Inscribed Lives: Exploring the Familial and Public Roles of Free Roman Citizen Women in Athens through Epigraphic Testimony (1st c. BC-3rd c. AD)

Early discussions of Greek and Roman women studied them as part of wider discourses and examined their lives as part of the private realm of their oikos, while later and more recent scholarly discussions study women more holistically and seek to trace their activities within and outside of their households as more active participants in their societies. The current thesis contributes towards the same scope, by exploring the private and public roles that the women who lived in Roman Athens held, focusing on the population of free citizen women who had acquired Roman citizenship. These roles are examined to determine the extent to which Roman citizenship affected not only these women’s visibility, but also their position and interaction with the Athenian society. By doing so, it examines the ways that they were expected to act, alongside any limitations that restricted their actions. It focuses on the epigraphic evidence for these women, and employs the tools of social identity theory and intersectionality as methodological approaches, to place women in the centre of the analysis and to examine how their characteristics influenced their inscribed narratives and marginalised them—these are their gender, familial roles, citizenship status, and religious and civic roles and engagement and how they shaped or were shaped by the city of Athens. The results of the thesis show that even though these women were Roman citizens who could occasionally acquire public roles, namely those of benefactresses and figures of religious authority, they were still influenced by their traditional gender roles. It also shows that their inscribed monuments were strategically displayed around the city, and in large numbers in the region of Eleusis, and other secondary places that would be frequented by many individuals (especially of influential status), and that they were used by their families to mostly promote their own status.