Roman Women

Roman Women uses numerous primary sources to explore the lives of Rome's most influential women. It is not simply another lurid and sensational catalogue of scandalous sexual outrages; these all feature, but they are balanced by careful analysis of female role models such as Lucretia, Verginia, and Cornelia. This volume examines the effect these women had on contemporary politics and society, and how far their actions reflected and affected other women in the Roman world. The women here displayed a wide range of characteristics: they could be devoted wives and mothers, intelligent, charismatic, ambitious, obtrusive, powerful, permissive, adulterous, manipulative, evil, cruel, dangerous, and (often) dead before their time. Nevertheless, they had one thing in common-they all made an indelible mark on one of the most powerful civilisations the world has ever known.