperial women to goddesses was also publicized on coins. Thus women served to promote the revival of the traditional Roman religion, which was supported by the emperors in the face of the popularity of foreign cults. Ceres, goddess of marriage, is the divinity to whom imperial women are most frequently assimilated. The characteristics of fertility and nurture associated with Ceres were those which the emperors wanted to instill in women in accordance with the official policy of improving the birthrate. (Ears of grain surrounding the portrait of Ceres also refer to the grain dole, an imperial gift to the male members of the urban population of Rome.) After Ceres, Vesta is the goddess to whom imperial women were most commonly assimilated on coins. These coins commemorate the grants of privileges of Vestals to nonvirginal women of the royal family. Occasionally women are shown as Juno or Venus, even more rarely as Diana.
The female members of influential families were also honored by the erection of statues and buildings. Statues of many women were erected in the late Republic and Empire, although Cato had inveighed against the practice,118 and the Emperor Tiberius ordered that official compliments paid to women be kept within limits.119The women most represented are the members of the imperial court and Vestal Virgins. In the provinces, this practice was imitated by the erection of statues of wives of provincial governors and a proliferation of decrees in honor of various women, including athletes, musicians, and physicians (see this page, this page).120 Augustus named the Porticus Liviae and the Macellum Liviae in honor of his wife. He also dedicated the Porticus Octaviae to his sister, and placed there the statue of Cornelia mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.
The ideal of fecundity represented by Cornelia was perpetuated during the Empire. Aside from coins announcing their deaths and consecrations, the coinage of imperial women most frequently commemorated their fecundity. Of course, their children were potential successors to the throne, and thus childbirth had political implications, but the implicit lesson was that all women should bear children. The inscriptions on other coins of the imperial women also refer to the traditional virtues Romans sought in women: Pietas, indicating their loyalty to the traditional religion; Fides, denoting their faithfulness to one man, continuing after his death; and Pudicitia, asserting that their sexual conduct was beyond reproach.
Obviously, if women were actually conducting themselves in accordance with the ideal, there would have been no need to urge them continually by such means as the Augustan marriage legislation and the reminders on imperial coinage. We cannot review here the fortunes and failings of famous Roman women individually, but they can be analyzed in a general way, since the historical accounts of women show certain patterns of moral polarity. Interestingly enough, the wives of Marc Antony provide the paradigms: Fulvia, the evil wife; Octavia, the virtuous wife. Cleopatra, who was Antony’s last wife, was, however, unique. The stories of all three women were distorted by political propaganda emanating from Octavian, or from historians hostile to Antony, who was Octavian’s rival.
Fulvia was Antony’s wife and she had been married twice before to husbands of distinguished backgrounds and brilliant political careers, including Publius Clodius (see this page). Fulvia did not inherit her mother’s charm, but she attracted three husbands by her wealth. She bore children in each marriage, but, like her mother, Fulvia was described as female in body only. Fulvia’s “masculinity” consisted in entering spheres reserved for men. Her political manipulations in behalf of her various husbands were of benefit to them, but Fulvia’s ambitions provoked hatred of her. The antagonism she aroused is a measure of the real political power that women like her wielded, whether through wealth or influence. It also resulted from the hatred accruing to the men with whom they were connected; for example, Sempronia’s aid to Catiline and Fulvia’s to Antony implicated the women in the odium felt toward these men. Moreover, despite the long tradition of Roman women playing a role in politics, there remained a feeling traceable back to Homer that women and men should have distinct roles in society. But Fulvia did not care about spinning or housekeeping; rather, she preferred to accompany her husbands even in the army camps. Her cruelty during the proscriptions was equal to Antony’s and her rudeness to the female relatives of the proscribed men has already been noted (see this page); but the stories about Fulvia are derived from biased testimony. Plutarch charges Fulvia with initiating the deterioration of Marc Antony and preparing him to be dominated by Cleopatra, for Fulvia wished to rule a ruler and command a commander, and she schooled Antony to obey women. While Antony was campaigning in the East, with Antony’s brother Fulvia maintained his interests in Italy against Octavian until the defeat at Perusia in 40 B.C. She was devoted to her husband’s career although Cleopatra had begun her liaison with Antony. In 40 B.C., soon after the birth of Cleopatra’s twins and after she herself had suffered many rebuffs from Antony, Fulvia died. Her death prepared the way for his second marriage.121
Octavia, the sister of Octavian, was newly widowed and hence available for a marriage alliance with Antony. Their marriage was the result of the agreement between Octavian and Antony in 40 B.C., known as the Treaty of Brundisium. While Fulvia’s policy had been to steer Antony against Octavian, Octavia’s was to mediate between the two men, and for her efforts she won the approbation of her brother and later historians. Her precedents for female intercession between factions of men were, of course, the legendary women of the early Republic, including the Sabine women and the delegation of women that dissuaded Coriolanus from attacking Rome. This was the only traditionally commendable, active political role for women in Rome. Octavia bore two children to Antony in the three years they lived together, but he grew bored with her sober intellectual character. In 37 B.C. Antony married Cleopatra, and in 36 B.C. their son Ptolemy was born. Since Cleopatra was not a Roman citizen, Octavia, like Fulvia before her, was able to view the marriage as not legitimate. She continued to aid Antony, it is claimed, despite her brother’s wishes. In 32 B.C. Antony formally divorced Octavia, and this insult gave Octavian a reason to declare war. Octavia was ejected from Antony’s house, weeping lest she be considered a cause of war. After Antony’s death she raised her children by her two marriages and Antony’s children by Fulvia and Cleopatra, with the exception of Antyllus, Fulvia’s elder son by Antony, whom Octavian had had murdered. Cleopatra’s two sons by Antony also were never heard of again. Octavia was not the ordinary hateful stepmother, and her reputation was unblemished. When Octavia died, as we have noted, two public eulogies were delivered and public mourning declared. In contrast, the suicide of Cleopatra was greeted by Octavian and Rome with jubilation. Some rejoiced that the prophecy that the Egyptian queen would conquer Rome, reconcile Asia and Europe, and reign in a golden age of peace, justice, and love had been thwarted by her death.122 Many were jubilant and ready to accept the rule of Octavian, for his propaganda against Cleopatra—the fatale monstrum—made Octavian himself seem like a divine savior when he defeated her.
