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Women in ancient roman society
The roles of women ancient
The roles of women ancient
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Rape of Lucretia is one of the many works of Livy, a Roman historian. Many of Livy’s works detailed the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. True or not, the story of Lucretia provides significant evidence regarding the gender roles that existed in Roman society, and how Livy saw these as detrimental to Roman society.
Perhaps the most shocking part of the story was when Lucretia felt so overwhelmed with guilt, that she took her own life (58). This event is particularly shocking due to the fact that her guilt arose from being raped. Lucretia felt as though she should be chastised for being raped. This brings to light the fact that women in Roman society were consumed with the thought that their self-worth depended solely upon being virtuous to their husbands. Lucretia questioned how she would live the rest of her life as a woman who “lost her honor” (58). She didn’t feel as though her life was worth living anymore, now that her body was “greatly soiled” (58.) Without her virtue, she saw herself as no longer valuable. In today’s society, one of the first things that is made clear to rape victims is the fact that they are in no way, shape, or form to blame for what happened to them. This goes to show the change in the role of women throughout
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history since women in today’s society are viewed as more than just a trophy for their husbands. Consequently, an obvious theme throughout the story is the objectification of women.
In chapter 57, the men sat around and compared their wives as if they were possessions, making it a competition to see who had the best wife. They gauged this upon which wife was doing the most honorable thing while the husbands were away. Since Lucretia was “still working on her spinning” instead of having fun with her friends, she was the best wife. (57) This suggests that women basically are not expected to have lives outside of their life at home with their husband and their children. This blatant double standard shows that it was seen as inferior that the other wives were out enjoying themselves in the exact same manner that the men
were. Another argument that is presented in the Rape of Lucretia, is what Livy saw as characteristics of the Romans, both male and female, that made them, in a sense, weak. The motif of acting out of passion or acting out of anger in the absence of logic and reason is what led to every tragedy throughout this story. Sextus Tarquinius acted quickly out of passion when he raped Lucretia (57). Lucretia acted quickly out of an overwhelmed sense of guilt when she killed herself (58). The men acted quickly out of rage when they promised to avenge her and sought after Tarquinius (59). The Roman’s didn’t think about the consequences of their actions; they simply acted. As Livy commonly wrote about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, it can be interpreted that this is one of the characteristics that he felt led to that fall. Fundamentally, women in the Roman society were more or less objects than they were actual people. Men viewed women as their possessions and compared them to one another as if they were sports cars. The double standard between men and women was so prevalent, that even the women didn’t take notice of it. Women tied their self worth to their success in their homes and their honor to their husbands. As we saw with Lucretia, a woman’s life wasn’t seen as worth living if it wasn’t an honorable, chaste life devoted to her husband.
For some odd reason, it seemed that men were allowed to be philanderers while their wives stayed at home. This is evidenced in the Odyssey quite well- Odysseus the?hero? is free to sample all the pretty ladies he cares for, whereas Penelope, his wife, is expected to fend off all the suitors at home. Predictably, Penelope melts into his arms when she realizes it is her long-lost husband without pausing to consider what he has done in his absence. This reaction portrays the unequal morals of Greek society regarding gender.
As the Roman Empire was founded around 27 BC, the wealthy women in its society started breaking the boundaries of domesticity. Kristina Milnor, in her book, Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life, suggests that women even played an “indispensable symbolic role in the emergence into public discourse of an ‘imperial’ private life” in the environment. However, when women advanced in society, other Romans combatted this progress by reducing them to emotionally vulnerable beings who should therefore be submissive towards men. Furthermore, Virgil emphasizes the sexist ideas of Roman society through characters like Dido, Amata, Lavinia, and Anna in his poem, The Aeneid, which was published around 19 BC. Virgil’s works
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...
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.
Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.
" 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--the woman included--that a wife should stay in the home far removed from the complicated business of the "man's world."... ... middle of paper ... ...
The time is the sixth century, the place is Rome and the person is Lucretia, a woman who contributed to one of the biggest parts of Roman history: the creation of the Roman republic. The rape of the virtuous Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of Tarquinius Superbus' (an Etruscan king) was the final straw for the Roman people and pushed them to want to change from a monarchy to a republic. From the accounts of the rape of Lucretia from ancient historians like Livy, Cicero and Dionysius, it is clear that Lucretias rape not only spurred the roman people to want to get rid of the Etruscan King and his family, but also revealed the important role of virtue in women in roman society.
2. Procopius starts this document stating that Theodora is nothing more than a prostitute. He goes on to say that she was not of class or had any dignity, because she would perform on stage almost completely nude. Procopius portrays her as someone who is ruthless and will do whatever she needs to do to accomplish her goals. Justinian would fall in love with her, but was not allowed to marry her because of his social status, because
Lefkowitz, Mary R. "The Heroic Women Of Greek Epic." The American Scholar Autumn 87, Vol. 56 Issue 4: 503-518. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Montgomery, AL. 2 Feb 2006 troy.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=
...exemplifies this, as Lavinia and Rhea Silvia held crucial role in its earliest development. Further, various women in Livy’s work served as martyrs that sparked political change. Lucretia’s rape and suicide spawned a revolution that took down the monarchy and established the Roman Republic, and Verginia’s death re-established the Republic after the fall of the decemviri. As such, these representations of women go beyond the surface descriptions of women as submissive and are in fact quite complex when observing their symbolic function. Still, while other ancient works depict women as more assertive in their roles and relationships, Livy sought to create the representation that was most true to ancient Roman society. Therefore, the women in Livy’s writing were defined by their sacrifice in deference to men as well as their sacrifice to symbolically catalyze change.
Throughout the book, many of the wives note how they wish that they were able to pursue their goals and dreams, but were unable to due to the fact that they had responsibilities as a wife. I think that by putting themselves in a position where they could be viewed as undeserving upper class members who did not work, it not created a dependency to their husbands financially, it portrayed them as women incapable of supporting themselves or their desires in life. “Upper-class women, like other women, experience dissatisfaction with their role as wives–with its expected mode of accommodation, unequal voice in family decisions, and sole responsibility for home and family”
Livy’s narration of the rape is different from Ovid’s as it clearly describes the effort put forth by Romulus to appease the women that were taken. Livy is able to develop the significance of the women taken by showing how his treatment of the gender roles is a direct reflection of what is acceptable in Rome, and that his narrative is not simply marital based but also has themes in the political and social realms. In the world today western culture recognizes persecution and oppression. Yet, the allegorical characterization of victims is not identified or taken as seriously. The Sabine woman are not viewed as victims for sexual innuendos in Livy’s tale. Instead they take the role of a counterfeit desire that seems ...
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.
...r’s household most women in this period had no self-respect and were controlled by their husbands.