Talk:Women in ancient Rome/Archive 1

Archive 1

Tag

This whole article seems very biased... And what's up with the women can't even travel even if accompanied thing? If so, then why were there women outside/in the streets of Rome (the civilization, not the city)? Bayerischermann 03:54, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

• I suspect that might be a bit overstated, but it is entirely true that women had little clout of their own (with some of these notable exceptions) until the Imperial Family took over after Augustus (and outside the Vestals). Travel would have happened within Italy, certainly, or to promagisterial commands in the provinces, but these women would be accompanied by their husbands or tutores. One shouldn't forget the commonplace nature of brigandage along the roads and piracy on the seas even during the pax Romana, especially in the 2nd century (see, for example, Hellenistic romances or Apuleius' Golden Ass).--CaesarGJ 02:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Many of the women on the street would have been slaves, who made up a perfectly huge percentage of the Roman population. They dressed like plebs and were not generally of a different skin colour or general ethnicity than their masters. Romans discussed creating special clothing for slaves, but it was eventually decided against - the senators were afraid that if slaves could identify each other in public, they'd realize how many slaves there were and revolt. --NellieBly (talk) 23:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Rich Women

It was typically rich women who had (or were at least expected) to be escorted, not all women. Ryan 04:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The article is biased. Its accurate, but not in the right perspective, like it mentions that Roman women had the rights of citizenship, something unheard of in earlier civilizations like Greece, where women were not citizens, could not own property, and were considered dirty. Romans tolerated bisexuality as being natural, but they did not promote homosexuality like the Greeks did. The lot of women in Rome was better then it had ever been anywhere else, and that isn't pointed out. Also the stuff about women not traveling is simply a lie. Many important politicians, even emperors insisted on their wives being with them on campaigns for their political advise, not just companionship. Also, Roman women were the first to be educated. In the dark ages, even middle ages that followed most women could not read. Even the noble ones were not taught. So someone needs to put this in the proper context and give Roman women their due. Maria Shavzin

Frankly, it's an accurate article. We were just learning about this in History. The roles of women in Rome were little to none, and it was a bisexual society. The men would have the women usually only to bear sons and to keep the home, and they would spend long amounts of time away from the home to be with other men, discussing history, poetry, etcetcetc. It wasn't uncommon for the men to have both female and male lovers. And this is coming from a woman, who is fairly feminist. But this society was better with women than in many societies. At least here the women could influence the men. Such as "the woman behind the man," in public figures. --JulieRaven, http://julieraven.deviantart.com, Oct. 25th, 2005 12:58 PM CST\

Time Period

This article doesn't specify a specific time period...Does this mean that the information here applies to Rome over the whole course of its history??? Just as another note, this stub is pretty sparse on sources.

--Unnamed, 4 Jan 2006, 4:38 PM

• I agree, the introduction is lacking a lot of sources, The whole this is filled with "citation needed" and such. Could someone try to fix this? Jezzamon (talk) 09:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Women taking husband's name

Didn't women in Rome, once married, often take a form of their husband's name? (ie, Julius' wife becomes Julia, Herod's wife becomes Herodias) If this is true, it deserves a mention, here and possbly under Slave name . 75.111.217.14 20:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)anonymous

We have a separate article for women's naming conventions in Rome. Generally women in the Republic didn't have names at all: they were referred to by a feminine version of their father's nomen. In theory, this meant that every daughter of a family was referred to in the same way (and in such cases they did - they were usually differentiated by ordinals, e.g. Prima, Tertia, Octavia), but in practice many poorer families exposed all but the first daughter. --NellieBly (talk) 23:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, saw the link for that article at the end of the page. How Roman women were named is pretty key information for people to have, so perhaps a sentence or paragraph in the intro on with a link to the full naming convention article would be in order. veracity-or-mendacity (talk) 01:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

No, see Friar + Mccgin a casebook study in Roman Law pg 98, I don't have time to quote the page at the moment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.53.152 (talk) 03:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Female citizenship in Rome

