ABSTRACT
The ancient sources that include accounts of impoverished senatorial women in Mid-Republican Rome are from disparate genres and periods, and, while all point towards the existence of such women, many of their claims about them may be exaggerated for rhetorical effect, and, at times, be part of a laus paupertatis. Wealthy, dowried wives enliven the plays of Plautus and Titinius and are historically attested to in the works of Cato and Polybius. The senatorial elite were the top tier of the two-tier equestrian aristocracy in Mid-Republican Rome. Impoverished senatorial women were poor women of high rank and status in Roman society, whose senatorial peers were normally wealthy. Furthermore, senatorial women were citizens and both they and their attendant property were registered in the census, either as dependents of legally independent adult male citizens, or independently and separately if they were legally independent widows or orphans.
