tion, but it is pieces of their lives that we have to look at. Evidence for what poorer women suffered during the Roman Republic and the Empire is very fragmentary, however, women of all economic levels shared one overwhelming pervasive role and responsibility, no matter the social position they possessed: that of child bearer.
Women, or more correctly, girls, were usually married by the time they were twelve years old, sometimes even younger.(1) In our modern world, this seems scandalous, but everything must be put into societal contexts. Life expectancy was very different in ancient Rome compared with today. Granted, some people would die of old age, but the majority only reached their twenties and thirties,(2) if they were lucky. Girls married very young. Many died in childbirth or because they were weakened from having too many children without reprieve.(3) A funerary inscription to a woman named Veturia provides a good example of this: she was married at eleven, gave birth to six children, and died at twenty-seven.(4) Women were expected to have as many babies as they could because they were never sure how many of the children would reach maturity.(5) Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, gave birth to twelve offspring, but only two boys and one girl survived.(6)
Aristocratic families wanted male children to carry on the family name and lineage,(7) and expected their wives to be perpetually pregnant.(8) Infertility was actually grounds for divorce, and women would often offer a divorce so that their husbands would have the opportunity to have children with someone else.(9) Women from the lower classes would not be expected to have as many children because they did not have the means to support them.(10) These women may also have worked outside the home to help support their families.(11) Their husbands would still want a son to carry on the family name and if they were a rural family, to help work on the farm. But certainly there was a difference between the higher echelon of Roman society and the lower classes: Upper class women had more children.
Women did not have a choice between having children or not. They also could not overrule her husband if he chose to expose a newborn. Many female infants were exposed by their families because they could not carry on the family name and they also required a dowry at the time of their marriage.(12) Eva Cantarella in Pandora's Daughters, states:
The earliest power that the father could exercise over a filias familias was that of exposure. At birth, in a highly symbolic rite, newborns -- male and female -- were deposited at the feet of the father. He -- without explanation or justification -- either recognized the child as his by picking it up, or withheld his recognition by leaving it where it was. The recognized child became a member of the familia; the unrecognized child was abandoned to the river or left to die by starvation.(13)
Most of the exposed were girls, but some were sickly or weak-looking males.(14) On an Oxyrhynchus Papri, a letter from a husband to a wife instructs her to let the infant live if it is a boy; [but] "if it is a girl, expose it."(15) It was as simple as that. This practise of exposure greatly reduced the female population, as did the neglect of girls. Augustus was so concerned with the decline in Roman population, particularly in the aristocracy, that he passed both the Julian Laws in 18 BC and the Papia-Poppaean Laws in 9 AD. These laws placed penalties on celibacy and not marrying, and rewarded marriage and having children. Neither set of laws really helped to greatly increase the population of Rome.(16)
Although the role of women in ancient Rome was primarily child-bearing, women also played an important role in raising the children.(17) This differed greatly from the Athenian tradition which placed both the cultural and educational aspects of raising boys exclusively in the hands of men. In the Roman world, women were encouraged to teach their children Roman culture.(18) When the boys grew up, the mother would spend both her money and time to advan