So, I am really confused...Did the women of Rome have roman citizenship? I don't think they had, but the article says otherwise. On Google, I see a 40/60 cut with it's leading more to the "NO" section. Both sides have RSs backing them up tho... TheAsianGURU (talk) 21:35, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Women did not hold citizenship in ancient Rome. All this information can be easily found in a book called Daily Life in the Roman City by Aldrete. Page 56 specifically refers to the non-citizen status of women. And, in reference to the previous comment about time-period, this non-citizen issue spans the Monarchical period, the Republic, and the Empire. --69.247.214.64 (talk) 21:56, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope your book has an explanation for jurists who are from the Roman Empire, where commissioned by the senate to record law and educate Iudex about the laws involved in his cases (because unlike in nearly all other legal systems a Roman Judge was a trusted person who both sides agreed would lack bias, but was not a professional by any stretch) said otherwise. I love when books on these things carry the original texts because that leaves little to no room for debate on a legalistic topic like citizen or non citizen.

I used Conubium to prove it in the article so I will use a random section to prove it here.

This comes from a Casebook Study on Roman Family Law, written by Bruce Friar and Thomas A.J. McGinn page 387, I just happened to flip through a bunch of pages to reach it, which is the same way I found Conubium, an important Roman Legal concept. It is a translation of Paul on the topic of lex Falcidia

If you would like I could provide the latin as well, but I only will if you say so. And not the works of any Roman Jurist has no copyright because it is upwards of two thousand years old.

"There was enacted the lex Falcidia, which in its first chapter granted freedom to make legacies up to three quarters (of one's estate), using these words "let any Roman citizen who after this statute becomes law, wishes to make a will have the right and power to give or legate his or her money to whomever he or she wishes, so far as it is permitted by this law." In the second chapter it sets a limit to legacies with the following words "let any Roman Citizen who, after this statute becomes law makes a will have the right and power to give and legate under our law as much money to any Roman citizen as he or she wishes, so long as what is given and bequethed does not leave less then a quarter of the estate for the heirs to take under that will. Therefore those to whom something is given and legated under these conditions will be permitted to take that money lawfully, and the heir in this case, who is obliged to make over the money, ought to give that money that he is obliged to give."

I'm sorry, but ancient Romans knew more about their system then any modern author, and Paul was an important jurist who is often cited by other jurists like Ulpian.--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 06:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, a citizenship with no right to vote, to stand for office, etc. How does Paul explain this paradox? Flamarande (talk) 21:41, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Wait a second here (read a bit from the book through Google - I can be making a mistake). I could find no clear sentence in this matter. IMHO you did original research (if I'm wrong I apolagize). You read some sentences about inheritence laws and you reached the conclusion that Roman women were citizens. Please provide a clear statement clearly stating that "Roman women are citizens" asap. Thanks Flamarande (talk) 21:41, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably a more complicated question than appears at first glance, as it depends on what you mean by "citizen". If a Roman man of the elite classes had married, say, a Gallic woman or Egyptian woman who was not the daughter of a man holding Roman citizenship, I'm not sure the marriage would be recognized as such, because she would be considered a non-citizen, a foreigner. Roman women did have specific legal rights that I'm not sure foreign women living in the city would've been protected by. So in a sense, the daughter of a male Roman citizen had the privileges of a female citizen, which were not the same as those of a male citizen, if you follow me: it was simply inconceivable at this point in history that women would have "equal rights." This entire article, however, is problematic. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm quoting the very first sentence of this article: "Noble Women in ancient Rome were citizens". Reading the posts of ScriptusSecundus above IMHO he concluded that the noble women of Rome were citizens based upon some sentences of ancient Roman jurists. However the sentences clearly refer to inheritances rights. There is the strong possibility that Roman women (noble or not) were not citizens at all but had the same rights as far inheritances were concerned. I read the provided source here and was unable to find a clear statement upon this extremely important matter. There is the very strong possibility that this is a case of OR or original synthesis. Flamarande (talk) 06:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I would agree that the complicated issue of "citizenship" is not necessarily the way you want to start this article. It's bothered me a long time, but then as I said, so much about the article does. Then again, how else to start it? Now, I don't think SS is trying to foist off "original" ideas (it's extremely hard to say anything the slightest bit original within an academic discipline that's existed for two millennia), but rather is struggling with how to express what "citizenship" might mean in regard to women without suffrage. And this is not simple. To make a comparison, in the 19th-century United States, women didn't have the right to vote; were they citizens? Depends on how you define "citizen," but most women were not slaves in legal terms. Certainly if an American woman at that time traveled to Europe and became involved in a legal issue, or an international controversy, she would be treated as an "American citizen" in a general sense. In fact, in Roman law the phrase civitas sine suffragio means precisely "citizenship without the right to vote"; this was a form of citizenship extended to towns in the provinces. Rome had more than one form of citizenship (see civitas and this book), particularly in the Republican period. Égalité was not characteristic of Roman society even in the matter of citizenship among men.

