{"id":14019,"date":"2025-04-21T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=14019"},"modified":"2025-04-07T08:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T08:10:15","slug":"pompeii-life-size-sculptures-women-ancient-rome-gender-roles-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/pompeii-life-size-sculptures-women-ancient-rome-gender-roles-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Life-size sculptures uncovered in Pompeii show that ancient women didn\u2019t just have to be wives to make a difference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n\n Emily Hauser<\/a>, University of Exeter<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Visitors to the site of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried (and so preserved for thousands of years) by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, don\u2019t often think to look beyond the city walls. And it\u2019s easy to understand why: there\u2019s plenty on offer within this monumentally well-preserved town, from jewel-like wall paintings of myths and legends like Helen of Troy<\/a>, to the majestic amphitheatre and sumptuously stuccoed baths.<\/p>\n\n

But step outside the gates for a moment, and you\u2019re in a very different \u2013 yet no less important \u2013 world.<\/p>\n\n

For the ancient Romans, the roads and paths leading into and out of cities were crucial: not just for getting places, but as a very real kind of \u201cmemory lane\u201d. Tombs lined these ancient byways \u2013 some simply bearing inscriptions to the memories of loved ones lost, others, more grand, accommodating space for friends and family to feast in remembrance of the dead. <\/p>\n\n

Some of the tombs even address the passerby directly, as if its occupant could speak again, and pass on what they\u2019ve learned. Take one Pompeiian example, set up by the freedman Publius Vesonius Phileros<\/a>, which opens with ineffable politeness: \u201cStranger, wait a while if it\u2019s no trouble, and learn what not to do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Going into Pompeii, and leaving it, was about being reminded of ways of living and ways of dying \u2013 as well as an invitation to tip your hat to those who trod the path before you, and to learn from their example.<\/p>\n\n

Which is why the recent discovery<\/a> of a monumental tomb crowned by life-size sculptures of a woman and man, just outside the gates on the east side of the town, isn\u2019t just a fascinating find in and of itself. It\u2019s also a reminder to stop, and to remember the people who once lived and died in this bustling Italian town.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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The tomb\u2019s main feature is a large wall, peppered with niches where cremated remains would have been placed, and surmounted by the astonishing relief sculpture of the woman and man. They\u2019re standing side by side, but not touching. <\/p>\n\n

I rather like that she\u2019s slightly taller than him, standing at 1.77m, while he\u2019s 1.75m. She\u2019s draped in a modest tunic, cloak and veil (symbols of Roman womanhood), and boasts a pronounced crescent-moon-shaped pendant at her neck called a lunula<\/em><\/a>, that (through the age-old link with lunar cycles) tells a story about female fertility and birth. He, meanwhile, is dressed in the quintessentially Roman toga that instantly identifies him as a proud male citizen of Rome.<\/p>\n\n

Who do the statues depict?<\/h2>\n\n

The status quo in archaeology, when a woman and a man are presented next to each other in tombs and burials like this, has always been to assume that she\u2019s his wife. Yet here, there\u2019s an unmissable clue that there\u2019s more going on. That\u2019s because, in her right hand, she\u2019s holding a laurel branch \u2013 which was used by priestesses to waft the smoke of incense and herbs in religious rituals. <\/p>\n\n

Priestesses, in the Roman world, held unusual levels of power for women \u2013 and it\u2019s been suggested<\/a> that this woman might have been a priestess of the goddess Ceres (Roman equivalent of Demeter).<\/p>\n\n

So this high-status priestess is shown alongside a man. The inclusion of the symbols of her status (as priestess) alongside his (as a togatus<\/em>, or \u201ctoga-wearing man\u201d), shows that she\u2019s there in her own right, as a contributing member of Pompeiian society. She might be his mother; she might even have been more important than him (which would explain why she\u2019s taller). Without an inscription, we don\u2019t know for sure. The point is: a woman doesn\u2019t have to be a wife to be standing next to a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s fascinating is this isn\u2019t unique to Pompeii. In my new book, Mythica<\/a>, which looks at the women not of Rome but of Bronze age Greece, I\u2019ve found that new discoveries in archaeology are overturning the assumptions that used to be made about a woman\u2019s place in society, and the value of their roles, all the time. <\/p>\n\n

One fascinating example is a royal burial in Late Bronze Age Mycenae: a woman and a man who\u2019d been buried together in the royal necropolis, around 1700 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius decimated Pompeii. As is typical, this woman was immediately labelled, by the archaeologists who uncovered her, as the man\u2019s wife. But then DNA analysis came into the picture. <\/p>\n\n

As recently as 2008, both skeletons were sampled for DNA \u2013 and came up with the game-changing result that they were, in fact, brother and sister. She\u2019d been buried here as a member of a royal family by birth, not by marriage, in other words. She was there on her own terms.<\/p>\n\n

From golden Mycenae to the ash-blasted ruins of Pompeii: the remains from the ancient world are telling us a different story from the one we always thought. A woman didn\u2019t have to be a wife to make a difference.<\/p>\n\n

So I think it\u2019s worth listening to the advice of our friend Publius. Let\u2019s look at the burials of the past, and learn.\"The<\/p>\n\n

Emily Hauser<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Hauser, University of Exeter Visitors to the site of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried (and so…\n","protected":false},"author":1149,"featured_media":14022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/08\/Relief_sculpture_near_Porta_Marina%2C_Archaeological_Park_of_Pompeii%2C_Italy_%28PPL1-Corrected%29_%28approx._GPS_location%29_julesvernex2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7529,7522,7530,7536,7525,7531,7532,7542,7537,7521,7520,7538,7541,7543,7533,1536,7524,7544,7539,7523,7540,7534,7526,7535,7527,7528],"class_list":{"0":"post-14019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-history","8":"tag-ancient-roman-tombs","9":"tag-ancient-roman-town","10":"tag-ancient-tomb-sculptures","11":"tag-archaeological-findings","12":"tag-archaeologist-discoveries","13":"tag-burial-of-the-past","14":"tag-burial-practices-in-ancient-rome","15":"tag-ceres-priestess","16":"tag-dna-analysis-in-archaeology","17":"tag-gender-roles-in-ancient-rome","18":"tag-historical-gender-roles","19":"tag-life-size-sculptures","20":"tag-monumental-tomb-discovery","21":"tag-mount-vesuvius-eruption","22":"tag-mycenae-royal-burial","23":"tag-pompeii","24":"tag-pompeii-archaeology","25":"tag-pompeii-tombs","26":"tag-role-of-women-in-ancient-rome","27":"tag-roman-toga","28":"tag-roman-women-in-society","29":"tag-symbolic-funeral-rituals","30":"tag-tomb-reliefs","31":"tag-woman-priestess-in-rome","32":"tag-women-in-ancient-societies","33":"tag-women-in-bronze-age-greece","34":"cs-entry","35":"cs-video-wrap"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14023,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14019\/revisions\/14023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}