Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The infant community of Rome grew up with neighbours who conceded a fairly high place to women. Etruscan sepulchral art suggests as much; the tomb paintings of early Campania show the womenfolk spruce, dignified, and house-proud; the authoritarian rule of the Sabine mother was traditional. Granted that in certain places and at certain times women were taboo, in a sense ‘infectious’, to use Warde Fowler's word, yet in the home the Roman wife had never been banished to a gynaeceum. The Atrium, the heart of the Roman house, was the wife's territory as much as the husband's. Though every Roman household was a monarchy with the paterfamilias as king, the womenfolk were no more, if no less, his subjects than the sons. When the Roman husband carried his wife into the Atrium, and she spoke the sacramental words ‘ubi tu Gaius ibi ego Gaia’, she made a claim that, in its due sphere, was admitted. In this sphere the Roman husband was more at home than the Greek, who hated not to be out of doors in the daytime. In a speech which Tacitus writes for Valerius Messalinus there is the truly Roman phrase ‘revertentibus post laborem quod honestius quam uxorium levamentum?’—‘the relief of a wife's society’—a society, that is, to quote another phrase from the same passage, ‘consortium rerum secundarum adversarumque’. When Lucretius writes:
iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent the adjectives carry a weight of feeling.
page 1 note 2 Horace, , Od. iii. 6. 38–40.Google Scholar
page 1 note 3 Arm. iii. 34; see xii. 5. 5.
page 1 note 4 iii. 894–6.
page 2 note 1 Malcovati, , Orat. Rom. Frag. i, p. 313.Google Scholar
page 2 note 2 Suetonius, , Div. Iul. 6.Google Scholar
page 3 note 1 N.A. ii. 23.
page 3 note 2 Lls. 42–7 Ribbeck.
page 3 note 3 L. 326 Ribbeck.
page 3 note 4 de agri cultura 143.
page 3 note 5 Pictor, Fabiusap. Pliny, N.H. xiv. 89.Google Scholar
page 3 note 6 Malcovati, , op. cit. i, p. 213.Google Scholar
page 4 note 1 ‘Une ordalie par le poison à Rome’ in Cultes, mythes et religions, iii, pp. 254 ff.
page 4 note 2 Origines, frag. 114, Peter.
page 4 note 3 Polybius, xxxii. 12.
page 4 note 4 Frags. 3 and 4, Riese, p. 140.
page 5 note 1 Plutarch, , Cato Major 8.Google Scholar
page 5 note 2 Od. ii. 12. 17–20.
page 5 note 3 Cicéron et ses amis, p. 175.
page 5 note 4 Plutarch, , Lucullus, 6.Google Scholar
page 5 note 5 Malcovati, , op. cit. i, p. 190.Google Scholar
page 5 note 6 L. 87.
page 5 note 7 Od. iii. 24. 19–20.
page 5 note 8 18.
page 5 note 9 Malcovati, , op. cit. i, pp. 240 f.Google Scholar
page 6 note 1 Bell. Cattt. 25.
page 6 note 2 Pomp. 55.
page 6 note 3 ad Attic. v. i.
page 7 note 1 Paraphrase by Fowler, W. Warde, Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, pp. 166 f.Google Scholar
page 7 note 2 Aen. i. 46–7.
page 7 note 3 Aen. vii. 803 ff.
page 7 note 4 Aen. viii. 407 if.
page 7 note 5 Suetonius, , Calig. 23.Google Scholar
page 7 note 6 Ann. xiii. 45.
page 8 note 1 Agric. 6. 1.
page 8 note 2 Sat. vi. 434 ff.
page 8 note 3 See Charlesworth, M. P., Five Men, p. 42.Google Scholar
page 8 note 4 Ep. i. 16. 6.
page 8 note 5 Ep. iv. 19. 1–5.
page 9 note 1 C.I.L. v. 2. 7066.
page 9 note 2 C.I.L. vi. 3. 15696.
page 9 note 3 Paraphrased from Ep. i. 14.
page 9 note 4 de benef. iii. 16. 2.
page 9 note 5 Petronius, , Sat. 67.Google Scholar
page 9 note 6 Pliny, , N.H. ix. 117.Google Scholar
page 10 note 1 Dessau, I.L.S. 3513.Google Scholar
page 10 note 2 viii. 3.
page 10 note 3 Dig. iii. i. 5.
page 10 note 4 See on all this Abbott, F. F., Society and Politics in Ancient Rome, pp. 77 ff.Google Scholar
page 10 note 5 Tacitus, , Ann. xiii. 21.Google Scholar
page 11 note 1 Ant. Hel. 4. 3–4.
page 11 note 2 Ibid.Aur. 49. 6.
page 11 note 3 Dessau, , I.L.S. 442–4, and possibly 2438.Google Scholar
page 11 note 4 Ann. xii. 37. 6.
page 11 note 5 Dessau, , I.L.S. 4928–9.Google Scholar
page 11 note 6 C.I.L. vi. 3. 15346.
