Non-elite Women in Early Imperial Rome: Funerary Art, Ritual and Law

New trends in iconographic and epigraphic analyses have begun to question traditional views of non-elites in the Roman world. Through an investigation of the representation of non-elite women in funerary monuments in early Imperial Rome this work illustrates how women's roles in funerary rites go beyond the traditional functions of mourners and lamenters. How were non-elite women perceived as members of Roman society during and after the reign of Augustus? More specifically what legal and funerary or cultic obligations were they performing? Do these obligations go hand in hand with a traditional value and belief system held by the freeborn ruling elite? This project shows that how the non-elite presented themselves was meant to invoke responses from a broader community that incorporated slaves as well as freeborn individuals of a similar economic standing as opposed to only the freeborn elite. The project focuses on an analysis of 350 examples of funerary monuments from Italy that incorporate portraiture, subsidiary scenes and inscriptions. These monuments lined the major thoroughfares that led into the cities and acted as a new and innovative means for non-elite women to proclaim familial relations within the spheres of Roman law and religion.