ME: The first thing I noticed is that you didn't even attempt to address the fact that women were required to be under guardianship of a male, who made most of the decisions for her. In fact, you seemed to avoid it like it had Cooties. :o Anyway, that law essentially gives a woman the status similar to that of a child, which is what one would expect to see in this type of patriarchal society.
You also didn't address my question about a formal debate on Google Hangouts early in the upcoming year. Would you be interested in an actual debate?
"There were five different classes of Roman citizenship for most of Roman history. Cives Romani, Latini, Socii, Provinciales, and Peregrini. Actually there were more than twenty if you want to be pedantic, but I am dealing with major citizenship groups and ignoring the subsections of those groups. Women of Roman bloodlines, born south of the Rubicon and north of Sicily were Cives Romani; the highest class of citizen."
Here is another example of your dishonesty in this thread. If you go back to my post you will notice some key sentences in my arguments, such as how women were not considered full citizens or true citizens.
While it is true that some women could be Cives Romani, you are once again leaving out a key piece of information. There were two legal categories of Cives Romani. The first one was the full (optimo iure) Cives Romani citizen who was given all legal rights such as the right to vote, serve in office, hold property, get married, have a trial, serve in the military, etc.. Women were not given optimo iure (aka full citizen) status in any circumstance. Instead they were considered a lesser class called non optimo iure and the only rights given to them were marriage and owning property. So even at the highest echelon of society, as Cives Romani, they still were not considered full citizens. Please stop cherry-picking information. You can read about this in the books I listed below.
Note: I actually took the time to go back through one of the books and find one of the relevant paragraphs myself.
"Depending on their age, gender and mental capacity, freeborn Roman citizens (Cives Romani) enjoyed a number of legal capacities or rights. In public law, these citizens had the right to vote in the popular assemblies; the right to stand for public office; and the right to occupy military offices in the Roman legions. In private law, they had the right to contract a legal Roman marriage; the right to enter into legal transactions and conclude valid legal acts relating, for example, to the conclusion of contracts and the acquisition of property; and the right to litigae before the Roman courts. In addition, certain financial rights and privileges were reserved for freeborn citizens only. A person entitled to all the rights of the citizenship was referred to as civis optimo iure. However, not all Roman citizens were cives optimo iure. Roman women, for example, did not possess the ius honorum and the ius suffragii, and their contractual capacity depended on whether or not they fell under the authority of their husband." - Roman Law and the origins of the Civil Law Tradition - George Mousourakis
Sources for the above arguments:
Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition - George Mousourakis
Women in Roman Law & Society - Jane Gardner
Online Sources:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Civitas.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spqr/citizen.htm
Note: Notice how each one mentions that non optimo iure were not considered full citizens.
Note: I should also point out that it was even worse in Athens, where throughout a large portion of history women weren't given even limited citizenship. As bad as Ancient Rome was for women, Athens is a completely different can of worms we could open later.
The penalty for unlawfully killing a Roman citizen was death, no matter who the killer was. Of course rich people could often get away with murder. Some things never change, but your claim that it was acceptable for a Roman man to kill his wife is pure nonsense.
As I point out with the adultery later in this post, this simply isn't true.
To quote (from his On the Dowry speech) famous Roman historian, Marcus Porcius Cato, "When a husband divorces his wife, he judges the woman as a censor does, and has full powers if she committed any wrong or disgraceful act; she is punished if she has drunk wine; if she has done wrong with another man, she is condemned to death. If you should catch your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial; but, if you should commit adultery or indecent acts, she should not dare lay a finger on you, nor is it lawful."
Notice how the male has the right to kill the female over adultery but she has no such right herself if her husband commits adultery.
Source: Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar - Matthew Dillon
Online Source:
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~mariterel/hist129t_sp%2704_roman_law_selections.htm
http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/
"Even people who were not Roman, could become citizens and this applied to men and women. Roman citizenship laws were very complicated and I don’t have either the time or the inclination to school you on how they worked. Suffice to say that they were based on bloodlines and class, not gender."
