Daily Life of Women in Ancient Rome - (Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History) by Sara Phang (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book is about the "daily life" of Roman women in the largest sense of daily life - the larger experiences of life from birth and childhood, through marriage and the family, the economic activities, public roles, pre-Christian religion, and the universal experiences of death and mourning. The focus of this book is on relatively "ordinary" women - including women of the upper classes - and away from "extraordinary" women such as the relatives of aristocratic politicians during the late Republic or the empresses and women of the imperial family during the Principate. This book uses documentary sources as well as literary ones; two inscriptions have already been quoted from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a collection of hundreds of thousands of Latin inscriptions on stone that have been reconstructed, transcribed, and published. Other documentary sources are discussed in this chapter. They are more likely to represent women's own voices and display the agency that women had within the framework of Roman society"--

Book Synopsis

This book provides an invaluable introduction to the social, economic, and legal status of women in ancient Rome.

Daily Life of Women in Ancient Rome is an invaluable introduction to the lives of women in the late Roman Republic and first three centuries of the Roman Empire. Arranged chronologically and thematically, it examines how Roman women were born, educated, married, and active in economic, social, public, and religious life, as well as how they were commemorated and honored after death. Though they were excluded from formal public and military offices, wealthy Roman women participated in public life as benefactors and in religious life as priestesses. The book also acknowledges the status and occupations of women taking part in public life as textile producers, retail workers, and agricultural laborers, as well as enslaved women.

The book provides a thorough introduction to the social history of women in the Roman world and gives students and aspiring scholars references to current scholarship and to primary literary and documentary sources, including collected sources in translation.

Review Quotes

"Highly recommended. General readers through faculty." --Choice

About the Author

Sara Elise Phang, PhD, received a doctorate in Roman history from Columbia University (New York) and is currently employed as a librarian.