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Gender roles and differences in ancient rome
Gender roles and differences in ancient rome
Roman punishments and crime
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What would do if someone raped you or sexual harassed you? Most likely you would prosecute them in court. What would you do if you were told you couldn’t prosecute them because you were a lower class woman? This was the scenario in Ancient Rome. Everything depended on your gender, status, and job. Even though women have fewer rights than men, women still had a legal and social position in Ancient Rome. Women had a position in marriage and family life. There were also a lot of women that were in religious groups, were prostitutes, and were slaves. Marriage in ancient Rome was a strictly monogamous institution. Monogamous means being married to one person at a time. This was fairly unusual for this time. Most lower class women got married …show more content…
People got divorced because of adultery, politics, or simply because they didn’t work well together. Punishment for adultery varied at different times in Rome’s history. Most times adultery was considered a family matter and most times didn’t need the attention of a court. “If the woman was the one who committed adultery, the husband could keep some of her dowry if she got divorced,” quote by “Women’s Rights in Ancient Rome”. That woman would also have to wear a toga instead of a dress. If there were children in the marriage then the husband would have full custody of them. The wife would go back to her family. Julius Caesar's second wife was divorced when she was caught in a compromising situation with another man. The man was thrown in jail. Politics had a bigger impact on a marriage than love did. Men wanted to have wives that were from influential and important families. All of Julius Caesar's wives were daughters or granddaughters of important government men. Many elite Romans got remarried if they got divorced or their spouse died. It was customary for a woman to mourn for 10 months before remarrying. Even women who were pregnant got remarried. Livia Drusilla got married to the first emperor of Rome, Augustus (Octavian), when she was pregnant with her previous husband's child. Her ex-husband was even at the wedding between her and
Turia’s life addresses many aspects of the Roman society. As a wife, Turia, was the ideal woman. Her family was very wealthy and she married very young. She seemed to display great modesty, deference, affability, and had an admirable personality. These are some of the qualities that he found in his wife Turia, and that made their marriage so successful. Marriage requires extraordinary effort and in this case the qualities and virtues of the wife made it successful and unique for fully 40 years (27). She was an exceptional wife, according to
Lucretia and Dido are both viewed as ideal Roman women. The story of Lucretia is found in Livy’s Early History of Rome, while Dido is written about in The Aeneid by Virgil. By looking at Roman values, the story of Lucretia, the story of Dido, their similarities and differences, a background of Livy and Virgil, as well as the similarities and differences of Virgil and Livy’s views toward them, Dido and Lucretia can be seen as exemplary Roman women.
This paper will discuss the well published work of, Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975. Print. Sarah B. Pomerory uses this book to educate others about the role women have played throughout ancient history. Pomerory uses a timeline to go through each role, starting with mythological women, who were called Goddesses. She then talks about some common roles, the whores, wives, and slaves during this time. Pomerory enlightens the audience on the topic of women, who were seen as nothing at the time. Men were seen as the only crucial part in history; however, Pomerory’s focus on women portrays the era in a new light.
Women were very important to the development of the Republic in the United States. Although their influences were indirect they had a big impact. Women were not allowed to participate in elections or hold office; however they were wives of politicians and “mothers of republic”. Despite being legally ineligible for the above roles they were granted the right to education and a small amount of freedom, which in turn enabled them to become more intellectually acceptable on the topics of government.
Women had very few rights, they lived as prisoners, serving men 24 hours a day. Women were sheltered from society, restricted to their husbands and their husbands houses, crying out for help and justice but there is no one to there to hear their screams. In the play Antigone when the title character had to sneak out of the house to meet up with Ismene. Ancient Greek men ruled a lot like over protective fathers with teenage daughters. Men were also scared of women gaining confidence and begin thinking on their own or worse taking action or speaking out against men, like in the play Antigone where Antigone confronts Creon by burying Polyneices after Creon strictly stated that no one bury him. If someone were to bury him, the whole Polis would stone them to death. When Creon found out that someone buried Polyneices, he did not even consider that it could have been a women that did it.
When thinking of ancient Greece, images of revolutionary contrapposto sculpture, ornate lecture halls, and great philosophers in togas are sure to come to mind. As the birthplace of democracy and western philosophy, ancient Greece has had an inordinate influence on the progression of the modern world. However, the ancient Greeks’ treatment of women is seemingly at direct odds with their progressive and idealistic society.
