Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives &  Slaves (1975): first significant study

Problems & Pitfalls

• Absence of women's own voices
• Privileging of literary sources over documentary evidence (literature * life)
• Anecdotal evidence vs. statistics
• Mistaking (men's) ideals, attitudes for women's actual experience
• Over-representation of elite women (aristocrats, imperial family)
• Danger of viewing "women" as monolithic category

                                -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 72)

Marriages as long as ours are rare, marriages that are ended by death and not broken by divorce. For we were fortunate enough to see our marriage last without disharmony for fully 40 years ...

                                -- Anon., Laudatio of "Turia"

Hilarion to Alis his sister, heartiest greetings, and to my dear Berous and Apollonarion. Know that we are still even now in Alexandria. ... If--good luck to you--you bear offspring, if it is a male, let it live; if it is a female, expose it.

                                -- Papyrus letter, 1st c. BC

The Ideal: the faithful matrona

Why should I mention your domestic virtues: your loyalty, obedience, affability, reasonableness, industry in working wool, religion without superstition, sobriety of attire, modesty of appearance?
                                -- Laudatio of "Turia"

... they found Lucretia very differently employed: it was already late at night, but there, in the hall of her house, surrounded by her busy maid-servants, she was still hard at work by lamplight upon her spinning.
                                -- Livy, History 1 (p. 98)

Here lies Amymone, wife of Marcus, best and most beautiful, worker in wool, pious, chaste, thrifty, faithful, a stayer-at-home.
                                -- Inscription, 1st c. BC

                In the old days
Latin women were chaste ...
Hands were hard from working the wool ...
                                -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 74)

Legal Position

Male custodianship (tutela)

• Paterfamilias
• father/brother (unmarried or no manus)
• husband (marriage w/ manus)
• Tutor for women sui iuris (no paterfamilias)
• Waived for Vestal Virgins

• Control of fertility (minimum age = 12)
• Theoretically arranged by paterfamilias/tutor
• Bride's consent needed; some choice
• No-fault divorce

• Defined as sex with married woman OR with unmarried citizen woman

Theory vs. Practice

Loosening of Legal/Social Restrictions

• Decline of manus marriage
• Loosening of tutela requirements
• waived for women w/ 3 (4) children
• tutor's approval can be compelled
• Changes in nomenclature

• Cornelia, mother of Gracchi
• Octavia, sister of Augustus
• Imperial women (Livia, Messalina, Agrippina etc.)

• Women in Pompeian painting
• Villa of the Mysteries
• Porticus of Livia

• Women as priestesses (e.g. Vestal Virgins)
• Eastern religions (Isis etc.)
• Women-only festivals (-> male anxiety)
• 186 Bacchanalia
• 62 Bona Dea scandal

Over our seven hills ... they came pouring,
The rabble and rout of the East, Sybaris,  Rhodes, Miletus,
Yes, and Tarentum too, garlanded, drunken ...

                                    -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 74)

Or, it may be, they have deeper designs and are really preparing
For the arena itself. How can a woman be decent
Sticking her head in a helmet, denying the sex she was born with?

                                    -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 72)

Even worse is the one who has scarcely sat  down at the table
When she starts in on books, with praise for Virgil ...

                                    -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 81)

All their gossip, their fears, their anger, their joys and their worries,
Their intimate secrets of soul, they pour out in  Greek ...

                                    -- Juvenal, Satire 6 (p. 70)