title: Space warfare

text: Anti-satellite attacks, especially ones with kinetic kill vehicles, can form space debris which can stay in orbit for many years and could interfere with future space activity or in a worst case trigger Kessler syndrome. In January 2007 China did a satellite knock out whose detonation alone caused more than 40,000 new chunks of debris with a diameter > 1 cm and a sudden increase in the total amount of debris in orbit. The PRC is reported to be developing "soft-kill" techniques such as jamming and vision kills that do not generate much debris.


title: Space warfare

text: Most of the world's communications systems rely heavily on the presence of satellites in orbit around Earth. Protecting these assets might seriously motivate nations dependent upon them to consider deploying more space-based weaponry, especially in conflicts involving advanced countries with access to space.


title: Space warfare

text: Since 2017, the United States Air Force has run an annual military exercise called "Space Flag" at Peterson Space Force Base, which involves a red team simulating attacks on U.S. satellites.


title: Space warfare

text: Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer and advocate for human exploration of Mars, stated that anti-satellite weapons capabilities of nations increases, space infrastructures must be able to defend itself using other satellites that can destroy such weapons. Or else, he states, satellite-based navigation, communications and reconnaissance capabilities would be severely limited and easily influenced by adversaries.


title: Space warfare

text: Space warfare is a staple of science fiction, where it is shown with a wide range of realism and plausibility. Fictional space warfare includes anticipated future technology and tactics, and fantasy- or history-based scenarios in a scifi setting. Some portray a space military as like an air force; others depict a more naval framework. Still others suggest forces more like space marine: highly mobile forces doing interplanetary and interstellar war but most of the conflict happens in terrestrial environments. The main sub-genres of the science fictional space warfare thematic genre are space opera, Military and Space Western. Though sword and planet stories like Finisterre universe by C. J. Cherryh might be considered, they rarely feature such technologies. These three genres often intertwine and have themes that are common to all. Written Space Westerns are often based directly on existing established scifi space opera franchises with expanded universes like Star Wars and Star Trek, including "Warhammer 40,000": the most popular space opera military miniature wargame which spawned successful spin-off media: novels, video-games and on-going live adaption based on books by Dan Abnett.


title: Space warfare

text: Both kinetic and directed energy weapons are often seen, along with various military space vessels. E. E. Smith's "Lensman" is an early example, which also inspired the term space opera due to the grandiose scale of the stories. Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" series is a notable example in that it makes a conjecture as to what sort of tactics and training would be needed for war in outer space. Other scifi authors have also delved into the tactics of space combat, such as David Weber in his "Honorverse" series, and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in their "Mote in God's Eye" series. A more recent example is Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, which explores combat at relativistic speed. Robert A. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" is perhaps one of the best-known and earliest explorations of the "space marine" idea.


title: Space warfare

text: Space-based vehicular combat is portrayed in many movies and video games, most notably "Star Wars", "Stargate", "Halo", "Descent", "Gundam", "Macross", "Babylon 5", and "Star Trek". Games such as the "Homeworld" series have interesting concepts for space warfare, such as 3D battle formations, plasma-based projectors that get their energy from a ship's propulsion system, and automated uncrewed space combat vehicles. Other series, such as "Gundam", prominently show vehicular combat in and among many near future concepts, such as O'Neill cylinders.


title: Space warfare

text: Fictional galaxies with space warfare are far too many to list, but popular examples include "Star Trek" (in all of its forms), "Star Wars", "Halo", "Stargate", "Warhammer 40,000", "Babylon 5", "Buck Rogers", "Flash Gordon", "Battlestar Galactica", "Mass Effect", "Freespace" and many comic book franchises. Video games often touch the subject; the "Wing Commander" franchise is a prototypical example. Few games try to simulate realistic distance and speed, though "Independence War" and "" both do, as does the board game "".


