Gender Inequality In Ancient Rome

Question Two: How is sexuality politicized in Rome?

According to the beliefs of ancient Rome, a person’s sexuality was intrinsically tied to their character. Because sexual characteristics were implicative of personal characteristics, you could judge someone’s character by their sexuality. The ancient Romans used sexuality to judge character, even though the two may be entirely unrelated. The Romans may have done this for another, more practical reason as well: bloodlines.
The Romans had no means to test for paternity, so sleeping around would have put the legitimacy of one’s heirs into question. Elite romans would have been expected to have a clearly defined heir, and if their sexual exploits invoked confusion it would have made them a poor citizen, unworthy of government. The original usage of sexuality, however, was as a character judgement. Dido, the ancient queen of Carthage, was portrayed in Virgil’ Aeneid to have been an effective leader. However, when Dido falls in love with Aeneas, she violates one of the key roman principles of sexuality: self …show more content…
Social identity theory suggests that not only do people categorize themselves into groups, they also compare themselves to other groups and react to threats to the power of their own group. For roman men, this meant that they were constantly comparing themselves to women, and then taking action to ensure that they were considered better. They did this by embellishing the idea of manliness and insulting the idea of femininity. There are other sub classifications of men and women, but the overall gender classification served to boost the self-esteem of men. Because Rome was founded on these principles, its culture and politics became entrenched in unequal