Roman legionaries and their wives

Women and the Army in the Roman Empire, 2024

The presence of women in Roman military contexts has been established beyond doubt by scholars in recent decades. Nevertheless, very little sustained attention has been paid to who these women were, how they fit into the fabric of settlements, and what their contributions were to these communities. This volume offers new insights into the associations, activities, and social roles of women in the context of the Roman army, emphasizing the tangible evidence for the lived realities of women and families at different social levels. The various chapters adopt dynamic perspectives and shed new light on archaeological and historical evidence to provide novel conclusions about women’s lives in antiquity. Histories of the Roman army can no longer ignore the women who lived and worked in its midst and histories of Roman women must acknowledge their important military role.

Women and the Army in the Roman Empire, 2024

This volume fills a gap in our understanding of the Roman army by focusing on the role of women within military communities. In order to do so it is useful to consider how our topic reached the point where we can now devote to it these concentrated studies. The topic of women in Roman military communities (i.e., military women) did not suddenly appear in the late twentieth century. Nor is it a result merely of the cultural turn in the humanities, feminist, or gender studies, nor the so-called “New Military History” with its focus on war and society. The topic has been around much longer than a review of the historiography would readily reveal, but it has not generally been an issue to which anyone has paid sustained attention until the last decade of the twentieth century. Roman authors’ interest in military women was less about the women than about the men with whom they were associated. The topic gained renewed interest as social and cultural history have become welcome components of historians’ toolboxes and as archaeological fieldwork has yielded new evidence and innovative methodologies have led to updated analyses of old artifacts.

Short survey of extant sources discussing females during early Imperial Rome.

Sommer, C. S. and Matešic, S. (Hrsg.), Limes XXIII: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies Ingolstadt 2015, 2018

Ever since the days of Augustus, the Roman propaganda cultivated an image of professional soldiers dedicated solely to the military service. This ideal state of affairs was supported by set of prohibitions, which debarred the soldiers from such distractions as (legal) marriage and family-life. The evidence related to the soldiers themselves (tombstones, judicial papyri and discharge diplomas) shows that this was wishful thinking at best, especially in the case of the auxiliary soldiers, who tended to form marital alliances with local (usually peregrine) women and raised children with them. But although some marital alliances did occur, the general tendencies of the troops during service time remain a disputed issue as the available evidence tends to provide only one-sided information. It could be argued that the discharge diplomas provide a true insight to the actual reality of the marital relations on the frontiers, as they were given to both bachelors and men with families, thus being much more democratic in nature than the official historiography or legislation. Also, as the number of discovered diplomas has soared in the recent years, a more detailed examination of the statistics in the marital patterns of the auxiliary soldiers upon discharge is now a more feasible task. Thus, this paper will provide a full examination of the available material and investigates the regional and periodical differences in marital patterns as they are indicated by the diplomata. Among the questions that are attempted to answer are: what were the proportions between the bachelors and family men upon discharge; what could have been the reasons that would explain the periodical differences in the statistics and whether the results are only an anomaly related to the nature of the evidence or if they represent the actual historical realities on the frontiers? In addition, the challenges related to the research of the Roman discharge diplomas and the dangers to the interpretation of the larger marital patterns on the basis of this single type of evidence alone are explored; as is also the question whether other types of evidence can be seen to support or contradict the patterns suggested by the diplomas.

2018

​ Philipps Universität- Marburg Alte Geschichte; Roman Women: Gender-History as Subject and Methodology of Historical Science - This article gives us the status of the women in the period of Roman Empire. The laws and rules for the community but most of all them that not with the inclusion of women status, they were just for the people except women. The role of the women in marriage, the role in the daily life, the role in the family as a mother and as a wife, the role in the jobs or did they have any job and the last one as a general topic that how was the situtaiton of the women in the Roman society. - Bu makalede, Roma İmparatorluğu döneminde kadınların statüsünü göreceğiz. Topluluğun yasaları ve kuralları, ancak hepsinin ötesinde, kadının statüsü dahil olmayacak şekilde, sadece kadınlar dışındaki insanlar içindi daha genel olarak. Kadınların evlenmedeki rolü, günlük yaşamdaki rolü, ailede anne ve eş olarak rolü, işlerindeki rolleri neydi ya da herhangi bir işte çalışma durumu söz konusu muydu ve son olarak genel Roma toplumunda kadınların durumu nasıldı?

Colonization and Romanization in Moesia inferior. Premises of A Contrastive Approach, L. Mihailescu-Brliba [ed.], 2015

Among almost 300 epigraphic monuments from Novae, thirty-five mention women, but only nine of them refer to female family members of the soldiers and veterans of the First Italic legion. The aim of this paper is to attempt to answer questions concerning the status and character of family relationships maintained by soldiers, officers and veterans of the legio I Italica. Therefore, to the group of monuments from Novae I have added evidence from other sites that yielded inscriptions mentioning the legionaries and their female family members. Thus, the list of monuments comprises evidence from other sites in Lower Moesia, Dalmatia and Chersonesus (Crimea), where soldiers of this unit were stationed. To this list I have added attestations of female family members of the high-rank officers (legates and tribunes) who mention the First Italic legion in their careers, as well as of veterans.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 2014

Diotíma: An on-line resource for women, gender, and sexualities in the ancient Mediterranean world, 2023

NB With a few exceptions, I have tried not to double-up the entries from the curated bibliography of Elizabeth M. Greene on 'Women, Children, and Families in the Roman Army/Roman Military Communities'

Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2011

This article explores the evidence for women and gender in the Forum Romanum, investigating (primarily through literary sources) women's use of this space, and (primarily archaeologically) historical women's signification there by images and structures. The illustrated analysis proceeds chronologically from the Republic to the early third century c.e. Authors report women's presence in the civic Forum as abnormal, even transgressive through the Julio-Claudian period. The paucity of women's depictions and patronage here until the second century c.e. echoes constructs of Livy, Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, and others. The mid-imperial Forum, however, marks changes in Roman ideology as well as topography.