No, actually gender was indeed an important aspect of citizenship and what type you are granted. I already showed you that with the differences in citizenship between male and female Civis Romani. Women never, under any circumstances, were considered full citizens like the men. They were given specific sub-classes even among the highest rank of citizenship. Women of any class had very few public and private rights compared to men. This is a fact and no amount of sugar-coating and revisionism is going to make it seem like they were peers.
"There was no requirement to be a Roman citizen to be in the Roman army. The Romans had always used non-Roman auxiliaries in its fighting forces, and by the fourth century, most of the Roman legions were made up of non-Romans. Like the French Foreign Legion of today, one of the reasons some men joined, was because they were guaranteed citizenship on finishing their contract. However all men who were Roman citizens could be pressed into service if required and service in the Roman army meant 15 to 20 years depending on the era. Roman soldiers were denied most of the rights of Roman citizens (even if they were citizens) and were literally owned by their commanders. They were slaves just as completely as the slaves who worked on the plantations of the rich farmers in Italy. "
That is incorrect. First of all, if you wanted to join the legions, you had to be a full Roman citizen. The auxilleries were reserved for non-citizens and was mostly composed of volunteers. The legions, on the other hand, were made up of conscripted soldiers who had full citizenship. Women, of course, were barred from both groups. Secondly, not all men were forced into service. Only land-owners were conscripted. In fact, throughout most of Rome's history they were the only citizens eligible to join the legions.
Sources:
Western Civilization - Jackson Spielvogel
Online Sources:
http://www.roman-empire.net/army/becoming.html
http://romans.etrusia.co.uk/roman_army_print
"Only men could be forced into this particular form of slavery, a form of slavery which would kill many of them. Would you consider this to be oppression based on gender?"
Clearly, you have never read my debates on MRA channels. If you had, you would know that I am completely against conscription of any kind. However, if you are asking if I think men were oppressing themselves, then that is a ridiculous statement. I will discuss the issue of the military later in the post.
"But for women, not being allowed to vote in relatively pointless elections. You do consider that to be gender based oppression. OK – I think your practised ignorance is showing again; your complete inability to see both sides of a picture."
It find it humorous that you talk about MY inability to see both sides while you have been consistently trying to dismiss all oppression against women as insignificant. Perhaps you should consider practicing what you preach? Just a suggestion.
By the way, you seem to be heading down the path toward the "disposable male" theory that is constantly being pushed by MRAs. Feel free to skip straight to that argument if you wish. I will be waiting with anticipation. :P
"In 212 the Constitutio Antoniniana allowed any person (male or female) from anywhere within the borders of the empire to claim Roman citizenship, but only those who had served in the military were allowed to take part in politics (there were some exceptions to this rule). "
First I need to point out that this only applied to freeborns rather than ALL people as you suggested. Secondly, women were only given the same rights as Roman women. Men and women still were not equal citizens by any stretch of the imagination. And once again, women were still not allowed to participate in either the military or politics. The main purpose of Carcalla's edict was to create a larger number of eligible males for the legions and increase the revenue by bringing in more tax money. However, I have never seen any evidence of military service being a requirement to get citizenship. However military service is a requirement if you had citizenship and you were a land-owner, which isn't what you implied. If military service was required to gain citizenship, then perhaps you can cite your source for this information?
Source: Law and Society in the Roman World - Paul J. Plessis
Online Sources:
https://politics.knoji.com/caracallas-constitutio-antoniniana/
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/law/g/CaracallaEdict.htm
"There were now laws as far as I am aware that governed who was or was not entitled to a formal education. Women were not banned from having an education in any way. Where do you get this nonsense? Can you give me a source for this astonishing claim?"
