Women In Ancient Rome

Women of today’s society play an important role in that of political, familial, and societal affairs. However, that has not always been the case. In the ancient world, women had to work their way up these ladders to finally arrive at the place in society that they are in present-day America, and in some countries, the treatment of women is still similar to that of primitive ones. Roman women illustrated a unique position within their society, but how were they dissimilar from the rest of the ancient world? The Romans had a set of distinctive laws, traditions, and activities, which all contributed to the variation between the way that Roman women were treated versus that of the other countries of their time period. A principal collation was …show more content…
Roman women were expected to bear as many offspring as they were capable of due to the relatively short life expectancy of citizens during this era. The women were viewed as the primary source of life; they were required to have and raise children, and to instruct them on both the literature and culture of Rome. The women of society were under the authority of the eldest man in the house, in accordance with the Roman law of paterfamilias. A right of men within the paterfamilias tradition was that of keeping newborns or leaving them on the hillside to perish from natural causes. If a father of a child did not particularly favor that child due to any number of reasons, he would not pick them up and therefore abandon them, mothers having no say whatsoever. During the middle-ages of their lives, women gained influence over familial and domestic affairs, though they stuck to the general tradition of the paterfamilias. Females in ancient Rome were not granted suffrage, able to engage in political matters, nor even viewed as individuals. Females were greatly concerned with their culture, however, and were allowed to attend events in the company of their husbands. They were also able to be present at religious festivals, and any religious cult that admitted …show more content…
Like Romans, they married around puberty, their fathers being the arrangers of the espousement. Athenian women were not perceived as citizens of Athens - they existed in a society dominated by men, where the primary belief was that women were too vacuous to even obtain a formal education. Married women spent most of their time in the ‘gynaeceum’ or women’s quarters, a section of the home assigned to the wife and the other unwedded women of the family. Women spent most of their time there, especially when visitors arrived. Athenians believed in keeping women isolated from society in order to preserve the lineage of their children. Women had few legal rights, could not appear in court, and were even forbidden from participating in sports, as men claimed they were too weak and