Rome, Women and Religion: Asserting Agency through Decoration

The Roman domus was utilized to facilitate a social system that privileged the power, status, and rights of men and male interests. The domestic sphere was generally regarded as a demonstration of morality and cultural values in reflection of the paterfamilias ’ identity. The domus possessed a very different position in Roman society than private residences do in our society. The roles of men and women, husband and wife, and father and mother were most rigid in the Roman domus. The home was not used as an escape from the public but rather as a means of presenting a cultivated material identity to a spectrum of viewers. The connection between physical space and identity construction is an example of an institutional patriarchy. Within Roman culture the social perception of decorative elements almost always reflected upon the male patron of the space. The reliance upon the decorative program to guide a guest in forming an impression of the owner is indicative of the role visual propaganda played throughout the Empire. It is this programmatic tendency that allows art historians to apply the same process of evaluation to imagery that is both religious and domestic in context. The visual material presented in this paper reveals that while gender roles may have been strict in the home, they were much more fluid in the religious experiences of the late Republic and early Empire. Thi