ABSTRACT
Prior to the Second Punic War, which played such a decisive part in creating the Roman empire, the third century exhibits very few significant developments in the area of women’s participation in public affairs. Apart from Claudia’s outburst in 246, there is only the passive evidence of the deaths, either by burial alive or suicide, of a number of Vestals, in pursuance of the barbaric policy of expiating prodigies and pestilences by killing members of that order.1 But with Hannibal’s irruption into Italy in 218 a new chapter opens in women’s affairs, as in so much else in that momentous era. Women are significantly active in a number of areas, not all of which have been noticed before; nor has their cumulative effect been perceived. Broadly speaking, the period displays two distinct developments: on the one hand a continuation, and indeed an intensification, of discrimination and ill-treatment; on the other hand the encouragement, by the more liberal elements in male society, not only of co-operation by women, but also of a more active role in the management of their affairs. There is no clear-cut temporal division between the two developments until the last few years of the war. Until then the good and the bad alternate in seemingly haphazard fashion. Only from about 207 BC does an unequivocally favourable climate emerge.
