Roman Women

1
Roman Women

2
Familia wife, husband, children, slaves

• Paterfamilias
• Potestas Tutor
• Iustum conubium marriage requires consent of
  Paterfamilias
• Manus marriages both
• with and without
• Dos
• Sponsalia

3
Aims of Marriage

• Property Inheritance issues
• Management of household (domus)
• Continuity of familia
• Ideal of univira
• Ideal of concordia

4
Womens Participation

• E.g. Oppian Law Livy
• Motherhood Vide Coriolanus, Gracchi
• Manipulation Vide Augustus wife, Livia
• Alliances via marriage Vide Augustus sister
  and Mark Antony

5
Professional Women Common Prostitutes

• Sources Syria, Egypt, e.g.
• Garb Tunica and toga (mens wear)
• Locations certain roadways, around Caelian,
  near Circus Maximus, e.g.
• Taxation Regulation must register with
• Aediles and submit to inspection in brothels

6
Professional Women Upper Class

• Courtesans/mistresses (e.g. Plautus characters)
• Doctae Puellae Cf. Elegaic Poets
• Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid

7
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus

• Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,and
  let us judge all the rumors of the old mento be
  worth just one penny!The suns are able to fall
  and riseWhen that brief light has fallen for
  us,we must sleep a never ending night.Give me a
  thousand kisses, then another hundred,then
  another thousand, then a second hundred,then yet
  another thousand more, then another
  hundred.Then, when we have made many
  thousands,we will mix them all up so that we
  don't know,and so that no one can be jealous of
  us when he finds outhow many kisses we have
  shared.
• 
  Catullus, Carmen 5

8
Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa.

• Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia,that same
  Lesbia, whom Catullus lovedmore than himself and
  more than all his own,now loiters at the
  cross-roads and in the backstreetsready to
  toss-off the grandsons of the brave Remus
• Catullus,
  Carmen 58

9
Catullus 85 Odi et amo

• I hate and I love. Wherefore would I do this,
  perhaps you ask?I do not know. But I feel that
  it happens and I am tortured.

10
Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle

• My woman says to me that there is noneWith
  whom she'd rather spend her days than I,Should
  even Jove himself ask her to wed.So she says,
  but women often lie,What a woman says to a
  desirous lover,This he ought to write in the
  wind and rapid water.
• 
  Catullus, Carmen 70