So let’s explore the lives of the women who lived during some of Rome’s most dramatic and game-changing periods. These women lived during tumultuous times: we’ll see them navigate unwanted marriages, political intrigue, exile to small islands, poisonous plots, poorly executed coups, bloodthirsty sons, cutthroat politics and MANY male haters, all while trying to stay alive and on top of the game in one of the world’s most successful of empires. Sometimes that tightrope was more of a knife’s edge. But when you read between the lines, we find women who stepped out from behind the shadows of their husbands and fathers to grasp real power and influence.īut these dominas, or “female masters,” couldn’t just march out and take what they wanted instead they had to be smart and calculating, walking a tightrope between respectability and their own ambition.
The tales we get of their lives come from male writers with their own agendas and prejudices, who treat them as cautionary tales and side stories as they write about important men. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in a society that coveted public glory, ambitious women found their way into the history books too, even if just in scraps and unflattering snatches. Theirs was a distinctly patriarchal world, true fame and public achievement was supposed to be reserved for men. She wove such fine wool she kept such a fine house she was so very chaste and never made her father look bad! They weren’t welcome in the public sphere of governance. Any fame she won was supposed to be confined to the private, domestic sphere.
In ancient Rome, a woman was defined in relation to her family.
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