As someone who mainly writes about the Republic, it seems to me that an ancient Roman made a distinction between a free-born Romana and a non-Romana who was either foreign or enslaved, and that this was "citizenship" in the sense that 19th-century American women were citizens of the U.S. and not of some other place. The fact that women didn't have the same privileges and rights as men is beside the point; that doesn't mean they were considered slaves or mere property without legal standing (this is a woeful distortion by misguided but well-intentioned feminists); the laws concerning inheritance and divorce make that clear. Archaic laws were still "on the books," so to speak (in the U.S., many states still have outdated laws that go unenforced, unless someone chooses to make political hay of them), and so we say that the paterfamilias had the "power of life and death" over wife and children, but that doesn't mean Romans actually went around killing their family members regularly and with impunity, or even thought it was OK to do so. Quite the contrary; it was considered an extraordinary sacrificing of personal feelings when, say, a general sentenced his son to death for conduct in a military setting that he had issued express orders against on pain of death. If you could just kill your wife as if she were a horse with a broken leg, there'd be no need for divorce. So the question "were Romanae citizens?" belongs in a section on "Legal rights of women in ancient Rome," but may be difficult to answer succinctly in the lead section. And the question should surely be seen in the context of how the Romans themselves defined civitas and civis and Romanitas, not modern ideals of citizenship.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Romanae were citizens is the phrase ex duobus civibus Romanis natos, in reference to children who are "born from two Roman citizens" as distinguished from those who are born from a Roman father and a woman who is a peregrina. The status of the mother as a citizen potentially affects the status of the son born to her. This does indeed pertain to conubium. When A.N. Sherwin-White published his book on Roman citizenship, however, he was evidently still untouched by the women's movement of the 1960s and 70s, and thus strangely unconcerned with the question of Romanae. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, so basicly all Roman women were more or less 2nd-rate citizens without the right to vote, stand for public office, ability to sue another citizen, etc. Citizens, but 2nd rate citizens. The very first sentence of the article is misleading. Was there any legal diff between noble women and common women? Flamarande (talk) 14:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

"Second-class citizen" has become such an English-language cliché that I'm not sure it's useful here; as noted above, Roman law explicitly institutionalized a form of second-class citizenship even for men, civitas sine suffragio. To put this into perspective, however, I would point out that my own grandmother was born a U.S. citizen without the right to vote; we sometimes forget how recent women's suffrage is. And children have citizenship status at birth, long before they have the right to vote or hold office. These are perhaps better viewed as privileges than rights, though I wouldn't care to argue that. In Rome, at any rate, see Conflict of the Orders on how plebeian access to offices developed over time: all citizens in ancient Rome are not equal.

You may be mistaken in saying that a Roman woman couldn't sue; I'm not well-versed in this, but Clodia notoriously brought charges against Cicero's client Caelius (I don't really recommend the bizarrely written article on the case). I vaguely recall other women suing over business deals. Women could also initiate divorce proceedings.

Although I might not choose to start the article this way, the first sentence is not factually untrue: as the quote I ended with above shows, a Romana was a civis, a citizen, but she didn't have the right to vote (nor, to reiterate, did many provincial men who were citizens) or hold office (ditto). What's incorrect is "noble," which has a specific meaning in Roman society: see nobiles. It should be "free-born," so maybe I'll make that one change. Though what to do about the rest I don't know. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Look at page 458 here. Roman women cannot vote, stand for civic and public office, hold magistracies, bring legal claims for others or represent others in court (couldn't become lawyers?). Flamarande (talk) 17:57, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

