POWERFUL MATRONS

The mos maiorum stated that only men could hold magistracies and military office, operating in the spaces dedicated to the city39;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 matrons39; contingent need to represent and replace the men who until recently had managed the city39;s politics, and to safeguard the ruling power among the families on which the oligarchic system was founded. Their contemporaries and subsequent ...