womeninrome

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Intended Audience

high school to college, anyone interested in depictions of elite women in Rome and my personal take on how they were used 

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How to Navigate

* To view the posts as a separate page (which might be easier to read, up to you), just click the numbers (i.e. 3:44) underneath the post

** Recommended order: Elite Women Roman Republic, Elite Women Augustan Age, Roma as the Ultimate Role Model, Concluding Thoughts

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Roma as the Ultimate Role Model

Sinclair Bell discusses role models and exempla in their paper and references Matthew Roller's "model of exemplary discourse”: actions, audiences, values and memory. (Bell, 6) Let’s use this model to look at Roma depicted in a relief of the Ara Pacis.

Relief detail from the Ara Pacis, Rome, 13-19BCE (marble)

Action (something embodying Roman social values): breastfeeding the twins (maybe Romulus and Remus) --> motherhood

Audience (the people who observe the action and categorize it as ‘good’ or ‘bad): Roman citizens who maybe doubted the connection between Augustus and the Senate

Commemoration: the monument that was the Ara Pacis

Imitation: strive to reach an ideal form of motherhood and provide for Rome

In summary, the feminine form of Roma is used to associate several things in a Roman citizens mind: woman = mother = virtues of a mother = nurturing = Roma. In the way that Roma is a mother, Rome the civilization will provide for its citizens through leadership, like those who built the Ara Pacis as well as Augustus.

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Elite Women in the Augustan Age

Women in the Augustan Age are significantly more present (even just as figureheads) in the political sphere than women in the Roman Republic. I think this was because Augustus realized there was a benefit to using the values and virtues associated with women such as being dutiful and raising children to be dutiful. This benefit was something that allowed him to spread a dynastic message and replicate Hellenistic leaders (the East used men and women on coins). There’s also the youthful features and nodus (bun at the center of the forehead), things which distinguish elite women and push the narrative that these women that Augustus is immortalizing through portraiture are women whose example should be followed.

Livia (Augustus’s 3rd wife, mother of Tiberius, later Augustus’s adopted daughter)

Portrait of Livia, Fayum region, Egypt, marble, after 4BCE

Octavia (Augustus’s sister, former wife of Mark Antony, mother of Marcellus)

Figure 2: Portrait of Octavia, Rome (Terme Museum), marble, early 30s BCE, dedicated by Augustus

Women could also be patrons of art and architecture in this period: Ara Concordia (Livia), Porticus Octaviae (Octavia), Eumachia building (outside of Rome, Eumachia). This speaks to the increase in their power in the political and social sphere since we’ve established that art was a means of manipulating public opinion.

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Elite Women in the Roman Republic

In order to understand why women were depicted a certain way in Roman art, I wanted to first look at the rights and roles they actually had in Roman society. Women couldn’t vote, hold office, or take part in war, and they couldn’t exist without a male guardian (pater potestas --> father, husband, appointed guardian). In fact even their name, a key part of any person’s identity, was taken from a male family figure and feminized (ex: Octavian’s sister --> Octavia). Free women could own property, inherit, initiate lawsuits and initiate divorce. While this may not sound like a lot to us living in 2021, these rights were pretty novel in ancient civilizations, and were most likely a result of the influence of Etruscan culture on Roman society.

In terms of roles in Roman society, elite women had the job of matrona (mother or wife) or priestesses (vestal virgins). Sub-elite women could be shop-owners (which was interesting because this meant they had a hand in manufacturing and commerce, a strength since money is power), sex workers or they existed as enslaved women in Roman society.

Looking at the roles and rights that women were afforded, how did this translate into how they were depicted? Roman culture was heavily dependent on spreading messages through their art and architecture so it’s important to view their art as symbols of how elite men wanted their citizens to think.

Let’s focus on elite women and what virtues we know were valued as well as how they moved in the political and social sphere where we’ve already established that they were limited. Elite women were expected to be/uphold values such as pietas (dutiful) and pudicitia (reserved/modest). I think that more than anything, a woman’s life was defined by her loyalty to Rome and the men around her, as well as her ability to create more men who would ultimately serve Rome. Let’s look at some examples of that loyalty to Rome.

Examples from Roman Republic (509 BCE)

Cornelia

base of statue dedicated to Cornelia, daughter of Africanus, mother of the Gracchi brothers

The inscription reads: Cornelia Africani F. Gracchiorum, meaning she was the daughter of Africanus (who defeated the Carthaginians) and the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi, two Senate members who went on to revolutionize Roman law and help the lower classes before being assassinated. What can we say they value here? A dedication to the Roman state by mothering two sons who would be thought of as great orators and harbingers of change. This is how elite figures used the idea of a woman in Roman culture to increase their citizens nationalism.

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Concluding Thoughts

I chose this topic mainly because I was interested in the difference between how Romans used the idea of a “woman” in their minds and the associated values with that to further a political agenda (i.e. Augustus and his dynastic messaging) while also limiting women’s roles and rights in real life. What’s also kind of disheartening is that because of the way women were represented, we as people in 2021 aren’t able to view them outside of the lens within which they were viewed in ancient Rome. Even in my descriptions of Livia and Octavia, I have them listed based on their association to Augustus and not as individuals. This is also further exacerbated by their lack of identity, or at least an identity that is known to us. Maybe they had nicknames within their families, but we as an audience will see them through the gaze of the elite men in their lives. 

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Citations

Beckmann, Sarah. “Women in the Augustan Age.” 1 Feb. 2021.

“Epigram Theme.” Pastebin, pastebin.com/XJfv4DZ8.

“Rome PowerPoint Backgrounds.” HipWallpaper, hipwallpaper.com/rome-powerpoint-backgrounds/.

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Thanks

thanks for reading this little blog! I had a lot of fun taking this class and getting to reacquaint myself with using tumblr :)