Roman Women, a Force to Be Reckoned with

Roman Women, a Force to Be Reckoned With World civilizations in the early ages were mainly histories of males, and the Roman civilization was no exception. There were few women's names recorded in history books at that time, and the names mostly appeared with their husbands or fathers. As individuals, Roman women were not able to run for office or even take part in voting, enjoying almost no political rights. Since their lives were highly related to their fathers and husbands before and after their marriages, it was hard for them to become economically independent and own their own properties. It also seemed to be not feasible for Roman women to achieve high social positions because of their identities as men's appurtenances. However, through the development of the Roman society, Roman women were not as powerless as they seemed to be, and the force of Roman women was more and more difficult to neglect. In fact, women had played a significant part in political, economic and social lives of Rome. Although not being able to take part in political careers directly since the public offices as well as public voting were only opened to males, many Roman women were of special importance in the political world. It was no coincidence that Caesar's aunt Julia married Marius. Caesar himself married Sulla's granddaughter Pompeia, and Pompey married Caesar's daughter Julia, etc.. Examples of marriages like that were innumerable in Roman society, and if we make a deeper research, it won't be surprising that the aristocratic families were all connecting to each other in the relationship of marriage. Ironically, verbal or written contracts were easy to be broken, while alliances through marriages seemed to be much more solid. I'm not going to discuss that if this kind of marriage was an offence of true love and disrespect of women feelings. I just want to point out that political marriage worked quite well in the Roman society. For example, Caesar married his