My avatar - An Offering to Venus
Welcome to my Gallery!
Thank you for visiting with me.
Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day
The Old, Old Story
By The Wayside
Autumn
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Roman Women
The Romans believed that women were the weaker sex. Families mourned when a baby girl was born, and sometimes girls were exposed - left out in the cold to die - if the father was displeased. Often daughters were hated by their fathers.
Doctors thought that a woman’s womb moved about inside her body, from her stomach to her legs, and caused hysteria, fainting and fits. However highborn a woman was, she was not a citizen and could not vote. Women had few legal rights, and were dependent on their fathers or husbands. This left them in much the same position as the slaves, who also could not vote and were dependent on their masters.
In practice, it was wealth and status that bought a woman her freedom. A widow, especially, could enjoy a great deal of independence; and even if her husband was still alive, the wife of an emperor or senator could exert real influence as the power behind the throne. Augustus may have boasted that he controlled his third wife, Livia, but his control had no discernible effect on her, for she did just as she pleased. A wealthy women spent her time discussing poetry, law and literature, and trying to influence politics through her husband. Claudius’ fourth wife, his niece Agrippina, murdered him to make way for her son Nero to become emperor (though Nero in his turn had both Agrippina and his own wife murdered).
These paintings of John William Godward are paintings of beautiful, wealthy Roman and Greek women with the status of their husbands or deceased spouses.
Oh, how lucky they were to have such beauty, riches and status! ;)
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My avatar, and all the beautiful art work in my home, is from
John William Godward Art. The background is my own.
Other images are from Ancient Worlds.
His Birthday Gift
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