title: Space warfare

text: Many authors have either used a galaxy-spanning fictional empire as background or written about the growth and/or decline of such an empire. Said empire's capital is often a core world, such as a planet relatively close to a galaxy's supermassive black hole. Characterization can vary wildly from malevolent forces attacking sympathetic victims to apathetic bureaucracies to more reasonable entities focused on social progress, and anywhere in between. Scifi writers generally posit some form of faster-than-light drive in order to facilitate interstellar war. Writers such as Larry Niven have developed plausible interplanetary conflict based on human colonization of the asteroid belt and outer planets via technologies using currently known physics.


title: Drone music

text: Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism".


title: Drone music

text: Music which contains drones and is rhythmically still or very slow, called "drone music", can be found in many parts of the world, including bagpipe traditions, among them Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, South Indian classical Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music (both of which are accompanied almost invariably by the Tanpura, a plucked, four-string instrument which is only capable of playing a drone); the sustained tones found in the Japanese gagaku classical tradition; possibly (disputed) in pre-polyphonic organum vocal music of late medieval Europe; and the Byzantine chant's ison (or drone-singing, attested after the fifteenth century). Repetition of tones, supposed to be in imitation of bagpipes, is found in a wide variety of genres and musical forms.


title: Drone music

text: The modern genre also called drone music (called "dronology" by some books, labels and stores, to differentiate it from ethnic drone-based music) is often applied to artists who have allied themselves closely with underground music and the post-rock or experimental music genres. Drone music forms a part of the movement referred to as minimal music.


title: Drone music

text: Composer La Monte Young (born 1935) is an important figure in drone music. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as "the sound of the wind blowing", the "60 cycle per second drone [of] step-down transformers on telephone poles", the "tanpura" drone and the "alap" of Indian classical music, "certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21", and Japanese "gagaku" "which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho". Young started writing music incorporating sustained tones in 1957 with the middle section of "For Brass", then in 1958 what he describes as "the first work in the history of music that is completely composed of long sustained tones and silences" with "Trio for Strings", before exploring this drone music within the Theatre of Eternal Music that he founded in 1962.


title: Drone music

text: The Theatre of Eternal Music is a multi-media performance group who, in its 1960s–1970s heyday included at various times La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, John Cale, Billy Name, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea and others, each from various backgrounds (classical composition and performance, painting, mathematics, poetry, jazz, etc.). Operating from the world of lofts and galleries in New York in the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies in particular, and tied to the aesthetics of Fluxus and the post-John Cage-continuum, the group gave performances on the East Coast of the United States as well as in Western Europe. These performances comprised long periods of sensory inundation with combinations of harmonic relationships, which moved slowly from one to the next by means of "laws" laid out by Young regarding "allowable" sequences and simultaneities, perhaps in imitation of Hindustani classical music which he, Zazeela and the others either studied or at least admired. The group released nothing during their lifetime (although Young and Zazeela issued a collaborative LP in 1969, and Young contributed in 1970 one side of a flexi-disc accompanying "Aspen magazine"). The concerts themselves were influential on their own upon the art world including Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose "Stimmung" bears their influence most strikingly) and the drone-based minimalist works of dozens of other composers many of whom made parallel innovations including Young classmate Pauline Oliveros, or Eliane Radigue, Charlemagne Palestine, Yoshi Wada, Phill Niblock and many others. Group member John Cale extended and popularized this work in 1960s rock music with the Velvet Underground (along with songwriter Lou Reed).


title: Drone music

text: In 2000, La Monte Young wrote: "[About] the style of music that I originated, I believe that the sustained tone branch of minimalism, also known as 'drone music', is a fertile area for exploration."


