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.
Roman society operated under the authority of paterfamilias. Paterfamilias is where the oldest living male of the family was considered to be the father of the household; he had “virtual life and death authority over the entire household” (MPN, 107). He would make the all the decisions in the family, and made the rules and standards, including the moral standards that women were expected to follow. Ideal Roman women were valued for their piety, modesty, performance of womanly duties, and faithfulness to their husbands. In both their stories, Lucretia and Dido do what is necessary to maintain their image of the ideal Roman woman.
The story of Lucretia begins with men boasting about their wives, trying to determine who is the best of them all. It is clear to them that Lucretia is the winner when she is found “hard at work by lamplight upon her spinning” (Livy, 100). She then moves on to be a gracious host to all of these men, again showing success in her womanly duties. Later that night one of the visitors, Sextus Tarquinis, comes into her room, and forces himself upon her, telling her that if she does not comply he will make it look like she had an affair with on of the servants (Livy, 101). She yields to him because she does not want it to seem as if she had an affair and n...
... middle of paper ...
...n their stories at first, but by the end they both praise them for their ability to act with the virtues that every Roman woman should strive to act with.
Overall, the Dido and Lucretia exemplify what it means to be an ideal Roman woman. They uphold the values that Virgil and Livy find most important. Dido does this through her solution to her offenses, and Lucretia by her ability to look past personal status and focus on the well-being of Rome.
Works Cited
Livy. The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of The History of Rome from its
Foundation. Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt. Intro. R.M. Ogilvie. Preface and Additional Material by S.P. Oakley. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Matthews, Roy T., F. De Witt Platt, and Thomas F.X. Noble. Experience Humanities.
New York: McGraw Hill, 2014. (MPN)
Virgil, The Aeneid, Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
For example, Anna encourages Dido to marry Aeneas for reasons related to political gain and progeny: she says Dido can “know the joy of children” and gain military security by having “a Trojan army marching” alongside her men. Dido exemplifies the domesticity women were subjected to regardless of their own opinions. Furthermore, Lavinia also represents the way women were inferior to their suitors, and husbands. Throughout The Aeneid, Turnus has more input in marrying Lavinia than she had herself. He even says he cannot allow Aeneas gain power from Latium, as well as marry Lavinia, whose parents choose her suitor. Virgil shows that marriage served as a contract that even materialistically benefitted women: Dido could obtain military security through Aeneas. However, Virgil also shows this idea of marriage further pushed women into following gender roles. Dido is automatically expected to bear children if she marries Aeneas regardless of her opinions on progeny. Furthermore, Lavinia acts a prize to motivate Turnus and Aeneas because her hand in marriage is the key to gaining rulership of Latium. Therefore, through Lavinia, Virgil reminded society that Roman women were objects regarding marriage. They were seen as symbols or keys to power for men to obtain the way marrying Lavinia would mean ruling Latium. Moreover, though men were also married for materialistic gains, their security in society was not threatened because they were seen as the stronger sex. Virgil’s works continued this idea of marriage being a contract for obtaining benefits in a way that harmed women due their secondary treatment in
Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be an evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600)." While this view may have been extreme even for the Greeks, they were convinced of the physical and intellectual inferiority of women. Thus, they believed that it was better for all--...
Lucretia was the symbol of chastity, faithfulness, and feminism. The courage of Lucretia was greatly recognized, being that her story is what rallied the Roman’s against their Etruscan kings . Through her story it becomes evident that while women may have been the inferior gender in Rome, they still had the opportunity to be indirectly involved in political and social aspects of the Roman Republic. Further on in Roman times, there becomes more and more instances in which women take on much more responsibility than just the typical domestic obligations of the average
Livy’s The Rise of Rome serves as the ultimate catalogue of Roman history, elaborating on the accomplishments of each king and set of consuls through the ages of its vast empire. In the first five books, Livy lays the groundwork for the history of Rome and sets forth a model for all of Rome to follow. For him, the “special and salutary benefit of the study of history is to behold evidence of every sort of behaviour set forth as on a splendid memorial; from it you may select for yourself and for your country what to emulate, from it what to avoid, whether basely begun or basely concluded.” (Livy 4). Livy, however, denies the general populace the right to make the same sort of conclusions that he made in constructing his histories. His biased representation of Romulus and Tarquin Superbus, two icons of Roman history, give the readers a definite model of what a Roman should be, instead of allowing them to come to their own conclusion.
The Tragically Paradoxical Role of Women in Ancient Roman Society In nervous preparation for the essay section of my history final, I found myself fascinated by Livy’s anecdotes concerning the common thread of violence against women. Livy, a Roman historian, wrote a significant number of volumes concerning the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Three stories in particular, the rape of the Sabine women, the rape of Lucretia, and the death of Verginia, shed light on the ancient Roman female as a surrogate victim blamed for her gender and sexuality in relation to men. While considering the themes of March’s Women’s History Month and now April’s Domestic Violence Awareness month, I thought it might be relevant to raise awareness of women’s struggles during this time.
