World History: the Life of Women in Ancient Rome

Women in Ancient Rome were considered child bearers and possessions and enjoyed very few if any civic liberties. What little we know about women in Rome is depicted in art and writings of men and usually consisted of the circles these men traveled in, which was upper class. Because there are no journals or writings of females, it is hard to gauge what their wants, desires or feelings of how society treated them were.

A Roman women had no real identity, not even an individual name. Because a women was not thought worthy of any sort of individualism, a girl was given her father's middle name, or nomen, and the name was feminised. It served to dictate to society exactly what social class she was in and to whom she belonged.

At birth, a father could choose to recognize his daughter. A women would place her child at her husband's feet and if he picked her up, she was considered part of the family, if he ignored her, she was either abandoned at the river or left to starve. Because a girl could not carry on the lineage and required a dowry to marry, many baby girls were left to die. Occasionally a sickly male child was left to the same fate.

Roman girls were often married at 12 and usually didn't live past their late twenties or early thirties. Marriages were political alliances and did not center around love. Women were given no choice of who their husband would be. Because the result of adultery, which lawfully only prohibited married women for having sex outside of the confines of marriage, was death, many women were sentenced to a loveless life.

Because such an emphasis was placed on women bearing children, many women either died in childbirth, or from the exhaustion of carrying to many children without allowing their body time to recuperate. If a women was infertile, it was considered grounds for a divorce. In upper class circles it was imperative a woman produce as many children as possible to ensure that a child would survive to carry on the lineage. In lower class circles, child bearing was still very important, but having that many children wasn't as necessary.