Throughout ancient civilizations, women were lower than men. In some civilizations like Mesopotamia society, women were below slaves. It is not shocking that they would still not be equal to men. In Roman society, women had more independence and people were more encouraging of women being educated in philosophy. In the Hans society, women did not have any freedom. They were required to follow what the men told them. By examining Gaius Musonius Rufus’ essay and Ban Zhao’s essay, the views of women were different. Woman in Roman society had more freedom and women in the Han’s society were required to fulfill her responsibilities.
Aside from the two different forms of marriage that was allowed, marriages in ancient Rome were very similar to those of the ancient Greeks. Girls married young, usually in their early teens, and many marriages were arranged by the family, usually the male head of the home. ...
Thompson, James C. "Marriage in Ancient Athens." Womenintheancientworld.com. N.p., July 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. .
Men were known to be all bisexual. It was normal in the ancient Greece for a man to find both sexes attractive, but their private lives in the classical Athens were more different from anything than being bisexual; which is what experience is today. Moreover, it was not common for men to have relationships with men of the same age. Relatively, men had relationships with adolescent boys or older man. It was common for men to married before the age of 30. On the other hand, women were known to be regularly prostitutes and sex was well known to be cheap in the city. In addition, a women father had arranged marriage for their daughter at the early age of 16. Their marriage was typically arranged with a man who was twice older than her; Often, someone well known by the family or related to the family such as an
Introduction: The role of women in ancient Rome is not easily categorized; in some ways they were treated better than women in ancient Greece, but in other matters they were only allowed a very modest degree of rights and privileges. One thing that does seem clear is that as the city-state of Rome evolved from its early days into a more complex society, women were not always limited to secondary roles. In some areas of Roman society, women were allowed more freedoms than in many other ancient civilizations. Research: What is the difference between This paper will explore the historical research that indicates what roles women were allowed to play in Rome, including the Ellis textbook for some of the basic facts.
In the Greek society women were treated very differently than they are today. Women in ancient Greece were not allowed to own property, participate in politics, and they were under control of the man in their lives. The goddess Aphrodite did not adhere to these social norms and thus the reason the earthly women must comply with the societal structure that was set before them. Aphrodite did not have a father figure according to Hesiod, and therefore did not have a man in her life to tell her what to do. She was a serial adulteress and has many children with many men other than her husband. She was not the only goddess from the ancient Greek myths to cause doubt in the minds of men. Gaia and the Titan Rhea rise up against their husbands in order to protect their children. Pandora, another woman in the Greek myths, shows that all evil comes from woman. Aphrodite, Gaia, Rhea, and Pandora cause the ancient Greek men to be suspicious of women because of her mischievous and wild behavior.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.
From the expansion days of Ancient Rome to the fall of the Roman Empire, women have always succumbed to living subjacent to the status of their omnipotent and dominant male figures. After leaving her childhood home and the rule of her father, a young Roman girl would then be coerced into the dominion of her husband, often taking a plethora of roles, ranging from lover, caretaker, and best friend. It is often lightheartedly stated that, “Behind every great man is an even greater woman,” and William Shakespeare exemplifies this concept beautifully in Julius Caesar, in which he effectively used the spouses of the two main characters to add more depth, drama, and literary elements to the play, bringing it to life. Although the only two female characters in Julius Caesar, Portia and Calpurnia do not play a pivotal role in the overall plot of the story, their presence is vital in illuminating and developing the characters of their husbands, Brutus and Caesar. What they reveal about their husbands leads the reader to infer that Portia is the more admirable and redeeming character.
Throughout many generations, a woman's role in society has continuously been to stay home; cook, clean and to take care of her children. Now that society has become more modernized, women have been allowed to obtain steady jobs and are allowed to compensate other women to accompany their children. Although women have been allowed this, they are still expected to arrive home; cook their families dinner and still clean up after. On the downside as well, women have been easy targets for work discrimination, sexual assault, domestic violence and even just being blamed for something they did not do. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, the author, William Shakespeare, demonstrates a woman's place in society in several ways.