A Day in Ancient Rome as a Young Woman

What was a day like for a young woman in Rome around AD 100? Follow three of them from sunrise to sunset: Valeria, a baker's daughter; Daphne, an enslaved hairdresser; and Cornelia, a senator's daughter who is already married at seventeen. Built from tombstones, letters, laws and archaeology, and honest about where the evidence runs thin. Chapters 0:00 Married at twelve, painted with lead 0:24 Three women, one day 0:47 What their names tell you 1:30 Hour 1: the bakery and Rome's working women 2:09 Hour 2: hair, wigs and a dangerous job 3:19 Hour 3: marriage, Minicia Marcella and the ivory doll 4:50 Hour 4: what a wife controlled 5:23 Hours 5 and 6: wool, lunch and Daphne's life 6:14 Hour 7: women at the baths 6:40 Hour 8: no vote, but a voice 7:00 Hours 9 and 10: Calpurnia, and childbirth 7:47 Hour 12: sunset 7:55 Did any woman write her own words? 8:23 Could girls go to school? 9:16 Three women, one day Sources and notes Valeria, Daphne and Cornelia are invented; the details of their day are not. Pliny the Younger, Letters 5.16 (Minicia Marcella), 4.19 and 8.10 (Calpurnia). Tombstone of Minicia Marcella (CIL VI 16631). Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3 (hairdressers) and Amores 1.14 (German hair for wigs). Juvenal, Satire 6 (the punished hairdresser). Juvenal was a satirist and exaggerated. Pliny the Elder, Natural History (white lead). Brent Shaw (1987), age at first marriage from Roman tombstones. Crepereia Tryphaena's burial and ivory doll, found 1889, now in the Centrale Montemartini, Rome. Eumachia's building, Pompeii forum; the Stabian Baths, Pompeii; election notices including Asellina's bar. Bronze bath regulations from Vipasca (Aljustrel, Portugal). Soranus, Gynaecology. Sulpicia's poems; Vindolanda Tablet 291 (Claudia Severa's birthday invitation). Martial 9.68 (the schoolmaster); Quintilian 1.1.6 (Hortensia and educated women). William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (1989). If you missed the day of Gaius, an ordinary Roman man:    • What Did Ordinary Romans Do All Day?   #AncientRome #RomanHistory #History