Who do you believe was the most influential Roman woman? Who would you like a future episode on? Join this channel to get access to perks: ruclips.net/channel/UC7Jx8j3giv0rsDX0wgz9uGQjoin
Theodora, she had a direct influence on her husband's policies, helmed the empire while he was incapacitated by the plague and saved his regime during the Nika riots. She was a true co-ruler with her husband and the two of them had a genuinely loving and powerful relationship. Procopius can Cope and Seathe.
@@josephlongbone4255 She is so interesting - certainly one of the most dynamic women of antiquity. I'm not as well read on the era, but I would love to feature her in the future.
@@tribunateSPQR yeah, it's pretty crazy that you can talk about "the Romans" and be anywhere within an almost 2000 year span. You'd have to be crazy or a genius to be an expert on it all .
We look to shed light on the less covered aspects of Roman society and unfortunately that includes many of our surviving tales of Roman women. We'll be returning to this subject again and again over the life of the channel
I was just marathoning your channel, then opened a new tab and I see this. Very excited to watch- just because women were restricted due to patriarchy doesn't mean their stories aren't worth telling. More so, in fact
The understanding that I’ve always had is that Roman women, more specifically the daughters of influential patricians, wielded a degree of “soft” power in society by influencing their husbands who had the real authority. The “behind every great man is a strong woman” sort of dynamic. Obviously a small portion of the population, but it isn’t nothing I guess.
One book I recommend about the various forgotten women of Roman history is "A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women" by Emma Southon. The writing style is very informal/conversational so if you want a purely academic work it might rub you the wrong way with the jokey nature of some parts, but it's a good starting point about women's Roman history. Basically if you want Cunk on Earth's tone in a book about Roman history, I'd recommend it.
Most efficient way to organize society: make sure 50% of the population is rejected out of hand from the majority of the work force and most especially the only avenue to climb the social ladder.
Indeed, the best way to structure a society is to depress wages by artificially bloating the labor pool by over half and setting the reproductive aged individuals against one another as competitors rather than equal halves to a whole! Very intelligent.
@someshtbaglcpl5455 You don't think competition between the sexes is natural? It's a shared trait among a ton of sexually dimorphic species. From a pov of valuing efficiency I would argue that the "plans" 3.7 billion years of evolution creates is going to be more developed and neutral than some human's ideas on how it "should" be.
@@thenameisbluEvolution only promotes such type of behavior that leads to sex and birth, I.e. continued reproduction - if a species lived by such instincts that males raped the females and the latter tolerated it “for the kids”, then we’d still consider it malign, even though they manage to reproduce and survive. Being able to discuss fairness is what differs us from animals.
@@thenameisblu I get where you are coming from but humans are more of a communal/herd species than tribal. That is to say in nature instead of adolescents breaking off into new packs we tend to form larger and larger communal rings. It’s kind of a misnomer of media that the average tribe was a dozen or so individuals, it’s more like every human society is realistically thousands of humans with varying degrees of orbital groups depending on the environment
@@TheTyralion I agree with you for the most part. I just took issue with shtbag's claim that competition in a breeding population is somehow bad. I would think its kind of obvious that competing for reproduction is a good thing. My mistake for invoking the "natural" argument.
Living in Canada I can't help but think about the framing of indigenous women in a similar light, juxtaposed with the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women. Makes me upset to think too hard about ngl.
Have to imagine abuse was common - the story of another Verginia as relayed by Livy tells of a freeborn woman who was claimed as a slave by a patrician who lusted after her. After corrupt courts ruled she was indeed his slave, her father killed her rather than allow her to become the property of the patrician.
I wish that history was taught more from the point of view of the little people. Of course, such accounts are rare because of the nature of ancient history. But our framing of history is so often from the frame of those who were at its commanding heights. This leads to nostalgia. If Rome existed today it would be culturally similar to the Taliban. That is the fly in the ointment
She certainly has to be up there, all records indicate that she seems to have been much more critical to the formation of Caesar's identity and sense of purpose than his father
Thank you very much for this, very enlightening. Only recently I was told by a scholar about the impressive legal rights afforded to Roman women... compared say to the Celts.
