For nearly eight centuries the city of Rome was imperial, ruling at its height more than 50 million people from Britain to northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East towards Asia. The indelible traces of Rome's long sway confront us in every aspect of modern western life. The surviving voices of Rome - Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Livy and others - define all we now know and understand of a vast, complex society and its beliefs. Yet for nearly a millennium, half of all people living and dying under the Caesars were women and their voices come to us solely through men. Their own words are mere whispers: a source here, a poem fragment there, and a reference in a politician's biography, tomb epitaphs. Yet the women of the Roman Empire were equally its founders and mainstay and their voices are only now, after 16 centuries, beginning to be heard.

This site attempts to give a sense of context to the position of Roman women vis-à-vis other Mediterranean cultures of the time and to follow their transition towards increasing freedom and power as the Empire itself grew. Historical Context contrasts the older cultures of Greece and the Etruscans, who influenced the early Romans. Heroines of Rome tells the legendary stories of Roman women that influenced later generations as to what a woman was supposed to be. Republican Women covers roughly the third through first centuries BC; Imperial Women documents the changes accruing after the failure of the Republic and the rise of Augustus. Forgotten Women attempts to sketch working women of Rome, of whom so little has been written in their own time. The World Within deals with the private world of the Roman women, both in terms of her female household, her love affairs, or her spirituality insofar as we may trace them. Women of Influence provides biographies of notable Roman women including Cornelia, Livia, Clodia, Agrippina the Elder, Julia Domna, and Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantinople.

In the world of antiquity, proportionately few women had either power or prestige. Yet the position of Roman women as we now understand it was, within the limits of a male-dominated world, comparatively proactive and respected. Although most admired in the traditional roles of wife and mother, Roman women in many ways suffered far fewer restrictions than women in other contemporary cultures. Perhaps more importantly, some compensation for lack of a woman's political or professional power was found in the moral and cultural authority she was held to possess, to which the Romans paid genuine tribute throughout their history.

The women of early Rome, as the Sabine women showed when they made peace between warring armies, were viewed as embodying values vital to the culture of which they were an integral part. They were expected to and were judged capable of reflecting traditional Roman virtues: endurance, courage, perseverance, honor, and patriotism. Significantly, these virtues were demanded also of men. A women had extraordinary power in her ability to influence and pass onto her children, so vital to Rome's future, the moral and emotional strengths she herself embodied. Thus the focus of Roman men on a women's fertility made a strength out of necessity and gave mothers unparalleled moral influence and stature.

As the Empire changed societal mores and women gained more real-world power (and sexual choice), the male writers of Rome often seem conflicted about this change from the demure (and invisible) matronae of yore. Yet the misogynist complaints of the great Roman satirists like Juvenal or Martial should be taken as the societal barbs they were, in which men were also judged to have become corrupted by the Empire's power and luxury. Women were more harshly judged in their corruption because the idealization and expectations of a woman's behavior were higher than for males. Like the Vestal Virgins, a woman was the keeper of the flame of Rome's greatness.

Cornelia epitomized the model of traditional Roman womanhood in the late Republic. Clodia showed that open sexual license in women was not tolerated. From Livia onward, the upper-class women of later Rome were able to take the expectations of their male counterparts and use them as screens for genuine power and influence. Those, like Agrippina the Elder, who failed spectacularly, attempted too overtly to influence political events in traditionally male fields. Empress Julia Domna, to take a late second-century example, wielded genuine political influence under the regimes of her husband and son. As the Empire progressed towards decline, the lines of descent were drawn from Livia to Julia Domna to the new Christian morality of Constantine's mother, Helena Augusta; her invisible authority would become overt with the Empress Theodora after the fall of Rome, essentially co-ruler of the Roman/Byzantine world with her husband, Justinian, long after the traditional Roman world had fallen into silence.

Although modern women may feel the scope of the women of Rome was sadly diminished, yet in the eyes of their own culture they were capable of receiving reverence and respect from the men around them. In classical antiquity, the lives of women were largely held cheap. Early Romans believed that they succeeded to rule the world through moral excellence and their women served to inspire men to their duty or to show the way themselves. In the later Empire, the genuine power held by thousands of wealthy Roman women far exceeded that of poor male citizens. In the early 21st century there are many cultures that do not place as high a value - or provide comparable opportunities - on and for women as Rome did, so many centuries ago.

Images of young woman courtesy of Pompeii. Fayum portrait from the Louvre; see "Fayum Portraits" acknowledgments in the "Links" section of this site.