Certainly! Its cute that you are continuing to be dishonest by claiming that there was no law preventing women from getting an education, as if you somehow are not aware that custom was just as strong as any law. Are you seriously going to sit there and claim to have studied this subject for 15 years while asserting that education was just as freely available to women as men? All historical evidence paints quite a different picture. Both male and female children were educated by the mother up until the age of seven, at which point the boy would continue with teachers but the girl's education was ended to prepare her for marriage. Furthermore, the girl's education was limited to certain subjects, as I mentioned earlier. This was the custom throughout most of the Roman era. Yes, later on upper-class women were eventually allowed better educations but this doesn't negate the fact that women were barely educated before that time.
Sources: Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity - Maureen B. Fant
Women in Roman Law & Society - Jane Gardner
The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World - Michael Peachin
Women in Ancient Greece and Rome - Michael Massey
A Cultural History of Women in Antiquity - Janet H. Tulloch
Online Sources:
https://www2.bc.edu/~mcglynka/honors1.html
http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/women.html
http://spartacus-educational.com/ROMwomen.htmhttp://spartacus-educational.com/ROMwomen.htm
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/roman_education.htm
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ887227.pdf
http://www.forumromanum.org/life/johnston_4.html
"Most people for most of human history, including the Romans, got whatever education they received from their parents or older relatives. Formal education was usually reserved for the elites, and in most cultures, those elites were both male and female."
Except in many cultures even the elite girls were not allowed an education. There have been quite a few cultures that didn't allow girls any kind of formal education through either law or custom. Some still existed in recent history, such as the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Many countries force girls into domestic roles rather than send them to school. And you can forget about college in many countries today if you are a woman.
http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2011/05/25-countries-where-women-dont-go-to-college/
"In Rome, most children were educated by their mothers for the first five or six years. After that, the education of boys was considered the responsibility of the father, while the mother was expected to continue the girl’s education."
Actually, as I pointed out earlier, the girl's education did not usually continue other than learning about domestic duties as she prepared for marriage by the age of fourteen and as young as twelve sometimes.
Sources: Women in Roman Law & Society - 1986
The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World - Michael Peachin
Online Sources:
http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women%20and%20marriage%20in%20ancient%20rome.htm
"Roman women could also own property and businesses and inherit property. They had almost all of the same rights in law as men, but they did not have all of the same responsibilities."
No, they did not have almost all of the same rights as men. They had almost none of the public rights and very few private ones. And to make matter worse, they were also limited by tradition and societal expectations.
Limitations by law:
* They couldn't vote.
* They couldn't be elected to office so women had no representation in the Senate.
* As far as property is concerned, in many cases a woman would have to get permission from her male guardian before she could buy or sell property.
* They had no legal rights regarding their children and automatically lost them after a divorce.
* They were basically property of their fathers and husbands.
* They couldn't bring up charges of adultery against their husbands. A male family member had to do it for them.
* Males could drink wine but women could be killed for doing so.
* She had to get permission from her male guardian to proceed with legal transactions.
* Women couldn't even have their own name.
Limitations by custom: * They were generally not given advanced educations like the males.
* They were basically forced to be perpetually pregnant.
Sources: These are all covered in the links and books I have cited in this post.
“Roman Women by Augusto Fraschetti, published by Phantom Oxford provides a good insight into the lives of ordinary Roman women. It also chronicles the stories of many elite women in Rome who became renowned writers, merchants, artists and politicians."
This was not a book about ordinary Roman women, it is about specific important women in Roman history. I should also note that the description of the book confirms my points about how women were viewed in Rome.
"This collection of essays features important Roman women who were active in politics, theater, cultural life, and religion from the first through the fourth centuries. The contributors draw on rare documents in an attempt to reconstruct in detail the lives and accomplishments of these exceptional women, a difficult task considering that the Romans recorded very little about women. They thought it improper for a woman's virtues to be praised outside the home. Moreover, they believed that a feeble intellect, a weakness in character, and a general incompetence prevented a woman from participating in public life.Through this investigation, we encounter a number of idiosyncratic personalities. They include the vestal virgin Claudia; Cornelia, a matron; the passionate Fulvia; a mime known as "Lycoris"; the politician Livia; the martyr and writer Vibia Perpetua; a hostess named Helena Augusta; the intellectual Hypatia; and the saint Melania the Younger. Unlike their silent female counterparts, these women stood out in a culture where it was terribly difficult and odd to do so."