1)De, Selincourt Aubrey. Livy, the Early History of Rome: Book I - V of the History of Rome from Its Foundation. London: Penguin, 1960. Print.
Women in antiquity did not have an easy lot in life. They had few, if any, rights. Surviving early records of the civilizations of antiquity from ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and Rome suggest the diversity of women’s roles differed little from region to region. There were a few exceptions, mostly concerning women of nobility and the city-state of Sparta. Excluding the rare instances mentioned most antique women were generally limited on education, mobility, and almost all possibilities interfering with domestic or childbearing responsibilities. The limited social roles of women in antiquity suggest the perceived c...
Both Virgil and Milton portray femininity and women as a threat to the divine higher order of things by showing women as unable to appreciate the larger picture outside their own domestic or personal concerns. For example, in the Aeneid, it is Dido, the Queen of Carthage, who out of all the battles and conflicts faced by Aeneas, posed to the biggest threat to his divinely-assigned objective of founding a new Troy. Like Calypso detains Odysseus in Homer's epic, Dido detains Aeneas from his nostos to his "ancient mother" (II, 433) of Italy, but unlike Calypso, after Dido is abandoned by Aeneas she becomes distraught; she denounces Aeneas in violent rhetoric and curses his descendents before finally committing suicide. Therefore, Virgil demonstrates how women have a potent and dangerous resource of emotions, which can ambush even the most pious of men. Indeed, Dido's emotional penetrate the "duty-bound" (III, 545) Aeneas who "sighed his heart ou...
The Aeneid, by Virgil, is an epic poem about dedication, love, pain, and kindness. Aeneas is Trojan that is loyal and dedicated to his country. His heroic action is shown when he carried his father on his back and his son by the hand. I chose to write about this poem because it shows how one character can change dramatically. Aeneid is a great Roman leader that is cares for the safety of his people. He turned down the love of his life to go fulfill his destiny. He was destined to be in Italy. This poem is structured the same way as modern literature. Virgil’s use of the three female characters in the story: Venus, Dido, and Juno depicts power and the decisions women encounter that can change the way they are seen by society.
Dido is a significant character when it comes to Western Literature; Interestingly enough, Virgil characterized Dido as a successful queen of a city (Carthage). This is important when it comes to gender roles because Dido is a female character that is one of power and status, which was unheard of in ancient society and literature. Women were usually depicted as servants, trophies, or temptresses, and if the women were depicted as goddesses, they were characterized as spiteful, tempting, and emotional. Virgil uses foreshadowing when Dido compares her love for Aeneas to be like fire (which is how she ends up dying). Given this foreshadowing and despair, through Dido, Virgil still depicts women/Dido as being too emotional and caring, such as how
The Aeneid is an epic poem written by Virgil that has rightly achieved great fame through its 2,000 years of existence. Through its 12 books and 9,896 lines, The Aeneid tells of its antagonist, Aeneas, handling love, loss, war, and religion. In “Book IV” especially, Virgil makes specific mentions of Aeneas’s heroic style of leadership and how he compared to others with similar power. This category of “other leaders” includes the controversial Queen Dido of Carthage. After hosting a feast in his honor, Queen Dido falls madly in love with Aeneas and he quickly reciprocates her emotion. Through the tumultuous period of time after, the two get married, rule their kingdom, feud with one another, and eventually die tragic deaths. While Virgil follows
In both The Aeneid and Inferno, Queen Dido of Carthage falls victim to predestined damnation. On the one hand, Virgil sees Dido as a notable queen who has fallen victim of fate's fickle nature. On the other hand, Dante Alighieri depicts Queen Dido as nothing but a treacherous creature. Within Dante’s Inferno, more importance is given to Dido’s lustful facet than to the fact that she committed suicide, and should therefore, be in the seventh circle of hell. Though Virgil and Alighieri existed in different time periods, both authors made of queen Dido the embodiment of women as a whole: a representation of lust. In other words, queen Dido represents the notion that women are responsible for the fall of humankind. Because of her lust, Dido manages
Woman in Roman were accompanied by or in other words looks after by a male figures it could of been a brother, cousin, uncle or any type of officer. Roman woman never really walked freely like the Roman men did.Roman woman was never treated the same as the roman men. Women didn't have a voice or a say in their lives. Since the beginning
The women of Othello have different characteristics, yet all share one common bond. Desdemona is submissive, but loyal and true to the men in her life. Emilia thinks quite low of her husband and is a strong, smart, assertive woman. Bianca knows her place in society and was unfortunate to succumb to a life of prostitution. However, all these women share the same knowledge, which brings them together as females. They all live under a harsh patriarchal society that does not allow them to think and act freely and naturally as men do, even though unlike the men, they know they are of equal human qualities.
Munson Deats, Sara. “The Subversion of Gender Hierarchies in Dido, Queen of Carthage.” Marlowe, History and Sexuality. Ed. Paul Whitfield White. New York: AMS Press, 1998.