History : May-Jun 2018
WORKING WOMEN Despite discrimination, there are notable cases of imperial-era ALCESTE DETAIL OF A PAINTING FROM POMPEII. NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM, NAPLES bankers In 1959 a hoard of wooden tablets was found near Pompeii. Dating between around a.d. 26 and 61, they detail a series of banking transactions made in the rich province and yield ample evidence that women were both lenders and borrowers. Historians believe that although women needed a guarantor to vouch for them, they could, at this stage in Roman history, take or give loans in their own right. managers Although some very wealthy women were landowners, it was not common to find women who actually managed property. One landowner, Valeria Maxima, believed to be living in the first century a.d., employed two female managers, Eucrotia and Cania Urbana, to run her estate. Another case was Prastina Maxima, the administrator (autrix) for a rich senatorial family. manufacturers Some rich women owned clay quarries, such as Domitia Lucilla Minor, mother of the second-century emperor Marcus Aurelius. She is known to have taken an active part in the business, which produced bricks and other hugely lucrative building materials. MERCHANT SHIP FOR GRAIN TRANSPORT ON A FRESCO FROM OSTIA. WOMEN WERE KNOWN TO OWN SHIPS AND TRADE IN CEREALS.