Women and the Roman City in the Latin West

Book excerpt: Roman Cities, as conventionally studied, seem to be dominated by men. Yet as the contributions to this volume—which deals with the Roman cities of Italy and the western provinces in the late Republic and early Empire—show, women occupied a wide range of civic roles. Women had key roles to play in urban economies, and a few were prominent public figures, celebrated for their generosity and for their priestly eminence, and commemorated with public statues and grand inscriptions. Drawing on archaeology and epigraphy, on law and art as well as on ancient texts, this multidisciplinary study offers a new and more nuanced view of the gendering of civic life. It asks how far the experience of women of the smaller Italian and provincial cities resembled that of women in the capital, how women were represented in sculptural art as well as in inscriptions, and what kinds of power or influence they exercised in the societies of the Latin West.