Inscriptions help us reconstruct some elements of the lived experience of women in the Roman world. This chapter analyzes the epigraphic evidence for women’s role in economic, cultural, religious, and civic life, acknowledging the inevitable biases inherent in such texts. We do not usually have access to women’s views of themselves or of each other, since men were responsible for the majority of the relevant inscriptions. Nevertheless, we can study how men looked upon women, how they reacted to them, and what their expectations of Roman women were .
