Ah they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome a podcast about the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a senior lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode LX I I. Women I.I.I.I.I.

All our talk of Roman writing has focused on men for the simple reason that, for the most part, that

is all we have. This makes the fragments of work we have by Roman women an important aspect of life and culture in ancient Rome.

Unfortunately we have so little of it that can be covered in a single episode.

Here's Rianna Evans.

What can we say about women writers in Rome?

Was it something that only the higher classes did?

Was it an acceptable past time, was it widespread?

Well, most of the evidence we have for women writers is, I guess you could say, images of women actually doing writing because we don't have very much extant writing.

So there are famous little small portraits of women with a book or there are sometimes relief sculptures of women working with

books maybe doing accounts. There's a really famous one of a woman with a big book in a butcher

shop. There's a man chopping up meat and the woman's just sitting on this sort of

throne looking at the probably the accounts. So that doesn't really count as a

writer, but what it does tell us is that at least some women were literate

and they're not necessarily from the very elite.

But in terms of writing poetry is pretty much the case that with men as well

you tend to be from the elite to have the time to reduce poetry.

And the knowledge of how it works and even how to write?

Well, I guess the education, yes.

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