Livy's Ab Urbe Condita

On a surface level, it is almost too easy to come to the conclusion that women in the ancient world were socially repressed. For example, in the Roman republic, women were not granted the ability to vote and constantly lived under the will of their pater familias. However, this does not imply that the matrona, female head of household, did not hold a respected position in society. On the contrary, Roman society did have a great respect for the values of pietas and pudicitia, a woman’s commitment to properly serving her household and maintaining her sexual chastity, respectively. Livy highlights the importance of pietas by extolling Lucretia in Ab urbe Condita for the strength of her fidelity to husband and household, embodied in her pudicitia. …show more content…
Lucretia serves as both a morality tale and an example for future Roman women to look up to and model. However, within this there exists a dichotomy in which women maintain both a position of inferiority and one of respect. Because of this dual nature, women may either accrue a meekness or gain a sense of empowerment from this story. If they remain meek, they risk falling complacent in their given roles, serving as only a representation of their household and family but nothing more. However, they may also use their given station as an opportunity to show their human value in such a way that forces a male-dominated society to acknowledge their contributions and viewpoints, if only through defense of their pietas and pudicitia. These two traits give the matrona a sense of moral authority that allow her to perform seemingly radical actions, such as publically denouncing a man who was a part of the Second Triumvirate or killing oneself, and have her contemporaries not only justify, but honor her actions. There is an certain power that a Roman woman had in being able to shape an arguably inferior gender role into a position of credibility and influence by finding a balance between the submissive wife and the overzealous