[HN Gopher] Roman Women and the Oppian Law
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Roman Women and the Oppian Law
Author : diodorus
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-06-07 20:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| thriftwy wrote:
| There should be explicit legal mechanisms to revert any temorary
| measures and as many measures as possible should be viewed as
| temporary.
|
| For example, every extension needs to be vetted by an independent
| court and by default it is revoked immediately upon failing to
| renew.
| more_corn wrote:
| This proposal solves many societal problems. LGTM please merge
| into master at your earliest convenience.
| vundercind wrote:
| This turns e.g. hard won fights for civil liberties and other
| very-nice-to-have things (parental leave, say, for countries
| developed enough to have it) into even more of a never-ending
| battle than they already are.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It seems like that would not necessarily be the case, since
| not all laws would be temporary. But there would certainly be
| a push to make controversial things a temporary law.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I have contemplated whether every law should be explicitly time
| limited. There are some theoretical arguments for it - all
| uncontroversial laws (e.g. no murdering) should be renewed, and
| other laws can be re--evaluated (e.g. a number of US states
| enacted laws in the 90s preventing under--18s having pagers,
| which are at best irrelevant today, ignoring all other facts)
|
| The trouble is that perhaps our societies are now so polarised
| we'd never be able to agree to pass uncontroversial legislation
| without partisan horse trading.
| clcaev wrote:
| Laws past are often changes to legal code, they often soon
| have other code intertwined with them. How do you expire code
| automatically, do all dependent changed also have to expire?
| How do you track the dependency tree?
|
| Horse trading is an aspect of compromise: you want A, I would
| rather not; I want B, you would rather not; so we agree on A
| & B.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Laws that are uncontroversial in one year can become very
| controversial in another. Is it murder to kill your slave? Is
| it murder to kill the man breaking into your home at 3AM? Is
| it murder for the government to kill the man convicted of
| murder?
|
| I think it's a good idea for all laws to have sunsets, though
| some could be longer than others.
|
| In the US, I see federal laws renewed every few years with
| little public debate, sometimes released to the legislature
| with little opportunity for them to debate, let alone read
| and verify changes.
|
| > The trouble is that perhaps our societies are now so
| polarised we'd never be able to agree to pass uncontroversial
| legislation without partisan horse trading.
|
| Again, some things may be more controversial than they
| appear.
|
| When things are uncontroversial, I think there's usually
| broad agreement to pass it without horse trading. More often,
| I see something (very) controversial is packaged with the
| uncontroversial, and the reporting of the situation is
| biased.
| swaginator wrote:
| Back when that meme of "how often do men think about the roman
| empire" was going around, I was talking to my girlfriend about it
| and I noticed how I couldn't name any Roman women other than
| [Agrippina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippina_the_Younger).
|
| I mostly just watch [toldinstone](https://toldinstone.com/) and
| [Historia Civilis](https://www.historiacivilis.com/) on Youtube.
| I'm not really that interested in roman history, it's just nice
| infotainment to put on in the background, so it's not like I am
| going out of my way to learn about roman history, so it may also
| be that the presenters are glossing over the role of women in
| roman society. But I also watch a lot of ancient roman cooking
| videos, and again, the role of women is often absent in the
| historical texts that these videos quote from.
|
| I find it odd that I can only name a single roman woman, when I
| can name at least a few dozen women in other historical time
| periods that were very patriarchal. medeival, renaissance, and
| colonial era European history has many famous women, and Chinese
| and Japanese history has many named women, many in the courts of
| nobles, but they were still written about. I also don't read into
| these eras of history deeply, I just consume infotainment about
| them.
|
| It makes me wonder how much worse roman civilization must have
| been for women that they apparently didn't even bother to write
| down anything about them. Or is it that pop-history about ancient
| rome tends to be more male-oriented than history about other
| historical eras, and so women are just not talked about?
| countrymile wrote:
| I was thinking something very similar to this. For all the
| thinking about the Roman empire, we (well the vast majority of
| we) need to be very thankful we live now rather than then. Tom
| Holland's dominion gives a very interesting run down of the
| horrors of those times.
