ABSTRACT
This chapter marks an important new development. It is concerned with three specialized women’s groups, all of which are centred on the Gracchan period, though they all have a degree of continuity both in the past and down to the first century. Not surprisingly, these groups display a sharper degree of definition with respect to women’s participation in public affairs than in any of the earlier periods. This is not entirely, or even mainly, due to good source material, for the absence of Livy is only partly compensated for by Plutarch, Appian, Dio and others. It is simply that some women in fact had a higher profile than their predecessors, and this has left its mark on the tradition.
