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. Women’s 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 (men’s 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 rise:When 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