@@benjaminmontenegro3423i dont know if its common throughout the greeks but athens in particular had several cultural and political rules for city or noble women that were extremely stiffling
@benjaminmontenegro3423 “Misogynistic” is an extremely relevist term, borne from modern biases, but if that’s the word you want to use-yes, is the short answer.
@@benjaminmontenegro3423 Athens specifically was, but this was due to a law that very strictly forbade Athenian men from marrying women born outside the city, because of the "corrupting barbarian influence" that flowed into Athens from their port on the Piraeus. The result was that the daughters of Athens lost a lot of rights.
@@benjaminmontenegro3423neither the Greeks nor the Romans were "misogynistic", they merely were not afraid of exercising their powers of pattern recognition. something which 99.9% of human beings have had in common and only recently we have lost
The story of the Sabine women is obviously propaganda. A Founding Myth, not unlike George Washington and his father's cherry tree; meant to teach a particular moral framework. This was extremely common in pre-modern (and even modern) cultures.
And this video lays out how it might even have been more forcibly propaganda for *women*: "live right & be content with your lot, or we'll bach you to [deth] with shields"
Didn’t Roman women have the right to marry and divorce any time of their choosing? Many of them had affairs. Julius Caesar’s wife had numerous affairs. But, she never got pregnant because she was already pregnant with his children before she’d take on a new lover. She called it carrying cargo.
8 :45 to 8 :55 word choice seems non objective (couched in a way to make history more palatable to the speaker) but other than that overall a great video with a fantastic quotable lines at the end.
Marxists and leftists are entirely incapable of doing anything except their one trick, which is applying their extremely limited, reductionist, Spirit list, lens of modernist materialist critique to everything, and then believing they have developed some kind of understanding of it.
@@williamchamberlain2263the assumption that we know anything detailed about minoan culture, never mind the relationship between the two Sexes they're in, based on a couple of fragmentary pieces of literature and some frescos with next to no context is more than a bit amusing. Every successful, powerful, and enduring civilization has treated its women more or less the same, especially when accounting for differences due to geography and climate.
@@atgay2640 for 99% of men of the past their individual lives don’t really matter and they are best studied in bulk movements of people, like climate or paleontology. For women, up until 300 or so years ago, it probably matters nothing at all.
Of course, women are half the population and a huge part of contributing to history and culture, how things turned out the way they did and our practices today. Gaining a better understanding of humanity’s past is always practical, it helps better inform our decisions today
The idea that it is somehow self-evident that Rome would be better, stronger, richer, etc if women had participated more in public life is resting on the unfounded assumption that more is always better, which is simply not true. This is kind of like saying that a family in which the two parents make decisions is good, but one in which every decision is also equally participated in by their three infant children is better. The only way one could even tentatively believe this is if one believes that men and women are completely identical, have no differences between them biologically intellectually or metaphysically, and may as well be interchangeable congruent parts. This is at diametric opposition to reality.
don't tell me you actually woke up and decided to type that, because if that wasn't a butt dial then we're going to have to get you some speech therapy lessons at the Y. You can do some physical exercise while you're there too, your brain seems out of shape and definitely needs the social enrichment because real cis men who are okay and happy in life don't talk like this, because you talk too much. you are not the type of man who would be allowed to be in the roman army, nor live long in their world because you speak ill of people's better halves. really, the roman and greek army destroyed their own if they acted out of line for things less then you are right now, a sneeze would get you made an example of. if we're just going by history and being frank here. honestly, you talk more like a lowly peon of the farm tils bashing the patrons of the more successful while they're at a party and you are stuck outside working for gruel because you believe it brings you closer to god. when in fact you are a party pooper, a sad sack, an oaf, a dunce, a jerk ect ect ect. until the cows come home. if that was too many words for you and made your little brain hurt, you are bad at doing words good, you dolt now delete your account.
Pretending that only one partner in any marriage is the only one who is smart & capable is a great way to miss out on intelligence & capability that could help the family. Did you just skip the video & rush down to the comments section? With the absolutely bonkers anaology of an infant to a woman, I have to assume "Yes."
Excellent commentary, quality post! You’re certainly the type of man I want my daughters marrying! What an embarrassment you are to whatever ideology you claim to adhere to.