That seems right. None of that makes them not citizens; as I said above, your birth makes you a citizen. Just as now a three-year-old can be a legal citizen of a particular country, but as a minor not be able to exercise certain rights or privileges of citizenship. Your last point, however, seems to be that they couldn't act as what we would call attorneys, not that they couldn't have an advocate bring a suit on their behalf. I can sue somebody, but since I'm not an attorney, I would need to hire one to do it. Again, it's only been in my lifetime that the number of female attorneys in the U.S. achieved parity with male. That doesn't mean women couldn't sue before that. They could sue in the 19th century, before they got the vote. I'm not sure, but I think if I've just been widowed in Rome and inherited my husband's Sabine farm, and the neighbors are encroaching on my water rights, I can sue them — but I would need to seek out an advocate to file the case and argue it, just as I myself would now. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't all male Roman citizens act as advocates/lawyers for a client and for themselves? Or was this something only allowed to patricians? Flamarande (talk) 21:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about the slow response but I will try to answer as best as I can. Citizenship means being a citizen, it doesn't mean being able to vote or other rights. 110 years ago many people had the same views on female citizenship that the Romans did (they should have it but should not have voting rights) Others had a status of Cives Sine Suffragio besides women, during the Second Punic War Capuan and Campanian males had only Cives Sine Suffragio status (they lost it for changing sides).

Your other question about advocates/lawyers is a little bit more compicated. Everyone could appear for themselves in court, but appearing for somebody else was considered a public service so it was restricted to male citizens. Because of belief that an advocate/lawyer should do his work out of his civic virtue instead of a desire for a reward the law severely restricted what a lawyer/advocate could charge a client (openly) so most advocates would be wealthy males (as far as we know). ScriptusSecundus (talk) 05:05, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Editing

This page really needs editing, it is innacurate, light on sources, and biased. I happen to have a couple of advanced books that deal in the subject, which are recently written, talk directly on the topic of Roman Law, and are very authoritative because at least my primary one consists of the Law in question, sometimes a case laid out by the jurist, and the commentary of the two authors. I will edit the law section to make it, at the very least try to resemble what we know about Rome. Lets face it. I'm not sure how to add a source at the bottom, so after each part I will type in (Authors used, Book used, Page used). I hope that's ok. Law is always an easy topic to present, it shouldn't be innacurate. P.S. the rights women are known for having in Rome, and the period of Roman history that allows us the maximum view into the lives of the people forgotten by history is the classical period (to date it roughly the end of the republic sometimes dated as early as 95 BCE, it's end is generally dated between the fall of Alexander Severus, and sometimes as late as the end of Diocletian), the idea that respect for women was derived from the Sabine Women's heroism is a wonderful story, but the dates don't add up, or if they do pre-classical Rome gave them respect and honor but none of the rights later roman society granted.

--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 06:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Why the change?

All of the changes I did where accurate, and very easy to prove accuracy in, each book I quoted from was given credite via a direct link to it, and it also gave a significantly more accurate and balanced look.

So if no objections are made I will restore the editing. Imagine if in a thousand years people determined the degree of rights and independence American Women had based on the 18th century law and customs and described the 20th century as a slight variation in culture allowing women to use property they didn't own and have more indepence then they legally had?

--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

But as I wrote on your talk page, the text was copyright and had to be removed. And you can't just paraphrase either, see WP:PARAPHRASE. Large chunks of copied text rarely improve an article in any case. Please don't restore it. We simply cannot allow copyright material being used this way. Dougweller (talk) 16:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Would you mind if I re-write based on that text then? Since Each source I used is a University level grade text, and are very well recieved by mainstream classical studies. What is in them really is the mainstream, and they are full of original sources like Ulpian, Gaius, and Mucius, who I think could be used as long as credit is shown to the original translator? Roman Society and Law happens to be my specialty, I apologize for getting lazy and just using authoritative texts.

--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 16:39, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

As I've said, you can't use close paraphrase, which is what you seem to be intending to do. Of course anything in an article should be based on reliable sources, and good writers are able to use sources without running into copyright problems. Dougweller (talk) 16:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

If it is a rewrite without a close paraphrase would it be acceptable? There also are some things that I think are just very proven to be false, such as no citizenship? If that was so why did Roman sources of Law like Ulpian, Paul, Gaius etc etc seem to think women where Citizens?

