Women in Roman History

By M.J. Cryan

History is nothing more than the stories of men and women who made things happen; and Rome, perhaps because it has one of the longest histories of any city, has an abundant share of these interesting stories.

Official guides and textbooks emphasize the deeds of men, of the generals and politicians who attacked, defended or governed the Eternal City over the centuries, but what about the women who made things happen?

Just to set the record straight here is a panorama, often romantic, sometimes slightly scandalous, of women who made history in Rome, a guide to the places that saw them protagonists, where they lived and died and sometimes changed the course of history. After admiring the architectural and artistic highlights and the well-known monuments of the city, take time to follow in the footsteps of these famous and infamous ladies.

Cleopatra (69-30 BC)

Our historical panorama begins not with a Roman woman but with a royal tourist from Ptolemaic Egypt, Cleopatra, and the first of a long line of visitors to Rome for the sake of love. Her meeting with Julius Caesar during his Egyptian expedition blossomed and four years later she took up his invitation to come to Rome along with her son, aptly named Caesarion. They lived in a villa across the Tiber where, according to writer Svetonius, they feasted all night and generally carried on much to the shocked delight of the e city’s gossips. Remains of Egyptian-style stucco decorations discovered in the Farnesina villa’s gardens in 1879 and now kept in the Terme Museum were probably part of the villa’s decoration. Another memento of Cleopatra’s stay in Rome is a statue in the Vatican Museums, a copy of a gold one in which the princess’s prominent Egyptian nose and large eyes are evident, that Caesar had set up in the Forum in her honor. Caesar’s mistress stayed on in Rome for a month after the dictator’s assassination hoping that their son might be designated heir to the throne, but then she returned to Egypt where she later met another fascinating Roman, Mark Antony.

Agrippina (15 -59 AD)

According to Fabio Pittoru’s biography of Agrippina, this Roman matron, mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of emperor Caligula, was the victim of bad press and her surroundings and not really a husband-poisoner nor as viciously depraved as her contemporaries, Messalina and Poppea. The physical aspect of this strong-willed empress is expressed by a monumental head still to be seen in Trajan’s Forum. It reminds us that Agrippina attained the highest honor ever granted to a woman in ancient Rome, that is to be carried into the Forum on a litter. Not only did this ambitious woman survive the palace intrigues and struggles for succession, but she wielded the imperial power during the reigns of her senile husband, Claudius and of her son, Nero. She was outwitted only by Nero’s growing persecution complex and insanity, succumbing to his hired assassins at her seaside villa near Naples at the age of 44.

Lucrezia Borgia  (1480-1519)

Salita dei Borgia is a steep, gloomy stairway leading from busy Via Cavour to one of Rome’s major tourist attractions, the Church of St. Peter in Chains. It takes its name from the Borgia family, once owners of many buildings in the area that gave history two popes, some saints and several sinners. With its sinister atmosphere this passageway induces the visitor to believe most of the bad things that have ever been written and said about the Borgia family. Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) probably spent some time here during her unhappy life as a pawn in her father’s politics.  In fact, between 1492 and her death at only 39 years of age in 1519, the beautiful but maligned Lucrezia passed from one marriage to another as alliances with different states were made and broken. First the wife of a Sforza of Milan, she was then married to an Aragonese prince, but when this union became inopportune e, the husband was eliminated by her brother, Duke Valentino, and the young widow was forced into a new marriage with the Duke of Ferrara. The unhappy heroine was portrayed as Saint Catherine in Pinturicchio’s frescoes of the Sala dei Santi, one of the rooms which make up that little jewel within the Vatican Museums, the Borgia Apartments, where the family resided during Rodrigo’s eleven years as pontifice.

Beatrice Cenci  (1577-1599)

In the ghetto neighbourhood a piazza and block-large palazzo are named after another unhappy young lady, Beatrice Cenci, who with other members of her noble family, was accused of having murdered her monstrous father.  

Imprisoned in the  Tor di Nona prison, the 22 year old Beatrice, her stepmother and brother Giacomo were condemned to death in the square in front of Castle Sant’Angelo on September 11, 1599, tortured, killed with a mace and then drawn and quartered. Her terrible death wrung the hearts of her contemporaries and inspired many writers –among them Shelley, Stendhal, Dumas and Moravia- to tell her tragic story. Later given a decent burial, her tomb can be found under the steps of the altar in St. Peter in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill.

Pauline Borghese  (1780-1825)

Napoleon’s favourite sister, the beautiful Pauline, took Rome by storm upon her arrival as a young widow of 23 in 1803. She so enchanted Prince Borghese that he asked for her hand in marriage and Pauline became the mistress of what is today Villa Borghese. Her extreme vanity was legendary: she used her ladies in waiting as footstools, had a huge black servant carry her to her bath and, to show off her  beauty, happily posed nude for the sculptor Canova’s famous statue which her jealous husband kept under lock and key while he was alive.Today the statue of Pauline as Venus forms the centre piece of the Borghese Gallery collection while the Napoleonic Museum in Palazzo Primoli proudly presents, protected by a glass showcase, a mold of one of Pauline’s breasts.

  Also Napoleon’s mother, Maria Letizia or Madame Mère as she was known,  spent many years in Rome where she died of melancholy and old age in 1836. Towards the end of her life she spent the better part of the day peering from behind the green shutters of her enclosed balcony on the corner of Piazza Venezia and Via del Corso. Standing in the piazza with your back to the huge white marble monument you will still note Madame Mère’s shuttered balcony running around the façade of the corner palazzo.