The mos maiorum stated that only men could hold magistracies and military office, operating in the spaces dedicated to the city’s politics — the senate, the popular assemblies, the courts, the Forum. Women, on the other hand, were obliged to conform to traditional behavioural models which excluded them from any form of political activity. Nevertheless, in the 1st century BCE, the emergency situation of the civil wars led some women to undertake political initiatives. This opportunity arose from the Roman matrons’ contingent need to represent and replace the men who until recently had managed the city’s politics, and to safeguard the ruling power among the families on which the oligarchic system was founded. Their contemporaries and subsequent historiographers often found ways to justify these women’s actions in order not to compromise their families’ reputations. To that end, certain legends, recast during the Late Republic and the Early Principate, identify authoritative precedents that would legitimise women’s initiatives in the present. This book studies the protagonists, the methods, the aims, the consequences, and the judgement of matrons’ political acts. The purpose of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it seeks to shed light upon a defining moment in the history of women; on the other hand, it aims to reconstruct a crucial aspect of the political history of ancient Rome.

upload/newsarch_ebooks_2025_10/2022/07/06/Powerful.Matrons.pdf

lgli/Rohr Francesca Vio - Powerful Matrons: New political actors in the Late Roman Republic (2022, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza).pdf

zlib/History/Ancient History/Rohr Francesca Vio/Powerful Matrons: New political actors in the Late Roman Republic_22211023.pdf

Vio, Francesca Rohr

Vio, Rohr Francesca

Francesca Rohr, Vio

Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza ; Universidad de Sevilla

Libera Res Publica, 6, Zaragoza, Sevilla, 2022

Spain, Spain

1, 2022

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 16.0.5

The mos maiorum stated that only men could hold magistracies and military office, operating in the spaces dedicated to the city's politics" the senate, the popular assemblies, the courts, the Forum. Women, on the other hand, were obliged to conform to traditional behavioural models which excluded them from any form of political activity. Nevertheless, in the 1st century BCE, the emergency situation of the civil wars led some women to undertake political initiatives. This opportunity arose from the Roman matrons' contingent need to represent and replace the men who until recently had managed the city' s politics, and to safeguard the ruling power among the families on which the oligarchic system was founded. Their contemporaries and subsequent historiographers often found ways to justify these women' s actions in order not to compromise their families' reputations. To that end, certain legends, recast during the Late Republic and the Early Principate, identify authoritative precedents that would legitimise women's initiatives in the present. This book studies the protagonists, the methods, the aims, the consequences, and the judgement of matrons' political acts. The purpose of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it seeks to shed light upon a defining moment in the history of women; on the other hand, it aims to reconstruct a crucial aspect of the political history of ancient Rome

PORTADA 1
CONTENTS 5
INTRODUCTION 7
I. CREATORS OF FAMILY TIES AND POLITICAL RELATIONSHIPS 17
1.1. Matrons as instruments in their own family’s marriage strategies 17
1.2. Promoters of marriage ties and divorces 30
II. EDUCATORS OF CIVES 43
2.1. Educated, before becoming educators 43
2.2. Mentors for sons 48
III. GUARDIANS OF THE FAMILY AND OF PUBLIC MEMORY 61
3.1. Useful in their death 61
3.2. Organizers of funerals for family members 66
3.3. Suicides for their own men 80
IV. DELEGATES OF THEIR RELATIVES 89
4.1. Wives acting on behalf of their husbands 89
4.2. Mothers acting on behalf of their sons 97
4.3. Women interacting with soldiers on behalf of their relatives 106
V. THEIR MALE RELATIVES’ ADVISORS 119
5.1. Active alongside their husbands 119
5.2. Instigators for their children 130
5.3. Accomplices of brothers, fathers, and lovers 142
VI. MEDIATORS IN POLITICS 147
6.1. Mediators towards their relatives 147
6.2. Mediators towards men outside the family 164
VII. INNOVATORS OR CONSERVATIVES?LEGITIMACY STRATEGIES FOR WOMEN’SPOLITICAL ACTION 171
7.1. The ways through which matrons act: the role of precedents 171
7.2. Typologies of female action:examples in the past 184
CONCLUSION 203
BIBLIOGRAPHY 211
INDEX OF ANCIENT NAMES 223
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 231
Contraportada 234

2022-07-26