--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

At the moment I'm concerned only with copyright violations. I've got the ability and responsibility to prevent those, but so long as there are no copyright violations anything else is probably going to be editorial decisions - in other words, you write using your own language and citing reliable sources (you do need to look at WP:CITE to learn what's expected), and then see what other editors (if any) think about your edits. Dougweller (talk) 18:21, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

why this article is so problematic

Although this article says at the beginning that the status of Roman women changed over time, it has little sense of the timeline of Roman history. At one point, it claims that Roman women who had been "violated" (presumably this means raped) were expected to kill themselves — based on the semi-legendary example of Lucretia. Maybe there are other known examples of honor suicide from ancient Rome, but I can't think of any; historical examples are needed.

Much of the mushy thinking in this article could be more rigorous by exploring various aspects of women's lives in the terms set up at the start, that is, with a recognition that there's no such thing as "ancient Rome" and that expectations for women, as for men, changed over time. The Early Republic is not the same as the Late Republic is not the same as the 2nd century or the early Christian era of late antiquity. There's some attempt to do this in the section on marriage and divorce, but that section is so confused about Roman social ranks and historical periods (not to mention the fundamentals of English grammar) that who knows what's happening in it.

I find it deeply embarrassing to the cause of feminism that articles on Roman military history are so far superior to those on aspects of women's lives. The military historians active on Wikipedia seem to be looking at primary sources, sometimes to a fault; this article, and some others associated with it, reads as if written by someone who had never read a single work of Roman literature — and yet presumes to represent Roman attitudes. It makes incredibly broad generalizations portraying Roman women as helpless victims (the tone is often "omigod, isn't this awful"), or at least as living under circumstances rather like those of Greek women in the Archaic and Classical periods; while this may be true in the Early Republic, it is laughably untrue of the Late Republic and the Principate, the periods for which we have the most information. The cult of victimhood can produce distortions. The material on education is better, perhaps because it is impossible not to acknowledge that among those social classes with access to education, women were educated, and the well-educated were praised for it (Cornelia Metella, for instance, and Sallust praises Sempronia for her intelligence and education while utterly excoriating her for her morals).

Here's another very telling thing about this article: unlike most on ancient Rome, it has relatively few links to other articles within the discipline. Again, this indicates that people working on it have an insufficient awareness of the social and political context, and how the subject relates to classical studies and Roman history as a whole, and where information comes from (few ancient authors mentioned). Some specific examples would be nice; for instance, I suspect that Publius Clodius Pulcher and his relationship with his three sisters underlies the paragraph on brothers ("their brothers often respected them for their sophistication. Brothers also did not expect the same level of chastity and servility in their sisters as their fathers expected").

I've made some contributions that I admit I've haven't properly sourced yet, but will try to improve citations over the next couple of days. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Well you aren't alone in wishing to bring the context of Roman Society to Rome related articles Cynwolfe, I have also been slowly trying to improve this article. Would you like to coordinate work perhaps? --ScriptusSecundus (talk) 04:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Sources

I've used the following for other articles. They might be useful here. Haploidavey (talk) 14:24, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

• The Roman mother, Suzanne Dixon. [1]

• The Roman Family, Suzanne Dixon. [2]

• More by Dixon: Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi, Suzanne Dixon (Series: Women of the Ancient World, Routledge) 2007.[3]

• Vestal virgins, sibyls, and matrons: women in Roman religion, Sarolta A. Takács. [4]

• I've not read this one but googlebooks offers a few tantalising glimpses: Growing up and growing old in Ancient Rome: a life course approach Mary Harlow, Ray Laurence. [5]

My very quick glance at this last produced a section on old women as invisible and ugly. Just this morning, I was reading a poem by Philodemus praising a woman of 60 for her seductive appeal and perky breasts (I kid you not). Now, Philodemus was a Greek writing in Greek, but in and around Rome under Roman patronage, including that of Caesar's father-in-law Calpurnius Piso. I was reading Philodemus after looking at this article because the Epicureans, who were so "hot" in the Late Republic, are known for their inclusion of women. I was very surprised at the Philodemus; apparently he has a whole series of epigrams in praise of older women.

