my-server
← Wiki Redirected from List of Roman women

List of distinguished Roman women

The list below includes Roman women who were notable for their family connections, or their sons or husbands, or their own actions. In the earlier periods, women came to the attention of (later) historians either as poisoners of their husbands (a very few cases), or as wives, daughters, and mothers of great men such as Scipio Africanus. In later periods, women exercised or tried to exercise political power either through their husbands (as did Fulvia and Livia Drusilla) or political intrigues (as did Clodia and Servilia), or directly (as did Agrippina the younger and later Roman empresses). Even the Severan dynasty from the beginning to the end was completely dominated by four powerful and calculating women.

During the Roman Kingdom

During the Roman Republic

  • Valeria, the name of the women of the Valeria gens
  • Valeria, first priestess of Fortuna Muliebris in 488 BC
  • Aemilia Tertia (с. 230 – 163 or 162 BC), wife of Scipio Africanus and mother of Cornelia (see below), noted for the unusual freedom given her by her husband, her enjoyment of luxuries, and her influence as role model for elite Roman women after the Second Punic War. Her date of birth, marriage, and death are all unknown. Her husband's birth and death dates are also not known precisely, but approximated.
  • Cornelia (с. 190s – c. 115 BC), virtually deified by Roman women as a model of feminine virtues and Stoicism, but never officially deified. The first Roman woman, whose approximate birth year and whose year of death is known, thanks to a law she caused to be passed to allow her granddaughter to inherit.
  • Publilia (1st century BC), the name of a woman of the gens Publilius. She was killed in 154 BC for poisoning her husband, the consul of the preceding year.
  • Julia (daughter of Caesar) (c. 76 BC – August 54 BC), daughter of Julius Caesar and fourth wife of Pompey the Great.
  • Clodia (wife of Metellus), an aristocratic woman attacked by Cicero in his speech Pro Caelio (56 BC). She was the sister of Cicero's enemy Publius Clodius Pulcher and is identified by some with the "Lesbia" of Catullus's poems.
  • Fulvia. A woman married in turn to three prominent late republican politicians: Publius Clodius Pulcher (died 52 BC), Gaius Scribonius Curio (died 49 BC), and Mark Antony (consul 44 BC). She is famous for stabbing the tongue of Cicero's severed head in 43 BC with her golden hairpin.

During the Classical Roman Empire

See also

References