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Unfortunately much of the evidence regarding the lives and rights of ancient Roman women is patchy and based merely on speculation
and often also personal interpretation. Many of the sources we do have are secondary sources, most written by men about the
great women of Rome. On a similar note, many of the sources that we do have about women are either about legendary characters,
freaks of nature and other women who have done something out of the ordinary. Therefore the lives of ordinary women were little
represented in the scheme of things.
The one thing that these women did have in common, regardless of social or economic class is their role as child bearers.
It was the fate of women in that era to be married off at the ripe age of 12 or 13 years and sometimes in the higher classes
- even younger! In comparison to our modern day society, this seems ridiculous considering the age of marriage for women in
the modern day is rounding in the 30s. But we must also consider that in essence this was most likely in conjunction with
the life expectancy of the people of ancient Rome. A fantastic example of the concept of young marriage and early death is
in a funerary inscription uncovered in Rome:
"Veturia - she was married at eleven, bore six children and died at twenty-seven"
The reason for the big families was that women needed to have as many children as possible considering very few would
actually grow and survive until maturity. For example, the mother of the Gracchi - named Cornelia - bore twelve children,
only two boys and one girl of which survived.
Fertility, was quite critical for women in general, however, the number of children expected to be born, varied from class
to class. Aristocratic families expected more children from their women, to assure them that the family name would be inherited
by as many offspring as possible. Therefore, for the aristocracy, infertility was plenty grounds for divorce, so that the
husband may pass on his lineage through the children he may bear from another woman. The lower echelons of society bore fewer
children, considering that more often than not they were not able to fully sustain large families on measly wages. Those rural
families, did want a healthy brood of children to work in their fields, whereas city folk were not inclined to do so as much.
In the Roman household, the pater familias had supreme power over those within the household, including family, slaves,
clients etc. In regard to women bearing children, the pater familias was in charge of accepting or exposing a child at birth.
An excerpt from Eva Cantarnella's, Pandora's Daughters:
'The earliest power that the father could exercise over a filias familias was that of exposure. At birth, in a highly
symbolic rite, newborns -- male and female -- were deposited at the feet of the father. He -- without explanation or justification
-- either recognized the child as his by picking it up, or withheld his recognition by leaving it where it was. The recognized
child became a member of the familia; the unrecognized child was abandoned to the river or left to die by starvation'.
The childbearing leg of the journey having been completed, Roman women also had the duty of raising their children, on
a far greater level than Greek women. Greek culture assumed that the raising of boys was strictly the duty of men. In Roman
families both boys and girls have a childhood mostly reared by their mother. Girls were given a home education of duties that
she would need to perform after marriage and teach her own children. Boys on her other hand were taught arithmetic, literature
and rhetoric, but at home they were given lessons by their mothers on Roman culture. The women in these situations would be
responsible for a great part of their education and cultivation.
Although the Roman women were fairly limited in their rights in comparison to modern women, they were actually very lucky
in relation to women in other cultures in the same era. The Romans believed that women were liberated in their ability to
"influence their society, be involved in their culture, dine with their husbands and attend parties, games and shows".
Having a number of freedoms within their personal lives was great, however, there were restrictions on many of the rights
of women. They were under constant supervision by their male counterparts. Originally it would be their father, then their
husband until death. This supervision left very little freedom for the Roman women in public. It was forbidden, for exmaple,
for women to consume wine, for it was believed that wine led directly to women having adulterous relationships, considering
marriages themselves were based neither on passion nor love.
The lives of women in Ancient Rome are truly interesting to study. With each different account, different opinions, perspectives
and discoveries are uncovered. Although restricted quite greatly in comparison to the modern day, the liberation of Roman
women in the ancient world is likely to be second only to Egyptian women of the same period, who appear to have had far more
legal rights.
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