Ritual and Revolution: Rethinking Roman Women’s Influence on Religion

Authors

Katlin Smith, James Madison UniversityFollow

Preferred Name

Katlin Smith

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5161-5482

Date of Graduation

5-15-2025

Semester of Graduation

Spring

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Department of History

First Advisor

Eva Carrara

Second Advisor

Emily Westkaemper

Third Advisor

Jonathan Jones

Abstract

This thesis challenges the long-standing portrayal of Roman women as passive figures. Focusing on the mid-to-late Roman Republic and early Empire (264 B.C.E.–180 C.E.), it argues that women were active participants in Roman society, particularly through their engagement in religious life. Drawing on the theory of “lived religion,” this study highlights how religion offered Roman women opportunity to interact with both domestic and public spheres in socially acceptable means. Religion allowed women to exercise influence, power, and autonomy otherwise denied to them in political or legal contexts. Through a combination of textual analysis and material evidence, such as inscriptions and graffiti, this thesis re-examines elite male-authored sources by reading “against the grain” and considering what their silences and biases obscure in a patriarchal society. Case studies of women like Terentia, Eumachia, and the Vestals Licinia and Fabia reveal that women not only participated in religious rituals, but also used them for their own benefit, gaining symbolic and socio-political power in the process.

Ultimately, this thesis contributes to a growing scholarly effort to re-evaluate assumptions about gender in ancient Rome. It affirms that Roman women, though often absent from the written record, were far more than passive bystanders; they were active and integral participants to the religious, cultural, and social fabric of Roman life.