Throughout history, when elite groups sense that their position is threatened, they develop narratives meant to restore the status quo. Roman antiquity is no exception. In their accounts of women’s journeys, ancient writers often appeal to ancestral customs or evoke female role models of previous generations. They construct a vision of a past Rome in which women behaved appropriately and in which, as a result of this, life was better. In this lecture, I will engage with the accounts of ancient writers who deal with women’s mobility –or women’s manifest refusal to move –during times of civil war. I will explain how these stories can be used to shed light on ongoing debates about the Roman ‘way of life’.

Zugang zur Online-Sitzung unter: https://forumantike.univie.ac.at/programm-ss2021/

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