In 41 B.C. Antony summoned Cleopatra to meet him in Cilicia. Cleopatra had not been able to persuade Caesar to abandon his respectable Roman wife, but she lured Antony from both Fulvia and Octavia. When she first met Antony she sailed on a golden barge, dressed like Aphrodite. She was not so beautiful as some earlier Macedonian queens, but she possessed a magical charm and a beautiful voice. She was well educated and spoke many languages including Egyptian (unlike many male Ptolemies), despite the fact that she was Greek by culture as well as heredity. Since Antony did not have intellectual aspirations. Cleopatra entertained him as he desired. The two of them enjoyed immense luxury, Cleopatra playing the exotic companion to Antony’s pleasure, though the debauchery and drunkenness ascribed to her are not in keeping with the traditions of Hellenistic queens and, as far as we know, she had sexual liaisons with only Caesar and Antony. Legends built up by her enemies are doubtless the source of unflattering accounts, since Cleopatra’s competence as a ruler was never questioned, and Egypt remained loyal to her.
Cleopatra resembled Octavia in her devotion to her country, Fulvia in her ruthlessness and masculine daring, and earlier Hellenistic queens in her unbridled ambition. She also resembled Alexander the Great in her ability and quest for world empire. She posed a major threat to Octavian and Rome, for she had the only living son of Caesar—Caesarion, Marc Antony—a triumvir and famous general who was widely popular among troops and aristocracy alike, and the riches and resources of Egypt at her command. When Octavian finally declared war after Antony had formally divorced Octavia, he declared war on Cleopatra alone. Antony was attracted to her personally, but politically he also hoped to profit by her support. Cleopatra aided Antony with her troops and supplies, but she never put her resources completely at his disposal. Rather, she participated in his campaigns and was present at the scene of battles, as were earlier Hellenistic queens. Her presence among the Roman troops was disturbing to them, since, as we have noted in our discussion of Fulvia, Romans, unlike the Macedonians, believed that the battlefield was no place for a woman. The Romans were also disturbed at Antony’s transformation from a Roman soldier into a self-styled Hellenistic king, and believed that if he were triumphant the capital of the world would shift from Rome to Alexandria. As everyone knows, in 30 B.C., after being defeated by Octavian. Antony committed suicide and died in Cleopatra’s arms. Rather than grace Octavian’s triumph, Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an asp to bite her breast.
The asp was sacred to the Egyptian sun god, from whom Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt considered herself descended—though she did not deny her Macedonian descent. The divinity of Hellenistic rulers in Egypt had a long history. Cleopatra and Antony were also viewed as incarnations of Aphrodite and Dionysus, and of Isis and Osiris. As Isis, who championed the equality of women—and doubtless motivated also by what she considered to be her own interest—Cleopatra is known to have supported women twice in minor political disputes.123
The story of Dido and Aeneas related by Virgil in the Aeneid bears some resemblance to that of Cleopatra and Antony. Both women, by means of Oriental luxury and feminine charm, diverted men from political purposes which were to benefit Rome. The motivations of Dido and Cleopatra were quite different. Dido loved Aeneas. Though as queen she had managed to found the city of Carthage, she let her government disintegrate while she carried on her affair with Aeneas, and even offered to share her realm with him. Aeneas eventually showed his worth by abandoning Dido and Oriental softness to continue with his mission, which led to the founding of Rome. In contrast to Aeneas, Antony was permanently seduced by Cleopatra and her Oriental ways. Cleopatra herself was more like Aeneas in her devotion to her country and her ambitions for herself and her children. She dominated Antony, and, if she loved him, she certainly never let emotion divert her from her schemes. The Romans feared her as they had feared only Hannibal, and they created a legend that survives to this day.
It is apparent that the upper-class Roman woman—at least from the time of the late Republic—had far more freedom than the woman of similar status in Classical Athens. The Roman woman had choices; the Athenian had none. As we have seen, life styles varied and more than one role was tolerated by the society. A Roman matron could be a virtuous Cornelia, Octavia, or “Turia,” or she could be free beyond the point of indiscretion. Like Dido or the daughter or granddaughter of Augustus, she might be forced to pay a price for her abandonment of propriety, but the choice was hers.
Roman women were given no true political offices and were forced to exert their influence through their men. Unlike Cleopatra, they were the power behind the throne, but the throne could never be theirs, and their interference in politics aroused resentment. Compared to Athenian women, Roman women were liberated, but compared to Roman men they were not.
On the other hand, Roman women were involved with their culture and were able to influence their society, whereas the Athenian women were isolated and excluded from activities outside the home. Roman women dined with their husbands and attended respectable parties, games, shows, and even political gatherings. Thus I believe that the notorious part of their lives has been exaggerated by historians who write of the silent, seething, repressed women taking out their fury in antisocial desecrations of tradition, in debauchery, and in cruelty at the games.124 Roman women had access to money and power, and their fortunes were linked to those of the state. As men prospered, so did women.