INTRODUCTION

Both these opinions are accurate reflections of their subject and their time, and yet they are poles apart in their estimation of women’s abilities. Such is the diversity we encounter when exploring the experiences and understandings of women in the time of Rome’s late Republic and early Empire. In fact, neither ‘women’ nor ‘religion’ should presuppose for us a fixed category. In our own day, and looking back through history, convincing definitions of what constitutes the female gender, or what constitutes religion have been elusive, and our contention in this study is that is the way they should remain.