Who do you believe was the most influential Roman woman? Who would you like a future episode on?
Join this channel to get access to perks:
ruclips.net/channel/UC7Jx8j3giv0rsDX0wgz9uGQjoin
Theodora, she had a direct influence on her husband's policies, helmed the empire while he was incapacitated by the plague and saved his regime during the Nika riots. She was a true co-ruler with her husband and the two of them had a genuinely loving and powerful relationship.
Procopius can Cope and Seathe.
@@josephlongbone4255 She is so interesting - certainly one of the most dynamic women of antiquity. I'm not as well read on the era, but I would love to feature her in the future.
@@tribunateSPQR yeah, it's pretty crazy that you can talk about "the Romans" and be anywhere within an almost 2000 year span.
You'd have to be crazy or a genius to be an expert on it all .
The Severian Julias (Domna, Mamaea, Maesa, Soeamias) and Livia Augusta.
Livia!!!
Being a woman and having an interest in history is scary in my experience. Thank you for covering this topic.
We look to shed light on the less covered aspects of Roman society and unfortunately that includes many of our surviving tales of Roman women. We'll be returning to this subject again and again over the life of the channel
Criminally underrated channel
Indeed. I blame it on Cato…
@@Carelock absolutely he's always up to something to undermine good initiatives
Agreed
alot of history channels will get subs years after uploads or 1 video will catch fire and then get alot of subs.
I was just marathoning your channel, then opened a new tab and I see this. Very excited to watch- just because women were restricted due to patriarchy doesn't mean their stories aren't worth telling. More so, in fact
I hope Fulvia gets her own video someday, her story is fascinating yet so constantly overshadowed by the other women Antony married.
I second this! Fulvia please
I think that her full name was Fulvia Flacca Bambula.
@@Ancient__Wisdom there is a book about her written by Celia E. Schultz.
The understanding that I’ve always had is that Roman women, more specifically the daughters of influential patricians, wielded a degree of “soft” power in society by influencing their husbands who had the real authority. The “behind every great man is a strong woman” sort of dynamic. Obviously a small portion of the population, but it isn’t nothing I guess.
i was having a boring, unremarkable day and my prayers have been answered, great work
One book I recommend about the various forgotten women of Roman history is "A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women" by Emma Southon. The writing style is very informal/conversational so if you want a purely academic work it might rub you the wrong way with the jokey nature of some parts, but it's a good starting point about women's Roman history. Basically if you want Cunk on Earth's tone in a book about Roman history, I'd recommend it.
Also, for me it’s Livia and whether or not she did indeed “unalive” everyone, as she’s often accused
Most efficient way to organize society: make sure 50% of the population is rejected out of hand from the majority of the work force and most especially the only avenue to climb the social ladder.
Indeed, the best way to structure a society is to depress wages by artificially bloating the labor pool by over half and setting the reproductive aged individuals against one another as competitors rather than equal halves to a whole! Very intelligent.
@someshtbaglcpl5455 You don't think competition between the sexes is natural? It's a shared trait among a ton of sexually dimorphic species. From a pov of valuing efficiency I would argue that the "plans" 3.7 billion years of evolution creates is going to be more developed and neutral than some human's ideas on how it "should" be.
@@thenameisbluEvolution only promotes such type of behavior that leads to sex and birth, I.e. continued reproduction - if a species lived by such instincts that males raped the females and the latter tolerated it “for the kids”, then we’d still consider it malign, even though they manage to reproduce and survive. Being able to discuss fairness is what differs us from animals.
@@thenameisblu I get where you are coming from but humans are more of a communal/herd species than tribal. That is to say in nature instead of adolescents breaking off into new packs we tend to form larger and larger communal rings. It’s kind of a misnomer of media that the average tribe was a dozen or so individuals, it’s more like every human society is realistically thousands of humans with varying degrees of orbital groups depending on the environment
@@TheTyralion I agree with you for the most part. I just took issue with shtbag's claim that competition in a breeding population is somehow bad. I would think its kind of obvious that competing for reproduction is a good thing. My mistake for invoking the "natural" argument.