I was also thinking about attitudes toward beauty and body image. The locus classicus for this is Ovid's poem, citation not handy, where he expresses his omnivorous appetites for women of all shapes, sizes, and colors. And then I was thinking hm, if Romans were so misogynistic, why is the body type of their ideal women (like depictions of Venus) so utterly natural? What a woman would have if she ate a normal, contented diet and didn't try to compel her body into a predetermined, exaggerated shape through physical training. And why is it so acceptable in our supposedly more enlightened culture, if I may take the most brutal example, for women to cut open their breasts and engorge them with bags of various foreign substances? I don't know of a single thing Roman women underwent that comes anywhere close to being so routinely barbaric as breast augmentation today in the Western world. Burying Vestals alive, maybe; but this was done a very few times over hundreds of years, and combined capital punishment and religious sacrifice. Not for the sake of beauty. So a section on "Beauty and body image" might be interesting — if it were indeed "neutral" in the Wikipedia sense, and not agenda-driven.

The trouble with many women's studies overviews, I'm sorry to say, is that they go looking only for evidence that supports their political preconceptions. And there's often a strange sort of combination of sanctified victimhood and smug condescension that we know so much better. There are many parts of the world today where women live under restrictions (often imposed by religious law, and that's all I'll say about that) which strike me as much more confining and severe than those Roman women lived with, at least from the time of Cornelia mother of the Gracchi onward. I question the assumption that Roman women necessarily envied the lives of men and found their own unrewarding, in part because that view privileges militarism, or confirms the Roman privileging of militarism, as the ultimate achievement in life. I wish we knew, for instance, what the wonderful Cornelia Metella did after Pompey died; Caesar evidently allowed her to keep at least a significent portion of her husband's vast wealth, and to go off and enjoy it as she pleased. As for non-aristocrats, both men and women had to work hard, just as they always have, and in the ancient world, a man who had to work for a living wasn't considered truly "free" in philosophical terms, whatever his legal status. My point (again) is that the article could benefit from a greater awareness of the facts on the ground rather than politically generalized preconceptions. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That's an articulate and provocative read. It suggests a useful outline for development of the article from people and their particulars in historical context rather than generalisations and principles (legal, moral, political or whatever-al). So really, that's not too different from any other article. In an ideal Wikipedia. Maybe even well intentioned cherry-picking (the most invidious agenda of all) can be avoided here. Venus Silicis forfend! Oh, I read the introductory pages of the last article in the above links a short time after posting and whoever-it-was makes much the same point regarding the essential voice of primary source material - it actually speaks for itself, what a surprise! - though I don't know how the rest of the book pans out and as ever, essential pages are missing from preview. The old page 10 deficit syndrome again. Haploidavey (talk) 22:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I would be glad to help with any rewritting of the article along the lines that you two have both suggested. --ScriptusSecundus (talk) 04:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Scriptus, since you have enthusiasm and good ideas, but are new to Wikipedia (I don't mean to be presumptuous), why don't you choose one subsection within this article, and focus on that for a while? I think Haploidavey is taking a look at the paterfamilias article, but truthfully, while I'll ramble on a Talk page about this subject (I type fast), it would take me too far away from other projects (here and in my other lives) to delve too deeply into women's lives in Rome in an organized way. So you shouldn't think of it as "helping" anybody; go ahead and take the lead. But see what you can do with first taking a section and getting the hang of formatting and style as well as content. Then branch out. The lead section is the most important thing in an article, and unfortunately it's the hardest to write, and usually can't be done well until the rest of the article is in fairly good shape. I made many dumb mistakes in editing when I first started, and I still do. Nothing I've said is meant to be discouraging. But maybe after reading some other good articles pertaining to ancient Rome, you'll enjoy working patiently to make one section as good as you'd want it to be, and branch out from there. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Recent editing

The recent additions to this article (introduction) have compounded rather than addressed the multiple issues described on the talk page (above the preceding header, "sources"). Would that editor please carefully read the talk-page comments above and the wikipedia guidelines and message I'm about to post at their talkpage? Haploidavey (talk) 23:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering if perhaps the women in private section should split into ideals and private life? I know for a fact that Roman Women were not chaste, if the writings of the Christian Elders about their lose morals isn't enough to show you what about Ovid who bought his books? --ScriptusSecundus (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I will also edit the part about all Roman Women would have to be sisters, in every culture the birth of only girls in a family is a very frequent event, and brothers lacked legal authority over their sisters, anything they might tell their sisters was only a suggestion unless of course there was a family arrangement for a sister to handle his property (which would fall under the occupations section not private life). Come to think of it abiding the role of daughter her entire life is innacurate, fathers dying while their children still had to grow up is common (A.J. Crook) and the institution of Divorce, and Death would garuntee plenty of single women, if not who exactly was buying the Art of Love?--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

