Compared to other countries in classical times, especially in the Greek world, Roman women had comparative stature, independence, and a value recognized by their society. This dialectic provides an ever-changing focus on Roman women; at times they appear completely overborne by the male society in which they functioned, at other times their independence and societal impact is far above the norm for their own times. Between the two extremes lies the truth.

Any study of ancient Roman women must focus on two problems: only male historians and writers speak for them, and those men are focused single-mindedly on the ruling class of Republic and Empire. The "short and simple annals of the poor" have little or no place in historical analysis before the 19th century. References to women must be analyzed to understand, and sometimes discount, the male perspective that produced them. Much is known about the women of upper class Rome. For lower-class women, we know only what can be gleaned from archeological finds, grave inscriptions, burial artifacts, and a working knowledge of their culture. This field of historical inquiry is exploding and much will be written and rewritten in the decades ahead as we seek to find the authentic voices of Roman women in their own times.

Women in Classical Greece

A necessary perspective on Roman female society comes by comparing the two great influences in early Roman society: the influence of classic Greece and Magna Graecia (its Mediterranean colonies) which deeply influenced all bordering cultures in the five centuries before Christ, and the opposite impact of the Etruscan culture of Italy, older than Rome and dominating it in the seventh and sixth centuries BC.

"She was not yet fifteen years old when she came to me, and up to that time she had lived in leading-strings, seeing, hearing and saying as little as possible. If when she came she knew no more than how, when given wool, to turn out a cloak, and had seen only how the spinning is given out to the maids, is not that as much as could be expected? For in control of her appetite, Socrates, she had been excellently trained..." Xenophon, On Men and Women,from Oikonomikos, c. 370 BC.

In the sixth-century Athens of Pericles, a strongly male-dominated culture relegated women to a position of essential impotence beyond the bonds of their children and households. Greek women were, legally and figuratively, considered as children all their lives. Societal mores separated male and female activities in every sphere. Women and their children lived in separate quarters in their fathers' or husband's house. Literacy was not encouraged for respectable women. A woman's major - almost sole - function was to produce a legitimate heir; thus she sought marriage above all other goals, usually marrying in her early 'teens, often to much-older men. Her chastity and reputation were paramount. A respectable woman was not expected to escape the confines of her father or husband's house; the less she was seen or even mentioned by other men, the more her honor. She was not permitted to eat in the company of males except those from her own family (only prostitutes, or hetairai, dined with strange men). Friendship between men (including homosexual friendship) was considered far nobler and more spiritually satisfying than any love a husband might hold for his wife. Socrates could and did dismiss his wife, Xanthippe, from his deathbed, preferring to die with his male companions; the decision was viewed with approval.

All the great Greek playwrights included women in dramatic or comic scenes (although, of course, only male actors could portray them). Only in comedy was a woman's assertiveness considered humorous, like the angry wives in Lysistrata who refuse their husbands sex and child care to force the vote for peace. In tragedies, an assertive woman usually spelled disaster; in a case such as Medea's, a woman's natural jealousy and tempestuous emotional instability resulted in the murder of her own children.

Except for religious ceremonies, women were not permitted to mix with men in public, attend political gatherings or the theater, or vote. An Athenian woman was not allowed to make important social or financial decisions without a male guardian's consent and had little or no financial independence. Although the Athenian male came of age at 18, an Athenian woman never did; her legal status until her death remained that of a minor child. She was provided little or no formal education other than necessary household wisdom. It was considered inappropriate for a woman to go to market without chaperones. Societal strictures and law firmly enforced the ideal that a woman was inferior to her morally superior husband, required his guidance, and must submit to his wisdom. Aristotle wrote that marriage between men and women is inherently unequal, and that a woman must look to her husband as a beneficiary looks to a benefactor. His influence was wide-ranging. Only lower-class women, who had to work to help sustain the household, escaped some of these strictures.

Yet there were exceptions to the outlines sketched above. Perhaps one of the most famous and influential women in Athens was the extraordinary Aspasia, mistress of the statesman Pericles, friend of Socrates. It is sufficient to say that her reputation for learning, wit, and political influence was allowed partly because she was only a resident alien in Athens (thus free from restrictions on Athenian women) and because she was a hetaira. It is a peculiar fact that Greek prostitutes were permitted infinitely more intellectual freedom than their chaste sisters, free to dine, learn, and argue philosophy with men beyond their other professional accomplishments.

The city-state of Sparta deviated from some of these restrictive conventions but its influence was minor compared to that of Athens and Athens' influence on its numerous colonies abroad. Although some of the more severe Greek strictures against women relaxed in the Hellenistic period, Greek women remained bound by moral dependency, lack of financial independence and lack of education throughout antiquity. Interestingly, many traditions of the Greeks were absorbed in the later, Byzantine culture. In antiquity, Greeks colonized towns in Sicily and southern Italy: Greek cultural stereotypes concerning women were influential on the development of early Italian culture.

