Beyond patriarchy – Women's lives in Carnuntum
By Nisa Iduna Kirchengast - Editors: Daniel Kunc, Thomas Mauerhofer, Anna-Maria GrohsInternational Women's Day is an appropriate occasion to question familiar narratives. “Women in Roman antiquity” often seems like a closed chapter in historiography. In fact, however, it is an analytical touchstone: do we narrate history as a sequence of political events and male elites – or as a complex web of social practices, legal frameworks, and individual life courses?
Anyone who asks about “the” Roman woman quickly reaches their limits. There was no such thing as a uniform female way of life. Status, origin, wealth, age, and family ties structured women's scope for action far more than gender alone. Roman society was patriarchal in its organization; nevertheless, women's realities could vary between lawless enslavement and considerable economic or symbolic power.
Matrons at the Late Antiquity Festival 2021 in Carnuntum - © A. Hofmarcher
Between ideal and everyday life
In the Roman value system, the ideal of the so-called matrona was condensed into virtues such as dignitas (dignity) and pudicitia (moral integrity). Added to this were housekeeping, caring for children, and family stability. This ideal was not purely a private moral program, but a public promise of order. From a Roman perspective, a “good” wife guaranteed the stability of the domus and thus of the social order as a whole.
At the same time, archaeological and epigraphic sources show that “real” women were not exclusively confined to the domestic sphere. They could own property, inherit, run workshops, engage in trade, or act as benefactors. However, their scope for action was structurally contingent. Legal autonomy was often tied to male guardianship; even exemptions – for example, within the framework of the ius liberorum – required the fulfillment of state-mandated reproductive goals. Autonomy was rarely an abstract right, but rather the result of social constellations.
Roman matrons on the streets of Carnuntum - © A. Achtsnit
Reproduction and social control
The Roman visual world sometimes strikes today's viewers as surprisingly explicit. But visibility did not mean modern “liberalization.” Sexuality was strictly tied to status. While men had relatively broad scope for action, female sexuality remained normatively bound to marriage, securing lineage, and household discipline. Sex work was part of social reality, but mostly under conditions of coercion or economic dependence. The female body was not only morally coded, but also integrated into economic logic. Motherhood was also a permanent risk. Pregnancy and childbirth were potentially life-threatening; high maternal and infant mortality rates shaped everyday demographic life. The Roman ideal of the family was therefore based on an experience of structural insecurity.
Woman in Roman costume at the Roman Festival 2025 in Carnuntum - © T. Mauerhofer
Gender reveal in the grave?
In an archaeological context, women are often identified by material markers: items of traditional dress, jewelry sets, hairstyles, spindle whorls, loom weights, or other textile processing tools. Such attributions are based on recurring patterns in graves, pictorial representations, and finds from settlements. Methodologically, this is understandable—but at the same time problematic. Clothing and handicraft utensils reflect cultural role models as well as real activities. They show how femininity was staged or normatively expected, not necessarily what a specific person actually did. Bioarchaeological analyses, inscriptions, or economic contexts expand this picture: women appear as entrepreneurs, benefactors, traders, priestesses, or in military border areas as part of complex mobility networks. Archaeology must therefore be careful not to hastily derive social identities from individual groups of objects. Women cannot be reduced to jewelry and spinning wheels—it is therefore important to approach material culture from different perspectives as an expression of gender identities.
Roman finds from Carnuntum: Hairpin (inv. no. CAR-OR-118), mirror disc with relief decoration (inv. no. CAR-M-4159), earring (inv. no. CAR-M-3600), and spindle whorl (inv. no. CAR-K-3576) - © Landessammlungen NÖ
Who's that chick? – Four women from Carnuntum on the trail
In a metropolis such as Carnuntum, it is particularly easy to identify different female life situations. Coins and grave monuments do not convey any direct “voices,” but they do provide important social information that allows us to gain a more detailed understanding of four women from Carnuntum who came from different social classes:
1. Sulpicia Dryantilla – Visibility as rhetoric of power
For a few months in the year 260 AD, Carnuntum became the stage for a takeover: Regalianus, presumably a governor or military commander, had himself proclaimed emperor after the capture of Emperor Valerian. To legitimize this elevation, coins were immediately minted – not only for him, but also for his wife Dryantilla. The fact that Dryantilla appears on coins is more than just “imperial wife decoration.” Coin images are small-scale state communication: they create publicity, assert order, and generate loyalty. Dryantilla is thus an example of how women could become visible in the Roman power apparatus – albeit often as part of a legitimization strategy, not as actors with their own institutional access. The “pros” of such visibility are evident: symbolic capital, public presence, integration into the rhetoric of power. The “cons” are just as clear: this visibility is dependent on the status of the man and on political success, which was lacking in this case.
