Two Women in Rome

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The rise of Augustus to sole power in the last decades of the 1st century BCE diminished the power of political officeholders and the traditional oligarchy, but did nothing to diminish and arguably increased the opportunities for women, as well as slaves and freedmen, to exercise influence behind the scenes. [127] [43] Augustus' wife, Livia Drusilla Augusta (58 BCE – CE 29), was the most powerful woman in the early Roman Empire, acting several times as regent and consistently as a faithful advisor. Several women of the Imperial family, such as Livia's great-granddaughter and Caligula's sister Agrippina the Younger, gained political influence as well as public prominence. She decides to investigate Nina Lawrence further and in doing so discovers a tragedy of love and passion set again the turmoil of Italy during the second world war, at a time when various political factions were pitted against each other, adding to the horror of war already well entrenched. As more comes to light on Nina’s career in espionage, the more Lottie learns about her husband Tom, his real life and previous marriage. Nobody and nothing is as it seems. How very Italian! A concubine was defined by Roman law as a woman living in a permanent monogamous relationship with a man not her husband. [84] There was no dishonor in being a concubine or living with a concubine, and a concubine could become a wife. [85] Gifts could be exchanged between the partners in concubinage, in contrast to marriage, which maintained a more defined separation of property. We start during the 1970s, as the independent minded Nina finds herself falling for a man who she knows she cannot have a life with. Leo has his own familial demons to contend with, whilst Nina has secrets of which Leo can never be party to. Nina’s life is snatched away from her but nobody seems to know anything or care; or do they?

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a b Boatwright, Mary; Gargola, Daniel; Lenski, Noel; Talbert, Richard (2005). A Brief History of the Romans. New York: Oxford University. pp.176–177. She is highly intelligent and a careful housewife, and her devotion to me is a sure sign of her virtue,” scholar Pliny the Younger wrote in a letter of his teenage bride, Calpurnia—who, at about 15, was some 25 years younger than him when they wed. Pliny also affectionately lauded his wife’s ability to memorize his writings.

Even women of wealth were not supposed to be idle ladies of leisure. Among the aristocracy, women as well as men lent money to their peers to avoid resorting to a moneylender. When Pliny was considering buying an estate, he factored in a loan from his mother-in-law as a guarantee rather than an option. [112] Women also joined in funding public works, as is frequently documented by inscriptions during the Imperial period. The "lawless" Politta, who appears in the Martyrdom of Pionius, owned estates in the province of Asia. Inscriptions record her generosity in funding the renovation of the Sardis gymnasium. [113] Valerius Maximus 8.3.1; Joseph Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 74–75; Michael C. Alexander, Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149–50 BCE (University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 180. Alexander places the date of the trial, about which Valerius is unclear, to sometime between 80 and 50 BCE. The charge goes unrecorded. John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250 (University of California Press, 1998, 2001), p. 34.

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The frequency of remarriage among the elite was high. Speedy remarriage was not unusual, and perhaps even customary, for aristocratic Romans after the death of a spouse. [76] While no formal waiting period was dictated for a widower, it was customary for a woman to remain in mourning for ten months before remarrying. [77] The duration may have allowed for pregnancy: if a woman had become pregnant just before her husband's death, the period of ten months ensured that no question of paternity -- which might affect the child's social status and inheritance -- arose. [78] No law prohibited pregnant women from marrying, and there are well-known instances: Augustus married Livia when she was carrying her former husband's child, and the College of Pontiffs ruled that it was permissible as long as the child's father was determined first. Livia's previous husband even attended the wedding. [79] Catharine Edwards, "Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome," in Roman Sexualities (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 66ff. Girls were expected to safeguard their chastity, modesty and reputation, in preparation for eventual marriage. [14] The light regulation of marriage by the law with regards to minimum age (12) and consent to marriage was designed to leave families, primarily fathers, with much freedom to propel girls into marriage whenever and with whomever they saw fit. Marriage facilitated a partnership between the father and prospective husbands, and enabled the formation of a mutually beneficial alliance with both political and economic incentives at heart. [15] The girls would leave their own families and join their husbands. The social regime, geared towards early marriage and implemented through children's education and upbringing, was particularly restrictive for girls. [14] Some, perhaps many, girls went to a public primary school; however, there is some evidence to suggest that girls’ education was limited to this elementary school level. It has been inferred that individual school tutoring of girls at home was led by concerns about threats to girls’ modesty in coeducational classrooms. [16] Ovid and Martial imply that boys and girls were educated either together or similarly, and Livy takes it for granted that the daughter of a centurion would be in school. [17] Alternatively, Epictetus and other historians and philosophers suggest that the educational system was preoccupied with the development of masculine virtue, with male teenagers performing school exercises in public speaking about Roman values. [18] Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 87ff.; Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 725; Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome, p. 350, note 5.First of I have something to confess. One year my mother requested from me for her birthday a book by Elizabeth Buchan. I became a fan of Elizabeth Buchan books since the day I Arthur Ernest Gordon, Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy (University of California Press, 1983), pp. 34, 103. The age of Augustus brought some of the most significant changes in the status of women. While unmarried women faced hefty penalties, and the laws punishing adulterous women were toughened, the Julian laws also allowed women who bore at least three children to win exemption from the guardianship of a man. Thomas AJ McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome, Oxford University Press. 1998, p. 56.