You're asking good questions. Be careful with how you handle the modern idea of a book-buying public; since there were no copyright laws, an ancient author who needed money depended more on direct patronage — more like grants — than book sales per se. But you're right to ask who these books were for, and what they got out of them. (And remember that poetry at this time was still social: you'd hear it read at dinner parties.) At the same time, literature can present an ideal (chastity) or an imaginative extreme (rampant sex). That's why it's good to break down a topic into clear subtopics. If we're talking about women's sexuality, there are many aspects: how was it regulated by law? how is it presented in literature? if chastity was such a strict ideal, how are women 'punished' or stigmatized for being sexually active? Short answer for the latter question: in the Late Republic, they aren't, at least not the aristocratic women we know about. Getting called bad names by Cicero or Catullus hardly counts as "punishment", because really, how many times has Madonna or Megan Fox been called a skank? Sticks and stones, as the saying goes; name-calling doesn't end a career now, but is there evidence that having Cicero call you slut and poisoner in court led to anything? Adultery is a legal charge, and then as now was used as a legal pretext ("Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," when she's no longer of political use); adultery should be distinguished from sexual behavior per se. Domestic violence existed at Rome as it does in any other culture I know of; but how did it manifest itself in Rome? Was there anything distinctive about it? Prostitutes also have to be considered separately, because their sexual status is again defined by law. And surely we cannot take male authors seriously when they accuse aristocratic women of prostituting themselves; they mean having illicit sexual relations involving favors and gifts, including money, but not contracting to perform certain acts for specified sums.

So really we should be cautious about making a private/public distinction with both men and women. I've seen it argued that the Romans had a concept of "secret," which was regarded almost always as a bad thing (conspiracies, dark magic rites), but not necessarily of "private" in our sense — that is, a man's life was expected to be an open book. The word privatus can mean "private citizen," one not holding an elected office. This aversion to secrecy is why the mystery religions were always a little dubious in Rome (hence the suppression of the Bacchanalia in the 180s BC, and later the druids and the Christians — the secrecy of these rites helped make them suspect). Women's religious practice tended to be secret; hence the salacious speculations of men about the Bona Dea ritual, and the scandal involving Publius Clodius Pulcher which led to the "Caesar's wife" remark. There's an anecdote somewhere that I remember only vaguely about a prominent Roman who was building a house, and the builder asked about making the wall taller for the sake of what we would call privacy; the Roman replied that the wall should be made lower, so that people can see in better. The Romans would've loved Facebook, and Julius Caesar would've twittered the Gallic War. But I digress. It might be better to think of women's lives as "domestic" rather than private, in the root sense of centered on the domus. Men tended to view their careers in terms of domi (at home, domestic affairs) or militiae (military service and foreign affairs). Women operated domi. But we shouldn't think of that as house-bound, because the domus was an extremely important expression of the family's standing in society. Aristocratic women didn't have to do housework, except to make some display of virtue of it, as Livia did. A pretense, an ideal. More like the relation of Martha Stewart to the domestic arts. If you don't have servants, you do your own housework, then as now — except that "middle-class" women who owned or managed a shop probably owned a slave or two. (At one time, this article seemed to exclaim indignantly that insulae dwellers bought a lot of prepared food, because they didn't have proper kitchens — as if picking up takeout were some kind of additional onus on women.) My point is that if you want to talk about sex, call it that. Don't call it "private life." Have a "Sex and sexuality" subhead. Have a "Women and the domus" subhead. Have a "Family law" subhead. Bring focus and clarity to the article. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the guidlines, I think I will use all of them, and thanks for the go ahead on the different subheads, but I think we can agree that the current Women in Private Subhead needs to be split up into more then one, and corrected in many ways.

I also think Caesar in many ways did Twitter his Gallic Wars, and Civil Wars to. Claiming to be fighting to uphold the rights of Tribunes when ignoring a Tribunes Veto on his use of state coffers really does reek of modern politicians using Twitter for only parts of their performances, but I too digress on this.--ScriptusSecundus (talk) 13:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for giving me a smile. I do agree that you should feel bold about dealing with "private life" under more specific, manageable subheads. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:00, 7 October 2009 (UTC)