| shrubble wrote:
| There is Lucretia, and Virginia who was treated so badly by the
| aristocrats that it led to the overthrow of the decemviri and
| restoration of the Republic:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verginia, Macaulay wrote a famous
| poem about her as well,
| https://www.theotherpages.org/poems/virginia.html
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| In later European monarchies you could have a queen or a woman
| acting as a powerful regent. There's no way a woman could be
| elected consul in the republic though, and it seems like child
| emperors were not much of a thing. I think the same is true for
| lower levels on the political ladder: they were all elected
| instead of truly hereditary, so women were legally barred.
| pvg wrote:
| _that they apparently didn 't even bother to write down
| anything about them._
|
| That doesn't sound at all right and it might be just a quirk of
| your sources? Just cracking open Tacitus
|
| https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/A...
|
| Don't need to get farther than 3 paragraphs in and a Roman
| woman is politicking in high Roman politics:
|
| _Adopted as son, as colleague in the empire, as consort of the
| tribunician power, he was paraded through all the armies, not
| as before by the secret diplomacy of his mother, but openly at
| her injunction. For so firmly had she riveted her chains upon
| the aged Augustus that he banished to the isle of Planasia_
| glitchc wrote:
| Was there a name? It wasn't mentioned in the quote. Was it
| revealed later? If not, I suspect the OP's point stands. The
| only woman I could think of was Helena, mother of
| Constantine, of course that's the Eastern Roman Empire in
| Byzantine, not the seven hills people often think of when
| they say Rome.
| roughly wrote:
| There's a self-fulfilling cycle that happens here in both
| history and anthropology where the assumption when looking at
| old cultures has been that they were a patriarchy, because
| that's all we've ever seen, because every time we look at an
| old culture we're assuming it's a patriarchy, so when we see
| things that look like a matriarchy we assume we're mistaken
| because everything else we've seen has been a patriarchy, so
| this must be one, too.
|
| For instance, looking at the art from Minoan Crete, there's
| abundant examples of works where women are portrayed in the
| ways that in other cultures of the region were how the rulers
| were portrayed, but since we're assuming they were a
| patriarchy, the assumption has been that these were gods being
| portrayed, and not rulers, because rulers are men and these
| were women, so they couldn't have been rulers.
|
| You see similar where we'll find grave sites where the skeleton
| seems female, but they're buried with the trappings and in the
| fashion of a ruler, and a shocking amount of effort is spent
| trying to reconcile that contradiction.
|
| (This is not to argue that Rome was actually a matriarchy or
| anything silly like that, rather that the blindness of history
| to the role of women reaches almost comical levels in other
| places, so it's not surprising to find a blank spot in Roman
| history in pop culture, at least.)
| coldtea wrote:
| > _For instance, looking at the art from Minoan Crete, there
| 's abundant examples of works where women are portrayed in
| the ways that in other cultures of the region were how the
| rulers were portrayed, but since we're assuming they were a
| patriarchy_
|
| Who assumes that? For over 40 years I've been reading
| conjectures about Minoan Crete being a matriarchy or
| substantially less patriarchical from all kinds of sources,
| it's quite a common theory. Even Wikipedia: "While historians
| and archaeologists have long been skeptical of an outright
| matriarchy, the predominance of female figures in
| authoritative roles over male ones seems to indicate that
| Minoan society was matriarchal, and among the most well-
| supported examples known."
| roughly wrote:
| Yes, and the reason it's taken more than 40 years to go
| from conjecture to broadly if grudgingly acknowledged
| theory is that there is and has been a baseline assumption
| of patriarchy within the field for centuries. Looking at
| the evidence on its own without the notion that a
| matriarchy would be outlandish and weird, there'd be no
| doubt what you were looking at, but instead we spent a long
| time talking about how strange it was they kept painting
| fancy women on the walls and we couldn't figure out who
| their kings were.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _is that there is and has been a baseline assumption of
| patriarchy within the field for centuries_
|
| Given 100% of present societies and all examples from
| recorded history can you blame them for this baseline?
| That's literally what a baseline is supposed to be!
| roughly wrote:
| > all examples from recorded history
|
| This is literally the thing we're talking about. Remember
| the Minoans?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| From reading 'I Claudius' I additionally remember Livia and
| Messalina.
|
| [Edit] oh, also Calpurnia, and Incontinetia Buttocks
| andsoitis wrote:
| > It makes me wonder how much worse roman civilization must
| have been for women that they apparently didn't even bother to
| write down anything about them.
|
| A starting point to learn about specific Roman women:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distinguished_Roman_wo...