Etruscan Women

At the other pole of classical feminine behavior lay the mores of the Etruscan culture of 7th and 6th century Italy. Greek writers, including the fourth-century Theopompus and the later Athenaeus, passed along scandal-ridden tales of the wealth, greed and sensual license of Etruscan women, revealing an implacable hostility to female conduct so foreign to that mandated in Athens at the time. The Romans listened. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans had no narratives of their early history before the third century BC, centuries after the founding of Rome. Thus later Roman sources such as Livy, often drawing on Greek historians, preserved legends of the vanished Etruscan culture and the behavior of its women. From what the Romans preserved, we can see how the Etruscans were viewed by their successors and how their treatment of women was part of Roman propaganda and moral instruction of females in Rome itself.

Etruscan women were permitted to dine with their husbands and male relatives, drinking wine and allegedly engaging in affectionate or sexual behavior in public. Funerary monuments and wall paintings suggest that the importance of married couples and their private relationships took cultural precedence over male relationship and even, in some cases, over the severe authority of the Roman paterfamilias. A noblewoman's lineage was noted alongside famous men's. Stories tell that several of the early Tarquin kings had wives of great political ambition and effectiveness (although these are usually held up by the Romans as cautionary tales of the disastrous impact of ambitious women). Artifacts, including mirrors and tomb inscriptions, suggest that many Etruscan women of the higher classes were literate. The tombs of women are elaborate and, like men, they are permitted to take status objects with them to the netherworld including familiar items of women's authority: wool-working equipment, engraved mirrors, toilet boxes, and jewelry, just as men took their fine armor, swords, and guest cups. Poignant tomb objects portray husbands and wives with the affectionate intimacy of the marital bed.

Etruscan women were allegedly permitted wide sexual latitude with multiple partners. Although the Etruscans were later conquered and then absorbed by the culture of Republican Rome, the tales of its more emancipated women must have driven deeply into Rome's own conceptions of permissible female behavior, both for good and ill. Roman myths as codified by Livy later contrasted the (perceived) shocking sexual freedom permitted Etruscan women with the chaste docility of a Lucretia or Verginia.

In Roman eyes, Etruscan women were also allowed a dangerous taste of political power and ambition. Livy also spotlighted certain Etruscan women such as Tanaquil, wife of Tarquinius Priscus, and Tullia, wife of Tarquinius Superbus, for their ambition and its disastrous results.

Tanaquil, daughter of a noble Etruscan family, played upon her husband's weakness to prod him by supposed prophecies to move to Rome, promising him a royal future there. Tanaquil is specifically given knowledge of divination, although it is unknown if Etruscan women were permitted to practice the art of augury. She then persuades her husband to adopt Servius Tullius as his successor. It is largely through Tanaquil that the royal family survived the murder of her husband, whereupon Servius Tullius became king of Rome.

Livy's description of Tullia, with her Lady Macbeth-like ferocity of savage ambition, is far closer to the vision of Shakespeare's Queen of the Goths in Titus Andronicus - Tullia, symbolizing Etruscan rule, is even more cruel and vicious than her husband and unnaturally connived at the murders of both her husband and father. Both these women were obviously nursery horror-stories for later centuries of Roman women who were thus warned against an overt involvement in the male sphere of politics.

Thus as the innate values of Roman society were being codified in the period between the Founding of Rome in 753 and 202 BC (the year of Rome's victory in her war to the death with the Carthaginian, Hannibal), the cultural identity of feminine Rome was being defined partly by the twin extremes of these influential cultures: by the restrictions of the Greeks and the supposed license of the Etruscans. It was between the two extremes that the Roman woman would find her own unique balance.

Sources:

Quotation from Xenophon from Ancient History Sourcebook. Translation from Lysistrata courtesy of EAWC Anthology. Quote from Theopompus courtesy of Morality and the Etruscans.

Marble head of veiled woman: copy of bronze head of "Aspasia" of c. 460 BCE Paris, Louvre Museum. Credits: Barbara McManus, 1999. Colored reproduction of the Peplos "Kore" from Museum of Classical Archeology/Cambridge. Sketch of Greek woman courtesy of The Costumer's Manifesto. Votive bust of Etruscan woman from Caere, 3rd century BC, Vatican Museum. Etruscan map courtesy of The Mysterious Etruscans. Sarcophagus of Etruscan couple c. 510 BC, courtesy of Artlex on Etruscan Art.

An excellent discussion of Livy's myths of Etruscan women may be found in the Ancient History Bulletin.