Women and their children

Roman women had no legal rights over their children. Unwanted children could be exposed (abandoned in the open air), which might mean death or enslavement, depending on where the child was found and whether the mother wanted that or not. If her husband died, then the estate passed to the son and a woman could find herself with nothing at all. Women who kept their children faced all the worry and tragedy of a very high level of infant mortality and all the pressure to produce a healthy son who lived to adulthood and could inherit his father’s estate.

Roman women’s clothing and beauty treatments

Women’s clothing, like most Roman clothing, was much simpler than today’s:

• Breasts were supported by a strapless band (strophium).
• Instead of panties or briefs a sort of bandage (feminalia) was often used instead, though panties very like modern ones have been found.
• A slip (tunica interior) was worn over these undergarments.
• On top was a woollen gown (stola) tied in round the waist and perhaps a shawl (palla).

Wealthy women could afford silk and a Greek woman called Pamphile invented a way to weave silk so fine that the clothing made women look nude. Bronze (or silver and gold for the rich) brooches, like our safety pins, were used to hold the clothing in place. Shoes were like open leather sandals today, sometimes elaborately decorated with patterned cut-outs. Cosmetic treatments included using ass’s milk on the skin or even a jelly made by boiling a bullcalf’s bone for 40 days to avoid wrinkles, antimony as an eyebrow make-up, and kaolin as a face-powder.

Roman women in the home

In the man’s world of the Roman Empire, women were theoretically confined to running the home and having children. The wife of a pater familias was known as the mater famiilias domina (‘mistress mother of the household’), and she was supposed to be entirely subject to her husband and, before him, her father. In general though, Roman society (which means basically men), reserved their admiration for women renowned for their upright moral virtues who were regarded as the guiding force behind teaching their sons the value of honourable behaviour in public and private life. In 215 BC, during the Second Punic War, the lex Oppia imposed limits on women’s right to own gold, wear elaborate dresses, or ride in fine carriages. It was repealed in 195 BC much to the annoyance of moral diehards like Marcus Porcius Cato By the first century BC women’s rights were improving.
Those over the age of 25 could have their own property and divorce their husbands if they chose. Women could also play a more important role in society, though they were still never allowed to take on any official jobs. But women were still primarily seen as wives and mothers. Augustus penalised unmarried women and men (for example, bachelors were prevented from inheriting legacies), but he rewarded those who did marry and had children. Even so, Roman women could be legally beaten by their husbands. In fact, it was even considered a reasonable way to treat a woman if her husband thought she had misbehaved. As a result, it was not unusual for women to bear scars on their faces from the treatment they had received. One of the most horrible cases was that of Egnatius Mecenius, who beat his wife to death for drinking wine. No-one criticised him, all thinking she had deserved it.

Education of Roman Women

Women were generally excluded from education, which was biased towards boys. But some girls from good families were taught to read and write and were known as doctae puellae, ‘educated girls’. Here’s an exceptional case of an educated woman in the public eye. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, heavy taxes were imposed by the Second Triumvirate on anyone implicated with the conspirators. A woman called Hortensia (whose father was an orator called Quintus Hortensius) made a speech to the Triumvirs in 42 BC on behalf of the wives of the men affected. It was written down and studied in later years as an example of an outstanding speech and not just because it was by a woman.

Women in Roman Society

Women could have citizenship status, but they had no formal role in Roman society. Women couldn’t serve in any of the capacities men served in as mag-istrates, politicians, or soldiers. A woman couldn’t even be an empress in her own right, though they were used for family alliances, such as when Augustus made his daughter Julia marry Marcellus, then Agrippa, and finally Tiberius in an effort to establish a dynasty through his only descendant. If an emperor left only a daughter, then the succession passed to a male relative or another man altogether.
Women had almost no legal identity other than as a man’s daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Vespasian (AD 69–79) passed a law that said any woman who had become involved with a slave man should be treated as a slave herself. Real slave women had even less of an identity, if that’s possible to imagine. Barbarian women didn’t think much of Roman women. When Septimius Severus campaigned in Britain in AD 208–211, he made a treaty with the Caledonians from Scotland. During the negotiations, the empress Julia Domna made fun of the wife of a chieftain called Argentocoxus about how British women slept with lots of different men. Argentocoxus’s wife snapped back: ‘We fulfil nature’s demands in a much better way than you Roman women do because we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourself be debauched by the vilest men in secret.’