You aren't exactly helping your case with that paragraph. :o
"They were not nearly as common as influential Roman men, but to suggest that women were not considered citizens or that they were forbidden from being educated or politically active, is pure wilful ignorance."
Politically active? If you can't vote or run for office, then your political activity pretty much comes down to begging men to vote in favor of the laws you support, which is what they had to do. Even when they wanted to repeal the Oppian laws they were forced to beg men to repeal it. As far as education is concerned, I believe I have completely covered that earlier in this post.
"And you’re right of course; most women did not own property or become involved in politics; but your argument smacks of typical ideological dishonesty. The fact is that most men didn’t achieve any of these things either."
The difference is that at least some men were allowed to do things that almost no women were allowed to do. Such as voting, running for office, get an extensive education, live without a guardian, etc... Most of these issues affected women for a long period of Roman history before positive changes were finally made. Men, as a gender, never had these limitations. The only limits men had were based solely on class.
"You life-expectancy figure is also dishonest. The figure you gave for life expectancy was and average and based on the high infant mortality rate that was a feature of life for most of human history."
Yes, I specifically stated that it was the average life expectancy. lol You claimed that life was shorter for men but there is no evidence to support that. Life was generally short for both genders, except that far more females died as infants than males. However, that doesn't mean you are always going to die before you are thirty. Some men and women lived to old age. Unfortunately around half of children died by the age of 10.
"A female Roman citizen, having survived infancy could expect to live to between 50 and 60 depending on which source you believe."
No, you can't say one could expect to live to that age because that implies it is an average lifespan, which it was not, especially early in the history of ancient Rome. However, many did live to old age.
"For men, life expectancy was lower given the fact that men were treated more harshly under the law and were often required to do military service. In the army, life expectancy was obviously much lower and at the top of society it was much higher, with many businessmen and politicians living into their seventies."
I have seen no evidence to suggest that life-expectancy of men was significantly lower than women. Men often died in battle and women often died during child-birth, due to the fact that women were perpetually pregnant at a young age. The mortality rate for infants was astronomical (around 50-70 percent according to many historians) which was one of the reasons why women were constantly having babies. If you have evidence that men, on average, had significantly shorter lifespans than women, then feel free to cite your sources.
Source:
As the Romans Did - Jo-Ann Shelton
Ancient Roman Women - Brian Williams
Online Sources:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/Articles/Pregnancy_and_Childbirth/Pregnancy_and_Childbirth_on_Roman_Coinage.htm
https://books.google.com/books?id=pNIbYdAkFt4C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=how+many+women+died+in+childbirth+roman+empire
"There was no legal requirement for a woman to have a child. In fact during the early years of Roman civilisation, a virgin was revered as being favoured by many of the Gods."
Again, you are being dishonest when you imply that there was no law so it didn't happen. This is a common tactic MRAs use against women's issues, such as when they say things like the pay gap isn't a problem because there is no law telling companies to pay women less than men. lol The reality is that women were expected to have many children and they were ruled over by their husbands so it really wasn't up to them.
"A Man who had not been in the military was not allowed to vote until the Emporor Vespasian introduced some flexibility to that rule in 70 AD, based on his understanding that much of the military membership, was not actually Roman."
Show me evidence of a law requiring military service to vote from the time of Augustus up until Vespasian. I have never read anything to suggest that men had to serve in the legions to vote.
"What a preposterously dishonest statement to make. The Julian laws did not allow anyone to be killed by anyone else."
The Lex Julia clearly states that a father can legally kill both his daughter and the male if he catches them committing adultery. A husband may also kill (with some restrictions applied) his wife and the male if he catches them. Some of these laws were changed eventually but as I said before, that does not negate their existence beforehand.
