Women in ancient Rome

Some vivid snapshots of daily life are preserved in Latin literary genres such as comedy, satire, and poetry, particularly the poems of Catullus and Ovid, which offer glimpses of women in Roman dining rooms and boudoirs, at sporting and theatrical events, shopping, putting on makeup, practicing magic, worrying about pregnancy—all, however, through male eyes.

[6] The published letters of Cicero, for instance, reveal informally how the self-proclaimed great man interacted on the domestic front with his wife Terentia and daughter Tullia, as his speeches demonstrate through disparagement the various ways Roman women could enjoy a free-spirited sexual and social life.

Forbidden from marriage or sex for a period of thirty years, the Vestals devoted themselves to the study and correct observance of rituals which were deemed necessary for the security and survival of Rome but which could not be performed by the male colleges of priests.

[17] Alternatively, Epictetus and other historians and philosophers suggest that the educational system was preoccupied with the development of masculine virtue, with male teenagers performing school exercises in public speaking about Roman values.

[49] Afrania,[50] the wife of a senator during the time of Sulla, appeared so frequently before the praetor who presided over the court, even though she had male advocates who could have spoken for her, that she was accused of calumnia, malicious prosecution.

That custom had died out by the 1st century BCE in favor of free marriage, which did not grant a husband any rights over his wife or cause any significant change to a newly-married woman's status.

Under early or archaic Roman law, marriages were of three kinds: confarreatio, symbolized by the sharing of bread (panis farreus); coemptio, "by purchase"; and usus, "by mutual cohabitation".

This archaic form of manus marriage was largely abandoned by the time of Julius Caesar, when a woman remained under her father's authority by law even when she moved into her husband's home.

This arrangement was one of the factors in the independence Roman women enjoyed relative to those of many other ancient cultures and up to the modern period:[67] So-called "free" marriage caused no change in personal status for either the wife or the husband.

[71] Valerius says that Lucius Annius was disapproved of because he divorced his wife without consulting his friends; that is, he undertook the action for his own purposes and without considering its effects on his social network (amicitia and clientela).

[77] The duration may have allowed for pregnancy: if a woman had become pregnant just before her husband's death, the period of ten months ensured that no question of paternity -- which might affect the child's social status and inheritance -- arose.

Fulvia was married first to the popularist champion Clodius Pulcher, who was murdered after a long feud with Cicero; then to Scribonius Curio; and finally to Mark Antony, the last opponent to the republican oligarchs and to Rome's future first emperor.

[81] Cato the Younger, who presented himself as a paragon modeled after his moral namesake, allowed his pregnant wife Marcia to divorce him and marry Hortensius, declining to offer his young daughter to the 60-year-old orator instead.

[92] Roman wives were expected to bear children, but the women of the aristocracy, accustomed to a degree of independence, showed a growing disinclination to devote themselves to traditional motherhood.

Since wealthy couples often owned multiple homes and country estates with dozens or even hundreds of slaves -- some of whom were educated and highly skilled -- this could be the equivalent of running a small corporation.

In addition to the sociopolitically important responsibilities of entertaining guests, clients, and visiting dignitaries from abroad, the husband held his morning business meetings (salutatio) at home.

Since the most ambitious aristocratic men were frequently away from home on military campaign or administrative duty in the provinces, sometimes for years at a time, the maintenance of the family's property and business decisions were often left to the wives.

When Ovid, regarded as Rome's greatest living poet, was exiled by Augustus in 8 CE, his wife exploited social connections and legal maneuvers to hold on to the family's property, on which their livelihood depended.

During the First Servile War, Megallis and her husband Damophilus were both killed by their slaves on account of their brutality, but their daughter was spared because of her kindness and granted safe passage out of Sicily, along with an armed escort.

[127][43] Augustus' wife, Livia Drusilla Augusta (58 BCE – CE 29), was the most powerful woman in the early Roman Empire, acting several times as regent and consistently as a faithful advisor.

According to the same work, Elagabalus also established a women's senate called the senaculum, which enacted very detailed rules prescribing the correct public behaviour, jewelry, clothing, chariots and sundry personal items for matrons.

This apparently built upon previous, less formal but exclusive meetings of elite wives; and before that, Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, had listened to Senate proceedings, while concealed behind a curtain, according to Tacitus (Annales, 13.5).

As a rule women did not perform animal sacrifice, the central rite of most major public ceremonies,[134] though this was less a matter of prohibition than the fact that most priests presiding over state religion were men.

Like the Flaminica Dialis, the regina sacrorum, "queen of the sacred rites", wore distinctive ceremonial dress and performed animal sacrifice, offering a sow or female lamb to Juno on the first day of each month.

[148] The twelve major gods were presented as six gender-balanced pairs,[149] and Roman religion departed from Indo-European tradition in installing two goddesses in its supreme triad of patron deities, Juno and Minerva along with Jupiter.

[171] Prostitutes depicted in Roman erotic art have fleshy bodies and wide hips, and often have their breasts covered by a strophium (a sort of strapless bra) even when otherwise nude and performing sex acts.

Catullus addresses a number of poems to "Lesbia", a married woman with whom he has an affair, usually identified as a fictionalized Clodia, sister of the prominent popularist politician Clodius Pulcher.

The affair ends badly, and Catullus's declarations of love turn to attacks on her sexual appetites—rhetoric that accords with the other hostile source on Clodia's behavior, Cicero's Pro Caelio.

[180] In the older tradition, intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth were not only central to women's health, but the raison d'être for female physiology;[181] men, by contrast, were advised to exercise moderation in their sexual behavior, since hypersexuality would cause disease and fatigue.

Although Hellenistic and Roman medical and other writers refer to clitoridectomy as primarily an "Egyptian" custom, gynecological manuals under the Christian Empire in late antiquity propose that hypersexuality could be treated by surgery or repeated childbirth.