IURA, FEMINAE, MONETAE. THE RIGHTS AND THE POWER OF WOMEN IN ROME REPRESENTED IN THE IMPERIAL COINAGE
IURA, FEMINAE, MONETAE. THE RIGHTS AND THE POWER OF WOMEN IN ROME REPRESENTED IN THE IMPERIAL COINAGE

Summary/Abstract: In Ancient Rome under the private law women were subjected to tutela mulierum even if adult and had their legal capacity seriously limited. At the same time they were completely excluded from the direct participation in the public life as ius honorum and ius sufragii were reserved only for men who were Roman citizens. The last century of the Republic was a dramatic period, characterized by the great social changes that occurred in the Roman society. The coinage from ancient times to the present day has been a brilliant illustration of any political, cultural and social events and certainly has had an important significance. On the other hand the coins are also an extremely valuable source of information for the correct understanding and interpretation of many aspects of reality, relevant to the time of their minting. Despite that, the female images had appeared for centuries on Roman coins - goddesses or figures from the legends like the Vestal virgin Tarpeia, but most of the women – the mothers, the wives and the sisters of the great Romans remained invisible in both on the social level and on the coins. In the new era of the Principate with the Augustan legislation the severe rule of the old ius civile was modified and women with ius liberorum were free of guardianship and sometimes this privilege was given without actual satisfaction of the requirement. While, this is the era of a gradual strengthening of the condition, the power and the influence of women in the Roman state and politics and, accordingly, of the gender role, which reflects a radical change in Roman thinking and law, and imposes a new status of women unlike the ancient archaic understandings. Analyzing the history of the Roman law and the rights that it determined to the women we know they had a subordinate position relative to the male members of their family. In the time of the Empire and the Classical law this concept was reshaped and the result was perfectly noticeable in the Roman imperial coinage where firstly the women were depicted after their death and identified with some divinity and later they were represented during their lifetime. The aim of the article is to outline the role and the power of Roman women and to track the process of progressive change on this matter in Classical Rome using together the legal and the historical sources and giving examples for it with the images of important empresses and princesses in the imperial coinage.

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