Roman History and the Status of Women

Chapter 3 locates William Thomas’s (d.1554) translation of a succinct but significant moment of the AUC concerning the repeal of the Lex Oppia, a sumptuary law targeting women in particular. The episode shows the women of Rome taking to the streets to demand the law’s repeal, forcing senators and tribunes alike to acknowledge their protest. Thomas thus chose to adapt one of the most arresting examples of women’s engagement in Roman politics. By choosing Livy as a champion of female autonomy, he went firmly against the contemporary grain, vying against more frequent appeals to the AUC as a means of censuring women’s dress and behaviour. Thomas was most probably alerted to this way of reading Livy during his extensive travel in Italy. During the Quattrocento, there had emerged a series of speeches and tracts concerning the status of women, which had similarly harnessed Livy in the defence of womankind. This chapter explores how Thomas was able combine these arguments with his own reading of classical history, producing a bold intervention in the Renaissance querelle des femmes.