Inscribed Lives: Exploring the Familial and Public Roles of Free Roman
Citizen Women in Athens through Epigraphic Testimony (1st c. BC-3rd c. AD)

Abstract

Early discussions of Greek and Roman women studied them as part of wider discourses and examined
their lives as part of the private realm of their oikos, while later and more recent scholarly discussions
study women more holistically and seek to trace their activities within and outside of their households
as more active participants in their societies. The current thesis contributes towards the same scope, by
exploring the private and public roles that the women who lived in Roman Athens held, focusing on
the population of free citizen women who had acquired Roman citizenship. These roles are examined
to determine the extent to which Roman citizenship affected not only these women’s visibility, but also
their position and interaction with the Athenian society. By doing so, it examines the ways that they
were expected to act, alongside any limitations that restricted their actions. It focuses on the epigraphic
evidence for these women, and employs the tools of social identity theory and intersectionality as
methodological approaches, to place women in the centre of the analysis and to examine how their
characteristics influenced their inscribed narratives and marginalised them—these are their gender,
familial roles, citizenship status, and religious and civic roles and engagement and how they shaped or
were shaped by the city of Athens. The results of the thesis show that even though these women were
Roman citizens who could occasionally acquire public roles, namely those of benefactresses and figures
of religious authority, they were still influenced by their traditional gender roles. It also shows that their
inscribed monuments were strategically displayed around the city, and in large numbers in the region
of Eleusis, and other secondary places that would be frequented by many individuals (especially of
influential status), and that they were used by their families to mostly promote their own status.