Antoninianus of Regalianus for Dryantilla (obverse, inv. no. CAR-N-38376) - © Landessammlungen NÖ
2. Augustania Cassia Marcia – family loss up close
One of the most impressive inscriptions from Carnuntum is the tomb stele of Augustania Cassia Marcia and her young son Marcus Antonius Augustanius Philetus (3rd century AD), which is now on display in the Carnuntinum Museum. The image shows a ship bearing the name “FELIX ITALA”; above it appear the donor Marcus Antonius Basilides, his wife, and their child. The inscription is a document of double loss: Basilides erects the monument for his wife and son and expresses grief, love, and longing for his homeland. Augustania is not “just” a wife. She appears in a social world of her husband's military service (frumentarius of the legio X Gemina), mobility, and family identity. The monument tells of female presence in a male-dominated military landscape—and of the fact that the “border area” was not only a garrison, but also a place for family and emotions.
Tombstone of Augustania Cassia Marcia and her son Marcus Antonius Augustanius Philetus (inv. no. CAR-S-725) - © Landessammlungen NÖ
3. Umma – Local identity in rural areas
The portrait stele of Umma (found in Au am Leithaberge; dated 70–120 AD) was discovered in the hinterland of Carnuntum and brings to life a group of people who have long been neglected in the classic narrative of “Romanization”: the indigenous population without Roman citizenship (peregrini). Umma has a local name; the inscription identifies her as the daughter of Tabico, aged 45, and names the donor: Illo, son of Itedo, who erected the monument “with his own money” for his wife. Iconographically, Umma is depicted in local costume (fur hat, wing brooches, rosette in the pediment). This reveals two things: first, that a Roman province was not culturally homogeneous. Second, that female self-representation – or more precisely, representation by relatives – does not necessarily mean “Romanization” as a task of local identity. Umma is a counter-image to the idea that provincial women were either invisible or completely romanized. Here, belonging is staged in difference.
Portrait stele of Umma (inv. no. CAR-S-699) - © Landessammlungen NÖ
4. Primigenia – Remembrance despite enslavement
The tomb stele of Primigenia (mid-1st century AD) confronts us with a harsh social reality. Primigenia is a slave of Caius Petronius—and, as is typical for enslaved people, she has only one name. The stele has a niche with a portrait head; the inscription field contains a funeral poem. It emphasizes that Primigenia died at the age of 20 (“twice ten years”) and formulates a moral self-characterization (no “revelry,” purity of age) as well as the wish that the reader may live longer and happier. Epigraphy is never “the voice” of the person, but a culturally standardized form of remembrance. And yet the poem shows that even for an enslaved young woman, there existed a framework of remembrance that articulated individuality, moral integrity, and grief. We obtain direct social information about status, age, and forms of remembrance.
Tombstone of Primigenia (inv. no. CAR-S-944) - © Landessammlungen NÖ
Women run the Roman world
When we think of the Roman Empire, we usually picture legions, emperors, and gladiators. Women often appear only marginally in these images—as wives, mothers, or dramatic supporting characters. But this image is less a reflection of antiquity than a product of centuries of strongly male-dominated historiography. Newer approaches show how different the empire appears when we broaden our perspective. Suddenly, it is no longer just battles and power struggles that take center stage, but also everyday life, work, and relationships. Traditions such as those of the four women from Carnuntum, preserved on stone tablets or coins, tell of social roles, identity, relationships, and emotional independence.
Including women in our thinking does not mean reinventing history, but rather telling it more completely. The Roman Empire was not only made up of emperors, politicians, and generals, but also of businesswomen, priestesses, mothers, friends, sex workers, and slaves. Only when their lives become visible does a more realistic, multi-layered picture of antiquity emerge—one that goes beyond the cliché of power and masculinity and shows how diverse the empire actually was.