I wonder what practices were endemic against plebeian women when the notion of their lack of Chastity was common among the elites?
Living in Canada I can't help but think about the framing of indigenous women in a similar light, juxtaposed with the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women.
Makes me upset to think too hard about ngl.
Have to imagine abuse was common - the story of another Verginia as relayed by Livy tells of a freeborn woman who was claimed as a slave by a patrician who lusted after her. After corrupt courts ruled she was indeed his slave, her father killed her rather than allow her to become the property of the patrician.
I love this channel. I can’t get enough of it now that I’ve found it
Please keep doing what you’re doing.
Really good to keep things in perspective like this
I wish that history was taught more from the point of view of the little people. Of course, such accounts are rare because of the nature of ancient history. But our framing of history is so often from the frame of those who were at its commanding heights. This leads to nostalgia.
If Rome existed today it would be culturally similar to the Taliban. That is the fly in the ointment
Well done, as always.
just found your channel, and the quality, research, etc is worthy of way more subs keep up the good work!
Really interesting - thanks for uploading
I am in awe of the talent for video making you possess. Thank you so much for this masterpiece ❤
Thank you so much! Really appreciate the kind words
REally good stuff - interesting to see myths dissected through modern approaches
Love your Channel
Very nice video, well done
“Rome rules the world but women rules Rome”
-Cicero
A lot of men comforted themselves with panegyrics such as this.
Incel
It was Metellus who said that.
Thank you very very much. Your documentary elevated my quite strong classical formation, with a wider view. Well done!
My nomination for the most influential Roman woman would be Aurelia, mother of Julius Caesar,
She certainly has to be up there, all records indicate that she seems to have been much more critical to the formation of Caesar's identity and sense of purpose than his father
great videos
Thanks for shedding light on this
Its remarkable we have any records of them at all!
Nice topic friend
thank you!!
Cool video. Chauvinism sure is freaky!
Fulvia is my vote
That has all the makings of a good episode I think - would love to do one dedicated to her
@@tribunateSPQR that would be great
Verginia's husband was an early Wife Guy
Anyone can become Consul twice, but going down in history as Rome’s first wife guy is a real achievement. May his legacy live forever
Thank you very much for this, very enlightening. Only recently I was told by a scholar about the impressive legal rights afforded to Roman women... compared say to the Celts.
You are doing very well Awesome content and speculation
Thank you! This was a really fun one to research and write
Thank you
Could be worse, they could have been born Greek women.
Were the greeks more misogynistic?
@@benjaminmontenegro3423i dont know if its common throughout the greeks but athens in particular had several cultural and political rules for city or noble women that were extremely stiffling
@benjaminmontenegro3423
“Misogynistic” is an extremely relevist term, borne from modern biases, but if that’s the word you want to use-yes, is the short answer.
@@benjaminmontenegro3423 Athens specifically was, but this was due to a law that very strictly forbade Athenian men from marrying women born outside the city, because of the "corrupting barbarian influence" that flowed into Athens from their port on the Piraeus. The result was that the daughters of Athens lost a lot of rights.
@@benjaminmontenegro3423neither the Greeks nor the Romans were "misogynistic", they merely were not afraid of exercising their powers of pattern recognition. something which 99.9% of human beings have had in common and only recently we have lost
Atleast the late empire/byzantine era had women getting more power/influence, some even became emperoresss.
This doesn’t imply what I think you think it does.
@@someshtbaglcpl5455what does it imply?
How about the famous female philosopher in Alexandria?
The voting tribes are named after the Sabine women as far as I remember
What about Livia, wife of Augustus? She was a real behind the scenes coniver, wasn't she?
Could wealthy women read and write?
The story of the Sabine women is obviously propaganda. A Founding Myth, not unlike George Washington and his father's cherry tree; meant to teach a particular moral framework. This was extremely common in pre-modern (and even modern) cultures.
And this video lays out how it might even have been more forcibly propaganda for *women*: "live right & be content with your lot, or we'll bach you to [deth] with shields"
Didn’t Roman women have the right to marry and divorce any time of their choosing? Many of them had affairs. Julius Caesar’s wife had numerous affairs. But, she never got pregnant because she was already pregnant with his children before she’d take on a new lover. She called it carrying cargo.
