Overview

According to legend, Rome was a settlement of warlike young men, from Alba, an area in the Alban Hills just southeast of Rome. When they settled there, they inaugurated the earliest of Rome’s traditions, including the relationship between men and women. Any woman who lapsed from the required level of ‘spectacular’ virtue was fiercely punished, and the failings of women would often be the centre of Rome’s legends, such as the battle between the Horatii in Rome and the Curiattii in Alba in the seventh century BC. Women of Ancient Rome describes how early austerities gradually eased, yet retained the authority of the Paterfamilias in family life, also how the differing classes reacted to each other, exploring religion and ‘outsiders’ such as soldiers’ wives, slaves, prostitutes and how the poor coped with a world giving them few personal choices. With chapters on family and the importance of stoicism over affection, marriage and motherhood, priestesses, slaves and prostitutes, old age and death, Lynda Telford analyses the struggle for survival of women from all classes under one of the oldest codified patriarchal systems devised.

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9781398106994

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Reviews

'Author Lynda Telford explains in this new study, women were very much needed in Ancient Rome – both to bolster a falling birth rate and to bring up a new generation of warriors.' -- Family Tree Magazine, July 2023 'The lively narrative really brings the Roman world to life and I found it very interesting to compare the experiences of Roman women to those that might have been experienced by our more recent ancestors.' -- Family Tree Magazine, October 2023

Author Information

Lynda Telford writes historical articles and is Events and Projects Officer for the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III society. She is a keen amateur archaeologist and the author of five books, including 'Women of Medieval England' and 'Women of the Vatican' for Amberley.

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