04-28-2003, 11:39 AM
Greetings,<br>
<br>
I glanced through the information in a couple of books I have and it is pretty contradictory. In 'Daily Life in Ancient Rome' by Jerome Carcopino (First published 1941) he says:<br>
<br>
"Among the thousands of epitaphs of the Urbs collected by the editors of the *Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum* I have found scarcely any women earners: one *libraria* or woman secretary, three clerks (amanuenses), one stenographer (notaria), two women teachers against eighteen of the other sex, four women doctors against fifty-one *medici*... In the urban epigraphy of the empire we find women...fulfilling the duties...of seamstress(sarcinatrix), woman's hairdresser (tonstrix, ornatrix), midwife (obstertrix), and nurse (nutrix)...<br>
I have discovered only one fishwife (piscatrix), one female costermonger (negotiatrix leguminaria), one dressmaker (vestifica)--against twenty men tailors or *vestifici*--three women wool distributors (lanipendiae), and two silk merchants (sericariae)."<br>
<br>
From 'Pompeii, The Day a City Died' by Robert Etienne:<br>
<br>
"The wives of artisans and traders were often responsible for running the shop; in a painting of the baker Terentius Neo, the woman at his side holds a stylus and writing tablet for drawing up the accounts. In the shop of M. Vecilius Verecundus, a major manufacturer of cloth and felt, it is his wife who is shown sitting at the counter, while an elegantly dressed young man chooses a pair of slippers from the cupboards full of merchandise that line the walls...It was often women who ran the inns and bars, which were frequented by a somewhat course clientele."<br>
<br>
I propose that whatever women were involved in, they received less recognition than men, and therefore they may have been more numerous in various trades and enterprises than records would indicate. The men were the writers and historians and concerned themselves mainly with the affairs of men. In politics, the most a woman could hope for, it seems, was to be "the woman behind the man." Among the working classes, however, I expect women were frequently employed in various occupations.<br>
<br>
Wendy <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub27.ezboard.com/bromancivtalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rekirts>rekirts</A> at: 4/28/03 1:41:54 pm<br></i>
<br>
I glanced through the information in a couple of books I have and it is pretty contradictory. In 'Daily Life in Ancient Rome' by Jerome Carcopino (First published 1941) he says:<br>
<br>
"Among the thousands of epitaphs of the Urbs collected by the editors of the *Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum* I have found scarcely any women earners: one *libraria* or woman secretary, three clerks (amanuenses), one stenographer (notaria), two women teachers against eighteen of the other sex, four women doctors against fifty-one *medici*... In the urban epigraphy of the empire we find women...fulfilling the duties...of seamstress(sarcinatrix), woman's hairdresser (tonstrix, ornatrix), midwife (obstertrix), and nurse (nutrix)...<br>
I have discovered only one fishwife (piscatrix), one female costermonger (negotiatrix leguminaria), one dressmaker (vestifica)--against twenty men tailors or *vestifici*--three women wool distributors (lanipendiae), and two silk merchants (sericariae)."<br>
<br>
From 'Pompeii, The Day a City Died' by Robert Etienne:<br>
<br>
"The wives of artisans and traders were often responsible for running the shop; in a painting of the baker Terentius Neo, the woman at his side holds a stylus and writing tablet for drawing up the accounts. In the shop of M. Vecilius Verecundus, a major manufacturer of cloth and felt, it is his wife who is shown sitting at the counter, while an elegantly dressed young man chooses a pair of slippers from the cupboards full of merchandise that line the walls...It was often women who ran the inns and bars, which were frequented by a somewhat course clientele."<br>
<br>
I propose that whatever women were involved in, they received less recognition than men, and therefore they may have been more numerous in various trades and enterprises than records would indicate. The men were the writers and historians and concerned themselves mainly with the affairs of men. In politics, the most a woman could hope for, it seems, was to be "the woman behind the man." Among the working classes, however, I expect women were frequently employed in various occupations.<br>
<br>
Wendy <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub27.ezboard.com/bromancivtalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rekirts>rekirts</A> at: 4/28/03 1:41:54 pm<br></i>
