SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

That is what lies at the heart of the story of the Sabine Women, which depicts the first marriage in the new city as a process of ‘legitimate rape’ for the purpose of procreation. The same message was paraded repeatedly on the tombstones of wives and mothers throughout Roman history. One epitaph written sometime in the mid second century BCE, commemorating a certain Claudia, perfectly captures the traditional image: ‘Here is the unlovely grave of a lovely woman,’ it reads. ‘… She loved her husband with her heart. She bore two sons. One of these she leaves on earth, the other under the earth. She was graceful in her speech and elegant in her step. She kept the home. She made wool. That’s what there is to say.’ The proper role of the woman, in other words, was to be devoted to her husband, to produce the next generation, to be an adornment, to be a household manager and to contribute to the domestic economy, by spinning and weaving. Other commemorations single out for praise women who had remained faithful wives to only one husband throughout their lives, and emphasise ‘female’ virtues of chastity and fidelity.