Towards a new economic history: women and Antiquity / Hacia una nueva economía histórica: mujeres y Antigüedad (Carmona, 14-16 November 2023) (original) (raw)

This work aims to expose the public image of Roman women such as Fulvia, Octavia, Livia, Agrippina Major and Agrippina Minor, including the late Republic and early Empire (84 BC - 59 AD), through coin samples and written sources that exemplify their lives. The aim is to illustrate how these women improved their public images through duties linked to the imperial family, the Patronage, religion, and imperial propaganda. The written sources gave visions of values and showed social relations, the principles of property, individual rights and their duties in Roman society. These sources also confirmed that Roman women of this time were embedded in a hierarchy of power marked by boasting male rule. In the written sources, they were described in familiar environments, but with exceptions and malcontents, forming an opposition between the public and private worlds. The material sources, the coins with the portraits of these women, composed a formidable working tool, as they justified positions and consolidated powers within an aristocratic context of competition. As a movable monument, such objects promoted a wide audience, even far from the elite. They demonstrated that elite women achieved "apparent" prominence, building a social life that led to a certain political openness, which contributed to their being important authors of Rome's history. Women's changes at that time may have ensured a social change in all categories, especially in cultural constructions and political performances. This fact led Roman society to mould itself into a tangle of circumstances, in which the divisions of male and female became intertwined, demonstrating a social and gender complexity. However, the purpose of this paper was to explain, through iconographic analysis, what these objects wanted to communicate politically and in an identity manner. That said, the question was raised about the power and place of action of the feminine, since the “sexual habitus” could have marked the values between the genders. Both the material culture and the written sources analysed together were essential to prove this problematic, since the literature made the gender relations of the emperors and their women very explicit. Material culture, by demonstrating male power, also highlighted female power. In this way, the major importance of this work is the invitation to a reflection of the perception of the reality of the present, for an analytical approach in relation to the improved conditions of the Women's Studies of Antiquity, with a purpose capable of managing conscience and coherence of current feminine factors in contrast to the existence of a variety and similarity about the woman of the past.