|
| One thing to note is that freeborn women in Ancient Rome were
| citizens but could not vote and could not hold public office,
| severely limiting their public role and hence reference by
| historians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Rome
| rKarpinski wrote:
| How about Cleopatra or the Virgin Mary?
| welder wrote:
| Hug of death alternative https://archive.is/CgxFF
| notjoemama wrote:
| > The lex Oppia was implemented to severely curb female
| expenditure on adornment and finery.
|
| This explains that other laws had been repealed following the
| conclusion of war 20 years prior. Women took to the streets in
| protest and filled the senate. As a result the lex Oppia was
| revoked.
|
| Interesting event. Let's not engage in presentism while we
| consider the implications of it today.
| tomrod wrote:
| Is it presentist to be presentist, where others in history
| exercised presentism without constraint?
| rkagerer wrote:
| I'd never encountered the term "presentist" before, and at
| first blush it sounded like some kind of hipster slang. Turns
| out it's been a word for at least a century, and I have to
| admit the definition encapsulates a worthwhile concept. Not
| to be confused with "presenteeism".
|
| The commenter could also have said: "Let's remember we're
| viewing this through the looking glass of today's values."
| gumby wrote:
| Why do you consider simpler the use of the incomprehensible
| expression "through the looking glass", as a looking glass
| is something you cannot see (view) _through_.
|
| Lewis Carroll's use of "Through the Looking-Glass" in the
| title of one of his books is an explicit joke in this
| regard. I don't think you meant that same joke.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Of course you can see "through" a looking glass (mirror)
| - you will see yourself. That's what they are for -
| direct reflection.
|
| "Through the looking glass" involves physical movement
| via a mirror and that is science fiction or fantasy or
| both (pick your genre or hit the drugs!) When I want to
| verify I have shaved fully, I look through a mirror,
| which is not a sight for the nervous ... first thing in
| the morning!
|
| There are half silvered mirrors and you can get a similar
| effect with a window, where you can see yourself and what
| lies beyond at the same time.
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed! I most often see it used in the context of
| apologists defending an organization's history by hiding
| people for looking at history with their current values.
| These apologists tend to miss the cases where their
| defended org was also seen as abysmal by people concurrent
| to their own time.
|
| As a modern example, almost everyone sees Epstein as a
| purveyor unmitigated corruption. Imagine in 200 years
| people defended him because in 200 years sex trafficking is
| also horrible.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Or just drop the four-dollar words and the playful
| metaphors and use a direct visual metaphor: perspective.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I hope whoever penned this quote was proud of themselves, it
| still carries a provocative punch after 2000 years:
|
| _'Would you in your refusal to revoke this law', the question
| was put to the Senate, 'allow the trappings of your own horse to
| be more splendid than the dress of your wife?'_
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A horse will never betray you, a woman (or man for that matter)
| can.
|
| So yes, I would invest more in horse armor than dresses
| assuming I were married.
|
| Now excuse me while I go back to climbing some mountains in
| Skyrim on my glorious steed.
| lazide wrote:
| Clearly you've never stood behind or near a barn sour (or
| just plain cranky) horse.
|
| They will crush your feet, or even kick you in the head.
|
| I was in the mountains and had a mare roll over and try to
| pin me to a boulder when I was on her - it was 5am and cold +
| icy, and she clearly didn't like that.
|
| Unfortunately for her, I grew up around a barn sour horse and
| saw it coming. Several times he tried to scrape me off
| against trees at full gallop.
|
| People are more dangerous just because they can manipulate
| others to kill/destroy you, and due to opposable thumbs can
| use weapons and construct machines/traps to kill you.
|
| Physically they're far weaker and less capable than a horse.
| A horse can consistently kill a full grown man with a single
| well aimed kick to the head.
|
| I've also been threatened with knives 3 times, and shot at
| once, by humans - but near as I can tell, they weren't
| serious about it. They just wanted the reaction. Unlike those
| horses.
|
| If horses (or cats for that matter) had opposable thumbs or
| speech, the sky would be the limit.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Very recently, we were complete morons.
|
| See page 3:
|
| https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/server/api/core/...
| jowea wrote:
| Wait, how does Christianity makes sense if women have no souls?
