Roman Attitudes

[caldrail]

That view was typically early empire. Rules regarding women were probably stricter in republican times. As an example of early imperial justice, there was a case of a young Roman from a wealthy family who was arrested for raping a prostitute. Because of her profession, the magistrate ruled that forcing himself upon her was actually not criminal (she was asking for it, is basically what he meant) but because the young man had broken down her front door to get to her, he was judged as guilty and jailed.

 

Of course by that era prostitution was far more prevalent and sex more gratuitous. The impression I get of later periods is more decadent but less provocative. One bishop wrote a sermon in which he tells us that the Goths were very moral, very restrictive in sexual matters, thus hated the Romans for their love of licentious behaviour. He probably exaggerated for the purposes of berating his congregation but his point is still an observation of late empire society.

Edited September 12, 2012 by caldrail

[DecimusCaesar]

I'd say you can make the argument that Roman women (of the patrician class anyway) were the high water mark of freedom for women until the 20th century.

 

Women could own property. They could, by and large, refuse marriage to a particular man. They could take some role in the religion.

 

Contrast women of rome to women of the middle ages and the renaissance, and I'd say the sisters of rome had it comparatively good.

 

A bit of a generalization there. Welsh women up to the English conquest were given legal rights unheard of by the Anglo-Normans.

 

It probably is true that women's rights improved somewhat after the Roman era. Take Sonic's example about Medieval Wales for example, and the same could be said about Ireland. Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman conquest gave women much more rights than usual too. The story of women's rights isn't a simple tale of women gaining more and more with each passing century. The reality in Europe is far more bumpy. Women of the fourteenth century had much more freedom than in earlier centuries, but by the 17th century those rights had largely disappeared, and by the early 18th century women's rights had actually regressed up until Mary Wollstonecraft began writing on the subject.

[caldrail]

Women's Rights are a modern issue. Whilst Roman women were given a definite place in society, it was possible for them to exceed those boundaries. One lady in Pompeii was known to have run a business after her husband died (although in fairness, she was due to be married in order to satisfy public expectation but then again I suspect she would have carried on running the biusiness regardless. Some of them, as we know, became influential in politics.

 

Nowhere in the sources do I find a suggestion that women were unhappy with their lot in the way we find in recent times. Arguably the Romans found a balance that was acceptable, flexible even, to some degree, but one that allowed the woman a measure of respect if she conformed (an attitude that is pretty typical of the Romans in general, they were a somewhat conformist society). I'm also reminded of a possible fate attributed to Zenobia, the former rebellious queen of Palmyra. Having led her armies in the field (yes, she really did that, dressed in armour and everything). Some versions of the story have meeting a sticky end, but one suggests strongly that she was allowed to marry a senior Roman and live as his wife as long as she accepted her lot.