Question

place of women in society in ancient time

Answer 1

WOMEN IN MYTHOLOGY

Unlike some other ancient cultures such as the Greeks who had formed a creation myth where woman was a creature secondary to man and, more specifically, in the form of Pandora, a bringer of unhappiness and vices, the Romans had a more neutral approach where humanity, and not specifically the male, was created by the gods from earth and water. Ovid's Metamorphoses, for example, does not specify whether the first human was a man or a woman. At least in a physical sense then men and women were not regarded as belonging to a different species as in the Greek world, a view often reiterated in Roman medical treatises.

One of the most famous early episodes in Roman mythology that reveals much about attitudes to women is the Rape of the Sabine women. In the story, the first settlers of Rome abducted women from neighbouring tribes, taking them as their wives. One of the reasons for this action may have been a desire to form local alliances through blood ties. Naturally, these tribes sought to reclaim their women and so declared a state of war. However, the abducted women - led by Hersilia, the wife of Romulus - actually tried to intervene at this stage to prevent bloodshed. The story echoes the important role women played in linking families in Roman society - their family of birth and then of marriage.