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The past cannot remain hidden and, in the end, Lottie uncovers more than she bargained for. Is anyone who they appear to be? The Vatican appears to want Lottie to cease her enquiries but she cannot comprehend whether this is for religious or more sinister reasons. Others described women far more scathingly. Ovid, the famous poet of the early empire, believed women’s “primitive” sex drive rendered them irrational. Roman politician and lawyer Cicero reminded a jury that their ancestors placed women “in the power of tutores” (or guardians) because of infirmitas consilii, or weak judgment. Marcus Porcius Cato, one of Republican Rome’s most revered statesmen, warned fellow Romans of the risks of treating a woman as as equal, asserting that “they will from that moment become your superiors.” Bruce W. Frier, Thomas A. J. McGinn (2004). A casebook on Roman family law. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516186-6.Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press, 2005, 2006), p. 141. For an extensive modern consideration of the Vestals, see Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (Routledge, 1998). This close dependence of women on their male relatives was also reflected in such matters as law and finance where women were legally obliged to have a nominated male family member act in their interests ( Tutela mulierum perpetua). The only exceptions to this arrangement were women with three children (from c. 17 BCE), freedwomen with four children, and Vestal Virgins. This rule was designed to keep property, especially inherited property, in the male-controlled family, even if male and female offspring had equal inheritance rights under Roman law. However, in actual practice families may not always have followed the letter of the law in this area, just as with many other matters, and there is evidence of women running their own financial affairs, owning businesses, running estates etc., especially in cases where the principal male of the family had died on military campaign. The story is told on dual timelines as we read from both Lottie and Nina’s points of view. This is done really well and there’s no confusion when switching from one timeline to another. However, just as in today’s political landscape, the wives and other female relatives of Roman politicians and emperors could prove a liability as well as an asset. Having passed stringent legislation against adultery in 18 BC, Augustus was later forced to send his own daughter Julia into exile on the same charge.

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Garrett G. Fagan, "Violence in Roman Social Relations," in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 487. The form of Roman marriage called conubium, for instance, requires that both spouses be citizens; like men from towns granted civitas sine suffragio, women (at least those eligible for conubium) were citizens without suffrage. The legal status of a mother as a citizen affected her son's citizenship. All Roman citizens recognized as such by law did not hold equal rights and privileges, particularly in regard to holding high office. See A Casebook on Roman Family Law following, and A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 211 and 268 (on male citizenship as it relates to marrying citizen women) et passim. ("children born of two Roman citizens") indicates that a Roman woman was regarded as having citizen status, in specific contrast to a peregrina. These highly public official duties for women contradict the commonplace notion that women in ancient Rome took part only in private or domestic religion. The dual male-female priesthoods may reflect the Roman tendency to seek a gender complement within the religious sphere; [147] most divine powers are represented by both a male and a female deity, as seen in divine pairs such as Liber and Libera. [148] The twelve major gods were presented as six gender-balanced pairs, [149] and Roman religion departed from Indo-European tradition in installing two goddesses in its supreme triad of patron deities, Juno and Minerva along with Jupiter. This triad "formed the core of Roman religion." [150] Mosaic depicting masked actors in a play: two women consult a "witch" or private diviner Roman religion was male-dominated but there were notable exceptions where women took a more public role such as the priestesses of Isis (in the Imperial period) and the Vestals. These latter women, the Vestal Virgins, served for 30 years in the cult of Vesta and they participated in many religious ceremonies, even performing sacrificial rites, a role typically reserved for male priests. There were also several female festivals such as the Bona Dea and some city cults, for example, of Ceres. Women also had a role to play in Judaism and Christianity but, once again, it would be men who debated what that role might entail. The Other WomenHallett, Judith P. (1984). Fathers and daughters in Roman society: women and the elite family. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03570-9. Gaston Boissier, Cicero and his friends: a study of Roman Society in the time of Caesar 1922 trans. Adnah David Jones. p.96 The Hippocratic view that amenorrhea was fatal became by Roman times a specific issue of infertility, and was recognized by most Roman medical writers as a likely result when women engage in intensive physical regimens for extended periods of time. Balancing food, exercise, and sexual activity came to be regarded as a choice that women might make. The observation that intensive training was likely to result in amenorrhea implies that there were women who engaged in such regimens. [184] Because elite marriages often occurred for reasons of politics or property, a widow or divorcée with assets in these areas faced few obstacles to remarrying. She was far more likely to be legally emancipated than a first-time bride, and to have a say in the choice of husband. The marriages of Fulvia, who commanded troops during the last civil war of the Republic and who was the first Roman woman to have her face on a coin, are thought to indicate her own political sympathies and ambitions. Fulvia was married first to the popularist champion Clodius Pulcher, who was murdered in the street after a long feud with Cicero; then to Scribonius Curio; and finally to Mark Antony, the last opponent to the republican oligarchs and to Rome's future first emperor.