Venus restrained: the regulation of Rome’s women in the Second Punic War.

Abstract

In war, women tend to suffer great harm, yet war also presents women with opportunities. The focus of this study is how Rome’s women experienced this harm and opportunity in the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BCE), where harm was the state’s regulation of élite women, and opportunity was their collaboration with that regulation to their advantage. This study establishes that the Roman state regulated élite women between 216 – 207 BCE with eight measures that targeted their social and economic independence. It reassesses the primary evidence for these acts of regulation, with reference to the work of Pomeroy, Evans and Hänninen. The argument of this study is that this regulation occurred after Cannae (216 BCE) and persisted past 207 BCE, pace Bauman. It will be shown that this process of regulation was motivated by the state’s desire to acquire assets and establish public order. This study further explores the ways in which élite Roman women collaborated in this regulation via religious rites c. 215 and in 204 BCE that promoted sexual virtue. It reassesses the primary evidence for these rites, and outlines the prominence of status and sexual virtue within them. Drawing on the work of Pomeroy, Hänninen, Schultz, and Langlands, the second core argument of this study is that these rites offered élite women an opportunity for status competition, and that they functioned as protective rites. It will be demonstrated that élite women used these rites to improve their status and participate in the religious protection of the state. Rome’s women were regulated throughout the Second Punic War, and some élite women collaborated with that regulation for their own benefit. Such pragmatism during wartime has a modern descendent in the collaboration of some British suffragettes with the state in World War I. In both cases Venus (restrained) transformed harm into opportunity.