Are you sure you mean *Caesar's* wife??
Hey tribunate...
8 :45 to 8 :55 word choice seems non objective (couched in a way to make history more palatable to the speaker) but other than that overall a great video with a fantastic quotable lines at the end.
6:25 holy shit it's Fiona from Shrek
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This is not wrong but I would have liked to see a deeper perspective than just applying modern morality to Iron Age culture
As opposed to e.g. the Minoans and other cultures that didn't comprehensively treat women as second class.
@@williamchamberlain2263 Minoans are Bronze Age but sure
Marxists and leftists are entirely incapable of doing anything except their one trick, which is applying their extremely limited, reductionist, Spirit list, lens of modernist materialist critique to everything, and then believing they have developed some kind of understanding of it.
@@williamchamberlain2263the assumption that we know anything detailed about minoan culture, never mind the relationship between the two Sexes they're in, based on a couple of fragmentary pieces of literature and some frescos with next to no context is more than a bit amusing. Every successful, powerful, and enduring civilization has treated its women more or less the same, especially when accounting for differences due to geography and climate.
Given today's climate you'll soon be inundated with all the information out there. Or at least the stories of what they want you to believe.
Victimhood.
Does it really even matter? Truly I ask is there anything practical to gain from the lives of women living thousands of years ago?
Does it really even matter? Is there anything practical to gain from the lives of men living thousands of years ago?
@@atgay2640 for 99% of men of the past their individual lives don’t really matter and they are best studied in bulk movements of people, like climate or paleontology. For women, up until 300 or so years ago, it probably matters nothing at all.
If it doesn't matter, why are you listening to this channel?
@@SafetySpooon well he has a decent channel overall and I’ve always loved Roman history.
Of course, women are half the population and a huge part of contributing to history and culture, how things turned out the way they did and our practices today. Gaining a better understanding of humanity’s past is always practical, it helps better inform our decisions today
todays "wokeness" doesnt fit on ancient rome....
If you think “women deserve to have names” is a woke take then there’s really no hope for you
The idea that it is somehow self-evident that Rome would be better, stronger, richer, etc if women had participated more in public life is resting on the unfounded assumption that more is always better, which is simply not true.
This is kind of like saying that a family in which the two parents make decisions is good, but one in which every decision is also equally participated in by their three infant children is better.
The only way one could even tentatively believe this is if one believes that men and women are completely identical, have no differences between them biologically intellectually or metaphysically, and may as well be interchangeable congruent parts. This is at diametric opposition to reality.
don't tell me you actually woke up and decided to type that, because if that wasn't a butt dial then we're going to have to get you some speech therapy lessons at the Y. You can do some physical exercise while you're there too, your brain seems out of shape and definitely needs the social enrichment because real cis men who are okay and happy in life don't talk like this, because you talk too much.
you are not the type of man who would be allowed to be in the roman army, nor live long in their world because you speak ill of people's better halves. really, the roman and greek army destroyed their own if they acted out of line for things less then you are right now, a sneeze would get you made an example of. if we're just going by history and being frank here.
honestly, you talk more like a lowly peon of the farm tils bashing the patrons of the more successful while they're at a party and you are stuck outside working for gruel because you believe it brings you closer to god. when in fact you are a party pooper, a sad sack, an oaf, a dunce, a jerk ect ect ect. until the cows come home.
if that was too many words for you and made your little brain hurt, you are bad at doing words good, you dolt
now delete your account.
Hey man just wanted you to know this is complete gibberish and you're far dumber than you could possibly comprehend.
What?!
Pretending that only one partner in any marriage is the only one who is smart & capable is a great way to miss out on intelligence & capability that could help the family. Did you just skip the video & rush down to the comments section? With the absolutely bonkers anaology of an infant to a woman, I have to assume "Yes."
I will NOT be watching
Lol, get a load of this guy.
Cool!
We asked?
Excellent commentary, quality post! You’re certainly the type of man I want my daughters marrying! What an embarrassment you are to whatever ideology you claim to adhere to.
@SU_Plata why do guys like you think she either married a left eternal online guy or a right eternal online guy? Bro touch grass.