Review: Women, Wealth, and Power Reviewed Work(s): Women, Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire by (original) (raw)
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THE STRENGTH OF ROMAN WOMEN THROUGH COINS AND A FEMINIST CRITIQUE FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT
THE STRENGTH OF ROMAN WOMEN THROUGH COINS AND A FEMINIST CRITIQUE FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT, 2024
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.
Exaequatio and aemulatio: Regulation of elite female status competition in Mid-Republican Rome
Gender and Status Competition in Pre-Modern Societies, 2021
In this chapter, I establish that one law, the lex Oppia (215–195 BCE), and a censorial action of 184 directly affected conspicuous displays of wealth and status (symbols) by women. I demonstrate that the lex Oppia prohibited the conspicuous display of gold, purple, and carpenta by women, while the censorial action of 184 temporarily punished or inhibited the conspicuous display of expensive jewellery, dresses, and vehicles by women. Both regulations hindered the conspicuous display of wealth and status symbols of the ordo matronarum, that is, the symbols of senatorial and non-senatorial equestrian married women, but may not have inhibited the display of senatorial gold rings. I argue that both forms of regulation inhibited the practice of elite female status competition by restricting and/or punishing the conspicuous display of wealth and status symbols (resources) in the domains of adornment and transport and, in so doing, rendered elite married women invisible. Thereafter, I turn to the female response to the lex Oppia in 195 and I argue that when elite (and other) women successfully lobbied for the abrogation of this law, they revealed their deep investment in conspicuous display and their status symbols, and, ipso facto, status competition.
Eris vs. Aemulatio: Valuing Competition in the Ancient World, 2019
In this chapter, I survey literary and epigraphic sources for evidence of elite female status competition in Mid-Republican Rome, demonstrating that elite women could engage in conspicuous display – the praxis of status competition – in many interacting and occasionally overlapping domains, including sacerdotal public office, public religious rites, transport, adornment, religious instruments, retinue, family, patronage, houses and villas, banquets, and public funerals. I demonstrate that the repeal of the lex Oppia and the lives of Tertia Aemilia and her female relatives attest to the investment of elite women in these practices and their entanglement with laus domestica. I moreover argue that elite women like Tertia Aemilia competed not just for personal status, but for familial status, competing for themselves and their families and clans. Ultimately, I conclude that there is strong evidence to support the existence of elite female status competition in Mid-Republican Rome and that this is particularly clear in the life of Tertia Aemilia. Article: https://files.cargocollective.com/694585/Webb-2019-Tertia-Aemilia.pdf (Corrigenda: https://files.cargocollective.com/694585/Webb\_2019\_Corrigenda.pdf)
Classical Review, 2022
The question central to B.'s book, at its simplest, is: did imperial women have power? And the simple answer is: yes, they did. Not in the same way as their male relatives did in the patriarchal society that was ancient Rome, but they possessed visibility in the public sphere, both within and outside the city of Rome, influence over official decisions made by their male relatives and control of their own finances, including the use of their personal funds for the public good (publica munificentia). Their elite status afforded these women prominence and privileges inaccessible to women of lower social standing. Yes, their power and status were due primarily to their relationship to their ruling male family members (fathers, brothers, spouses and sons) and the public promotion of those men, but, nonetheless, possess power they did. One has only to think of a recent US presidential administration in which the daughter of the President (and her spouse) held significant positions of influence and power although neither she nor her spouse held elected political office. Sometimes official and legal definitions - often B.'s focus - do not encompass actual practice. Problematising the answer to this simple question provides B. an opportunity for the creation of a book-length study, which treats related issues thematically rather than diachronically. Given the span of time that the book encompasses, from the Late Republic to the Severan dynasty (roughly 30s BCE to 235 CE), the answer to this question is complex, as habits and trends constantly change over time, even over a period of several years, and often from one ruling dynasty to another. So, for example, the wife of Augustus, Livia, after her posthumous adoption by her late spouse, was referred to as 'Julia Augusta' after 14 CE. Other extraordinary privileges were granted to her at that time, namely a priesthood in the new cult of divus Augustus and accompaniment by a lictor. That the title of 'Augusta' did not carry these privileges for other, later imperial women (with the exception of two near-relatives, the Julio-Claudians Antonia the Younger and Agrippina the Younger) is a case study that highlights what was a localised trend for one particular dynasty rather than one that had any significant or meaningful continuity over time (see Table 1.1, p. 33). B., after adducing copious amounts of evidence that likely took years to assemble, repeatedly denies that the imperial women had power. For example, Chapter 5, one of the book's strongest chapters, maps onto the city of Rome (1) imperial women's public activities and visibility, and (2) monuments that mention their names or otherwise evoke the memory of these individuals in the public sphere. There are 41 pages of evidence. And yet the chapter's conclusion begins with the following sentence: 'The assembled evidence indicates that imperial women were not much in public in Rome, either in person or associated with buildings and statuary' (p. 207). Such rapid shifts between the attitudes of 'optimist' and 'pessimist' (terms coined by A. Richlin, 'The Ethnographer's Dilemma and the Dream of a Lost Golden Age', in Arguments with Silence [2014], pp. 293-4, and discussed below) in the study of ancient women not just here, but throughout the book and the tendency to leap across centuries, often within a single paragraph, to compare women from various dynasties on a particular issue, often make the narrative hard to follow.