|
| > Christianity swung between the Augustinian view that women
| had souls only to have Aquinas take up Aristotle's position
| that women were incapable of reason and therefore had no souls
|
| > The question of women having Souls was only resolved for the
| Church in 1950 with the promulgation of "The Assumption of the
| Virgin Mary into heaven" and the Papal Bull (De
| munificentissimus Deus 1950) which accompanied the creation of
| a special feast to commemorate this event
| throwup238 wrote:
| The list of contradictions and logical inconsistencies was so
| long it took them a while to work their way up to women's
| souls.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Neither of those sentences cite a source. The papal bull
| notes, "our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, solemnly
| proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God's Immaculate
| Conception."
|
| Pope Pius IX died in 1878. Did he proclaim that Mary was born
| without sin but she still didn't have a soul?
|
| So, how many errors do we have to find in the paper before we
| just dismiss the paper as nonsense?
| coolsunglasses wrote:
| This isn't even remotely accurate to Christian belief in
| either the Catholic or Orthodox churches. There isn't a
| single church father who believed women didn't have souls,
| that's facially ludicrous if you know anything about church
| teaching which means the person writing this did not.
|
| Here's a simple example out of many I could draw on: if women
| didn't have souls they wouldn't be able to receive the
| sacraments. That means no baptism, no chrismation, no
| Eucharist, no marriage, no reconciliation, and no extreme
| unction. It would be metaphysically impossible to be
| sacramentally married to a woman. C'mon. There would be no
| need to distinguish between sacramental and natural marriages
| if women were soulless because they'd be unable to confect
| the sacrament with their espoused.
|
| The misreading of St. Augustine here has to do with a
| distinction he was making regarding Imago Dei. He pretty
| clearly believes women and men are spiritually/metaphysically
| equal, including as it relates to their spiritual dignity
| deriving from being made in the image and likeness of God.
| The passage that gets misread has to do with physical nature
| and its derivation from Imago Dei. I don't think it was a
| particularly important point and it's not something I've seen
| repeated elsewhere.
|
| This is a notorious enough myth about Christian belief that
| First Things has a multiple articles addressing it:
| https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/04/the-myth-of-
| soul...
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor
| is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
| _Galatians 3:28_
|
| Written by Paul, generally regarded as pretty sexist when it
| came to women.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| As someone who spent years studying classical and medieval
| philosophy, and a few more years studying medieval history,
| this really pisses me off.
|
| I guess astrophysicists have to deal with people who read
| Steven Hawking and think they're brilliant physicists.
|
| But Hawking is generally right.
|
| It's so insane how serious scholars are allowed to treat this
| area like it's crap, ignoring the work done by serious
| philosophers and historians.
|
| I guess I'm a bit sore because one of the most respected
| faculties of medieval history in America replaced their
| "Medieval History" courses with "Modern Conceptions of the
| Middle Ages" - which is the Middle Ages according to
| Shakespeare , Chaucer, and Tolkien.
|
| There's still good work being done here, but the stupidity is
| alive and well and being passed off as reality.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I would love to learn. Please share some links.
| mentos wrote:
| I'm interested in the day to day life of a persons life in
| ancient Rome anyone recommend a book?
| boygobbo wrote:
| Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino
| consumer451 wrote:
| Spectaculum Britannicum cui nomen est "Plebs" commendare volo.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjfft56qTy0
| vizualbod wrote:
| Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
| brightlancer wrote:
| > These restrictions prevented what these women saw as their
| right to be elegant in appearance.
|
| ...
|
| > The events that it set in motion on the streets of Rome created
| a precedent which saw Roman women stand up for their rights and
| make their voices heard.
|
| Recognizing that yes, women and men should have the same legal
| rights, I find it hilarious that the tipping point that year was
| that women had to limit their wardrobe in public.
|
| From [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Oppia)
| because I find the phrasing interesting:
|
| "Cato argued that the law removed the shame of poverty because it
| made all women dress in an equal fashion. Cato insisted that if
| women could engage in a clothes-contest, they would either feel
| shame in the presence of other women, or on the contrary, they
| would delight in a rather base victory as a result of extending
| themselves beyond their means."
|
| Again, men and women should be equal under the law, but it isn't
| an antiquated notion that women would engage in a "clothes-
| contest", particularly among economic classes.
|
| (Men, to be clear, are socially permitted far less peacocking
| with clothing, so there isn't anywhere near the same contest.)
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