Sources: Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition - George Mousourakis
Online Sources:
http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/Adulteriis.html
http://www.ancient.eu/article/116/
http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/50/50-3/JETS_50-3_573-594_Tracy.pdf
http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/
http://www.class.uh.edu/MCL/faculty/behr/WomenLexIulia.html
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Adulterium.html
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.imperium-romanum.info/wiki/index.php/Lex_Iulia_de_adulteriis_coercendis&prev=search
"They made adultery a crime which could result in the loss of property and certain privileges. The laws applied to both men and women. The Julian laws also allowed for lower taxes for people who were married with children and imposed certain restrictions of people who refused to re-produce. Divorce was not illegal but it was frowned upon. There was no obligation for a widow to re-marry and there was no obligation for every woman to produce children. Cultural expectations and legal obligations are not the same thing."
Actually, before Augustus, it is believed that any person could bring up charges of adultery but afterward only fathers, husbands, male family members or patruus could prosecute a male for adultery. A woman could not. This is covered in the earlier links I posted about adultery in the Lex Julia.
"The Lex Oppia was a result of economic depression following the Punic Wars. It was overturned in 195BC less than 20 years after it had been instituted. It was repealed largely as a result of mass protests by women."
Yes, it was repealed eventually but does that negate it's existence entirely? The fact is that it was implemented and existed for many years and was yet another limitation on women.
"Most Greek philosophers considered women to be morally inferior to men."
No, they considered women to be inferior in a variety of ways, including intellectual capacity. Aristotle believed women were intellectually and biologically inferior to men. He also said that the male was superior by nature and meant to rule over women. This view was held by the majority of well-known philosophers and historians, such as Plato, Juvenal, Socrates, Cicero, etc... This was also one of the reasons why educating women was looked down upon by most of society at the time, which created a self-fulfilling prophecy. When a society views women as less intelligent and doesn't let them get the same education as a male, it in turn leads to them not knowing as much as a male so this view is reinforced. Plato shared this same view regarding women's inferiority but some of his other opinions about women were a lot more progressive at the time.
"In fact their views on the morality of women have been mirrored by similar views on the morality of men taken by feminists in general over the last hundred years or so."
Ah, now you get yourself into a little trouble here by making the same error as many MRAs when I debate them. You made a blanket statement about what feminists as a whole believe. If you are going to say that "feminists in general" believe that men are morally inferior as a gender, then I am going to ask you to provide evidence. Prove that a majority of feminists during the last 100 years believe that men are morally inferior. Naturally, like every other MRA I have debated, you won't be able to do this because it is complete nonsense. You will no doubt throw out a few anecdotal examples but that is not evidence of it being a prevalent view among of feminists.
"No: Uppers class women had the privilege of staying at home: A privilege that must have been envied by their poorer sisters. There was no law that restricted women of any class from working or opening businesses."
Hint: It is not really much of a "privilege" if it is expected of you. lol And here we are once again with the dishonest "there wasn't any law so it didn't happen!" argument.
"Yes. And the type of education received by men was very basic too. Have you got any point to make at all?"
No, men were allowed to further their education, while throughout most of Rome's history a woman's education was generally limited to what she learned before she was prepared for marriage.
"Yes I know, and men had very limited rights too. That was my point and one that seems to be completely lost on you. Both sexes were discriminated in different but equally limiting ways. On balance though, it is fair to say that at least for the majority of non-elite citizens, the women probably got a slightly better deal. "
How did women have the better deal when they were under guardianship of men, treated essentially as breeding machines, could not vote, could not run for office, could not get and extensive education, could be killed by their husbands or fathers for drinking, wine, adultery, etc... And what was the worst "discrimination" most male citizens had to face? Oh yeah, being required to join the legions if they owned land, which was something that most men wanted to do anyway at the time. Serving in the legions was a matter of honor to Roman men during that era. We can argue that it is oppression anyway but this is literally the only argument you have compared to countless examples of the oppression of women.
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