Gender Studies

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Article

ordo matronarum  

Lewis Webb

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 May 2024
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Roman History and Historiography
The ordo matronarum (order of married women) was a corporate body of married women (matronae) in Rome, attested for the Republic and Principate. Its exact composition is uncertain, but accounts of its activities in the Republic suggest its members included wealthy, high-status married women and widows. Criteria for membership probably included a marriage, substantial wealth, and high status: this was an exclusive ordo. It was thus analogous to the ordo equester.The ordo matronarum may have existed already by the 3rd century bce, given the evidence of Plautus and Livy. By 42 bce, the ordo included perhaps 1,400 wealthy married women, as attested by Valerius Maximus and Appian. The evidence from Seneca and Suetonius indicates it persisted in some form into the Principate.Matronae were distinguished by privileges and status symbols (vehicles, mobility privileges, funerary orations, jewellery, dress): they had a visible, corporate identity. The ordo matronarum was feasibly one of the primary structures behind the collective actions of married women attested in the Republic and the Principate, facilitating meetings, collections, benefactions, lobbies, mourning, religious activity, and more. Epigraphic evidence of matronal dedications, benefactions, mourning, and corporate bodies from Italy from the 3rd century bce to the 3rd century ce offers corroborating support for the existence of the ordo matronarum.

Article

female life-course  

Kelly Olson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
23 August 2023
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies

The female life-course in ancient Greece and Rome ideally followed a set path, a path which would look different depending on one’s rank, status, race, and geographical location. Women of the upper and middling classes in Athens and Rome, however, were supposed to progress through childhood and marry almost immediately after puberty, producing children in their turn, raising them, and perhaps becoming widowed before dying in what people today would consider the prime of life.

The female life cycle changed according to rank, status, race, and geographical location across the Mediterranean. Thus, an urban slave-woman’s life cycle would have looked significantly different from that of a married citizen woman, as would that of a lower-class woman, or a foreign woman living in Athens or Rome, which in turn may have been very dissimilar to (for instance) a woman living in a rural Roman province. What follows is what is known of the life stages of a middling-to-upper-class woman, since this is where literary and artistic sources pool.

Article

cross-dressing  

Vassiliki Panoussi

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
19 April 2023
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
Cross-dressing is the act of dressing in clothing considered appropriate for a different gender. The practice, ancient or modern, is studied alongside issues of gender identity and sexuality and falls into the purview of both gender studies and transgender studies. Ancient Greek and Roman examples of cross-dressing of male to female are many, whilst female to male are very few. Ancient attitudes to the practice vary: cross-dressing is socially permitted in the case of theatre actors who performed female roles dressed as women and as part of religious custom. Hostility and condemnation are also frequent in both Greek and Roman sources, as cross-dressing by men is also linked to effeminacy and homosexuality. The modern theoretical framework of transgender studies can help in the study of cross-dressing in Greece and Rome. In turn, ancient concepts associated with cross-dressing can shed light on modern concepts and practices.Cross-dressing is the act of dressing in clothing associated with members of the opposite gender. As a practice it is attested in all cultures throughout history, often disturbing established notions of what constitutes male and female .

Article

Phryne  

Melissa Funke

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
21 December 2022
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Greek History and Historiography

Phryne, a Boeotian hetaira, was active in Athens in the mid-to-late 4th century bce. Said to have been born in Thespiae (Ath. 13.591c) and originally named Mnesarete, she took the name Phryne from a nickname given due to her sallow complexion (Plut. De Pyth. or. 401b). Along with several other famous hetairai of the time, she is mentioned in several comedies produced at Athens during her lifetime (Anaxilas Nottis fr. 22; Timocles Orestautocleides fr. 27, and Neaira fr. 25). Narratives about her life associating her with prominent artists and philosophers from 4th-century Athens first became popular in Hellenistic collections of anecdotes influenced by Middle and New Comedy and then featured prominently in Imperial Greek literature. While most scholars acknowledge that Phryne was a real woman living in 4th-century Athens, the majority of the sources on her are Hellenistic and Imperial Greek, casting doubt on the historicity of the biographical details they preserve.

Article

women in science  

Sophia Connell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 June 2021
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine

Women were involved in both practical and theoretical aspects of scientific endeavour in the ancient world. Although the evidence is scant, it is clear that women innovated techniques in textile manufacture, metallurgy, and medical sciences. The most extensive engagement of women in science was in medicine, including obstetrics, gynaecology, pharmacology, and dermatology. The evidence for this often comes from male medical writers. Women were also involved in the manufacture of gold alloys, which interested later alchemists. Maria of Alexandria innovated equipment and techniques while also theorizing about chemical change. Many of the works ascribed to women in antiquity were not written by women. However, they do indicate what sorts of sciences were taken to be the province of women.

Scientific achievements are not the result of individual genius. Science has been a collective endeavour, involving the whole structure of society. The ancient world is no exception to this. Indeed, what is known about the desire for knowledge and control of the physical world indicates that the ways in which Greeks and Romans pursued it were various and diverse, and included the thoughts and activities of many women.

