WOMEN in ANCIENT ROME the Other Great
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WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME The other great classical culture was Rome. Its development from a small village on one of the seven hills of Rome to a world-wide empire is a remarkable story. As ancient Rome changed from a monarchy to a republic, and finally an empire, the status of women changed as well. However, at no time were women as restricted as Greek women. Roman legacies to Western Civilization were as numerous and important as the Greek heritage. Roman architecture, education, engineering, governmental structure, law, and the Christian Church have had lasting influences on the rest of the western world. Additionally, Rome became the great transmitter of Greek culture. The mythical story of Rome’s foundation clearly establishes the tone of women’s treatment. Amulius wanted the kingdom of Latium, so he killed the two sons of the king, and required the king’s only daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a virginal priestess for the Goddess Vesta, deity of the household. When Rhea fell asleep, the Mars, the god of war became overwhelmed by her beauty and seduced her. Rhea gave birth to twins, Romulus and Remus, but Amulius demanded that they be drowned. Instead they were placed on a raft which drifted ashore where they were suckled by a female wolf, and then later raised by a peasant family. Romulus ended up killing his brother, and when he established a village in 753 b.c.e. it was called Rome. As there were not enough women for each man to have a wife, Romulus invited the neighboring Sabine tribe to a barbecue. In a premeditated plan, the Sabine women were seized and the husbands were driven away. In the seventeenth century, the great Baroque Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens, will paint this event in his celebrated nude entitled the “Rape of the Sabine Women.” When the husbands of the Sabine women later returned armed for battle, their wives were pregnant and asked for peace, saying they had lost one set of husbands and did not want to lose their new ones. Ancient Rome right from the beginning was a mixture of various tribes and cultures. Until 509 b.c.e. Rome was ruled by kings. Some of these monarchs were Etruscans, another important group of people north of Rome. This occurred not through Etruscan conquest, but through their assimilation with Rome. The Etruscans resided in the Tuscany plain and beyond. As the Etruscan language has not been translated, we are not sure of some of the details of their society, but we know that they were heavily influenced by the Greeks, who had colonized southern Italy. These Greeks were vastly more advanced in the civilization process than the Romans. What was so unusual about the Etruscans was how well they treated their women. There was an equality in their society similar to the ancient Egyptians and Celts. Not much of this fairness to women was passed on to the ancient Romans, although the Etruscans’ influence might have been responsible for what scholars attest is Rome’s better treatment of their womenfolk than the Greeks practiced. Rome does not have the same literary foundations that the Greeks had. Rome’s literature was basically produced five or so centuries after the actual events. While the Romans had an epic tale like the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greeks, it was written late in the days of the Republic (the Republic ended 31 b.c.e.). Entitled the Aeneas, it was written by Virgil who modelled it after the famous Greek stories. A near contemporary of Virgil’s was Ovid (43 b.c.e. - 17 c.e.), who in his poem, The Metamorphoses, was the first to organize all the Greek and Roman myths into a cohesive, chronogical collection. The Romans might have had their indigneous deities, but they also borrowed heavily from the Greek ones. There are many historical sources for reconstructing the lives of ancient Roman women, but not that many that offer the personal voice of a woman. Rome was patriarchal in its organization during its one thousand plus years of history. Literature, philosophy, politics, and the arts were dominated by men. Men had both public and private identities, while women usually had only private lives. Generally, only in the area of religion did some Roman women have a powerful, public role, although wives, sisters, and mothers of Roman senators and emperors at times exerted great influence over political affairs and their male relatives. There were three identifiable groups in ancient Rome: the patricians, the plebeians, and the slaves. The patricians were the landed class, who became dominate in the Senate. The plebeians were constantly striving for more political power, and over the centuries of Roman history were able to make some gains. When the transition from republic to empire was achieved about one- third of the population were slaves, captured from many centuries of warfare. Morally, women were to be positive role models, which idea the Christians will adopt. A story from the monarchical days of early Rome clearly illuminates this important and honorable role prescribed for married matrons. Lucretia was the wife of a soldier. When her husband was gone from Rome with other soldiers, they started bragging about whose wife was the most faithful and honorable. In the course of the discussion, one of one of the soldiers surreptiously slipped away to Lucretia’s house and raped her. Rather than suffer the lost of her family’s reputation as a result of this incident, she committed suicide, salvaging her family’s name. Another laudable legend was about Cornelia, the exemplary daughter of Scipio Africanus, the general and hero of the final Roman battle against Carthage, who was Rome’s main competitor for commercial domination in the Mediterrean Sea basin. Cornelia was the wife of Tiberius, and mother of the reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi, who were both assassinated for pushing land reform legislation, which was threatening and thwarting to the wealthy patrician class. During the centuries of the Republic and Empire, women were under the guardianship of their male relatives, their fathers before marriage and their husbands after. In every aspect of their lives women were expected to defer to men. The head of the household was the oldest adult male, the paterfamilias, literally father of the family. The paterfamilias could legally kill his wife for adultery, divorce her at will, and expose a new-born infant without the mother’s consent. When a maiden married, her father’s authority passed to her husband, and she was considered an infeliae loco or a child in the family. During the approximately five hundred years of the republic, girls had only one name, the family one. There were no specific names for Roman girls, only masculine ones that changed their ending to a feminine one to indicate a girl. If there was more than one girl then they both had the same name, but with the additional moniker of elder and younger or first, second, and third, etc. By the time of the Empire, women had two names, but again they were taken from the family and the father’s name. No girl names were specifically female in origin. Thus, Claudia, Julia, Victoria, Livia, and Cornelia were feminized male names respectfully of Claudius, Julius, Victorius or Victor, Livy, and Cornelius. Education for the girls of the patrician and plebeian classes was based on three fundamentals: the study of classics including the Greek language, needlework, and the art of pleasing. Classics were the accepted literary endeavors of the Greeks and Romans. It was expected that perspective wives were to receive enough education in order to appreciate their future husband’s work, wit, writing and worth. An intelligent and talented woman had to be careful not to appear more clever than the men she came in contact with. This idea will percolate down through the centuries to modern times. As for the Romans and most all ancient cultures, marriage was the expectation for young maidens. During most of the republican days of Rome, there were three forms of marriage. One was where the power over the girl passed from her father to her husband. The next was where brides were purchased, and the third was basically a common law type of marriage. After spending a year living together the couple were considered married. Dowries and trousseaus were part of the Roman marriage contract. The dowry for upper class brides could be paid in three annual installments. When the famous lawyer and orator, Cicero, saw his daughter Tullia married for the third time, Cicero had difficulty making the last payment to the extent that he considered arranging for a divorce for his daughter to avoid paying .