Classical Studies 1000 Lecture 24: Lecture 24 Term 2 - Women in Ancient Rome.docx

• School: Western University
• Department: Classical Studies
• Course: Classical Studies 1000
• Professor: Robert Stanley Brown

Document Summary

Women and family in roman society: almost all of the information we have about roman women derives from elite roman males, usually women were portrayed stereotypically. Wives, mothers and daughters who are chaste/good/honourable (both sexually and socially) Evil seductresses, scheming power-mongers (i. e. mothers who manage the political rise of their own sons) The reality was almost certainly more complex than the stereotypes: women played many roles, scholarship has tended to treat women narrowly in relation to men. The focus has often been on what they could not do rather than what they really did: recent work has attempted to redress the balance and focus on what they actually did do. Women and public life: women had no political rights. They could not be elected magistrates or hold any official offices in the running of the state (they could be priestesses: all they could really do was exemplify an ideal.