Article

stepmothers  

Patricia Watson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
25 March 2021
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
Stepmothers in the ancient world had a bad reputation, especially in Rome, where the stereotype of the cruel stepmother (saeva noverca) was so prevalent that the historian Tacitus could employ it to cast aspersions on historical figures such as Livia and Agrippina the Younger. In contrast to stepfathers and the younger generation of step-relatives, stepmothers bore the blame for all stepfamily conflicts, a phenomenon that continues to this day. The image of the stepmother—jealous, scheming, malevolent, lacking in self-control—is a notable example of a misogynistic tendency to view women in stereotypical terms, the stepmother encapsulating all the negative traits which were believed to be inherent in the female sex (cf. Arist. Hist. an. 9.1).Malignity was assumed to be an inevitable consequence of the stepmotherly role. This is seen, for example, in the common metaphorical use of the Greek and Latin terms for stepmother (μητρυιά and noverca respectively) in a metaphorical sense; for example, at Aesch.

Article

Volumnia Cytherisa  

Marilyn B. Skinner

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
23 February 2021
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Roman History and Historiography

Volumnia Cytheris, a freedwoman of P. Volumnius Eutrapelus, was a celebrated mime actress (see mime, roman), notorious during the 40s bce for her affairs with prominent political figures. Her lovers included Mark Antony and C. Cornelius Gallus, the inventor of Roman love elegy, who celebrated her under the pseudonym “Lycoris” in four books of amatory verse (Serv. ad Verg. Ecl. 10.1 and 6). According to a late source (De vir. ill. 82.2) she was also the paramour of the tyrannicide M. Iunius Brutus (2). All three men were, like Eutrapelus, at one time adherents of C. Iulius Caesar (2), and her association with them may have furthered her former owner’s ambitions.1 While the name “Cytheris,” alluding to Venus’s birthplace, sexualizes its possessor and is thus a suitable appellation for a stage performer, “Lycoris,” reminiscent of a cult title of Apollo, transports her into the realm of literature.

Article

hermaphroditism  

Katharine T. von Stackelberg

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 May 2020
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
A physical condition whereby a living organism has both male and female reproductive parts, hermaphroditism is a well-established phenomenon in the ancient world. In Greek and Roman literature and art, hermaphroditism in humans had cultural significance as divine portent, erotic subject, mediating or transgressive condition, and symbol of marital union. The most significant literary accounts of human hermaphroditism are found in Plato’s Symposium and Ovid’s Metamorphoses; the greatest concentration of visual evidence is to be found in the environs of Pompeii and Herculaneum.Hermaphroditism is not acknowledged in Greek texts before the 4th century bce, when it is identified in three distinct ways: as a mythical and philosophical concept in Plato’s Symposium (189d–190c); as a natural phenomenon in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals (770b, 30–35); and as an eponymous figure in the title of a lost play by Posidippus of Pella. The earliest physical evidence also dates from the same period as an Athenian terracotta figurine, probably a cult votive, raising the hem of hir skirt in a ritual gesture (see .

Article

stola  

Kelly Olson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 May 2020
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Roman History and Historiography
  3. Roman Material Culture
The stola was a long, sleeveless overdress or slip-like garment suspended from shoulder straps that is claimed by literary sources to be the distinguishing garment of the Roman matrona. The stola was worn over the tunic and belted with a cord (see Figure 1). It was a sign that the wearer (perhaps freeborn) was married in a iustum matrimonium. The term is not mentioned by Terence, Cato, or Plautus, and so the garment may not have been commonplace before about 50 bce. It is by no means referred to by all authors even after this date: often the garment of the married woman is referred to in general terms as longa vestis (e.g., Ov. Fast. 4.134), which may refer to her long enveloping tunic, and not the stola at all. It is uncertain whether or not freedwomen wore the stola (see ILLRP 977; = CLE 56; Macr. Sat.

Article

rape  

Sharon James

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 April 2020
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Greek Law
  3. Roman Law

Only the rape of citizens was taken seriously by law. Sexual assaults on non-citizens were lesser matters. Rape of enslaved persons, a daily reality, was a crime only if committed by someone other than their owner. Rape of citizen males damaged their reputations; rape of citizen females could render them ineligible for marriage. Ancient myth features almost countless stories of rape, usually of human females by divine males. These tales were common subjects in ancient art and literature. Overwhelmingly, the victims are unmarried girls, who may suffer brutal treatment afterward and frequently bear miraculous offspring, some of whom establish cities (e.g., Romulus and Remus). Rape by human men is rarer in myth; rape of a wife causes massive militarized response (e.g., Helen of Troy, Lucretia). War-rape and post-war rape were standard practice around the Mediterranean.

Rape in antiquity was a matter of social and civic class. As a crime, it was understood as happening only to citizens: sexual assault of non-citizens was not a concern of law. The law took rape of citizens very seriously. Rape of citizen girls and women was a violation against the men who were responsible for them—father, husband, brother, guardian—but female victims would have experienced it as a personal violation first, rather than damage to their guardian’s ownership of their sexuality.