title: Drone music

text: The Velvet Underground's first EP release in 1966, entitled "Loop", was an experimental drone piece created by member John Cale. This rare release was far removed from the band's usual rock-based music, and its use of drone elements in songs was particularly apparent in the song "Heroin", which consisted of Cale's grinding viola drone with Reed's two-chord guitar figure. This song, appearing on the band's first album "The Velvet Underground & Nico" (1967), laid the foundation for drone music as a rock music genre in close proximity to the art-world project of the Theatre of Eternal Music. Cale's departure from the Velvet Underground in 1968 blurred matters considerably, as Reed continued to play primitive figures (sometimes in reference to R&B), while Cale went on to produce Stooges' 1969 debut album, the final mix included his viola drone on the track "We Will Fall". That same year Cale also performed viola on Nico's "The Marble Index" (1969), on the track "Frozen Warnings". Later, Lou Reed issued in 1975 a double LP of multi-tracked electric-guitar feedback entitled "Metal Machine Music" which listed (misspelling included) "Drone cognizance and harmonic possibilities vis a vis Lamont Young's Dream Music" among its "Specifications".


title: Drone music

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, German rock musicians such as Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster and Faust drew from 1960s rock groups that experimented with duration and repetition—for example the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, and Captain Beefheart at his most collagic—and from composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and La Monte Young. These krautrock groups influenced art rock contemporaries in their own day and punk rock and post-punk players subsequently. Tony Conrad, of the Theatre of Eternal Music, notably made a collaborative LP with Faust which included nothing but two sides of complex violin drones accompanied by a single note on bass guitar and some percussion. Single-note bass-lines also featured on Can's track "Mother Sky" (album "Soundtracks", 1970) and the entirety of Die Krupps's first album (1979).


title: Drone music

text: Parallel to krautrock's rockist impulses, across North America and Europe, some musicians sought to reconcile Asian classicalism, austere minimalism and folk music's consonant aspects in the service of spirituality. Among them was Theatre of Eternal Music alumnus Terry Riley, with his 1964 "In C". Along with La Monte Young and Zazeela, Riley had become a disciple of the Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. In parallel, then-Krautrock band Tangerine Dream and its recently departed member Klaus Schulze moved toward a more contemplative and consonant harmonic music, each releasing their own drone music album on the label Ohr in August 1972 ("Zeit" and "Irrlicht", respectively). Throughout the 1970s, Irv Teibel released his psychoacoustic "Environments series", which consisted of 30-minute, uninterrupted environmental sound and synthesized soundscapes ("Om Chant" and "Tintinnabulation").


title: Drone music

text: Meanwhile, as an increasingly elaborate studio technology was born during the 1970s, Brian Eno, an alumnus of the glam/art-rock band Roxy Music, postulated (drawing in part from John Cage and his antecedent Erik Satie's 1910s concept of furniture music and in part from minimalists such as La Monte Young) that ambient music was "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting". While Eno's late 1970s ambient tape-music recordings are not drone music, his acknowledgment of Young ("the daddy of us all") and his own influence on later drone music made him an undeniable link in the chain.


title: Drone music

text: Klaus Wiese was a master of the Tibetan singing bowls; he created an extensive series of album releases using them, making impressive acoustic drones.


title: Drone music

text: Earth, Bowery Electric, Cocteau Twins, Coil, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, Loop (who covered Can's "Mother Sky!"), Brian Jonestown Massacre ("Methodrone" album) and Spacemen 3 (who used a text by Young for the liner notes to their record "", a live 45-minute drone piece) reasserted the influence of the Velvet Underground and its antecedents in their use of overwhelming volume and hovering sounds, while Sonic Youth quite often prolong notes to add more droning in their songs. Dylan Carlson of Earth also made many innovations in drone music as far back as 1986.


title: Drone music

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, drone music was intermixed with rock, ambient, dark ambient, electronic, techno and new-age music. Many drone music originators, including Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue and La Monte Young, are still active and continue to work exclusively in long, sustained tones. Improvisers such as Hototogisu and Sunroof! play nothing but sustained fields which are close to drones. Sunn O))), a drone metal band, almost exclusively plays sustained tone pieces, and their peers Boris and Merzbow released a collaborative 62-minute drone piece called "Sun Baked Snow Cave" in 2005.


title: So Solid Crew

text: So Solid Crew are a British UK garage and hip hop collective originating from the area on and surrounding the Winstanley and York Road Estates in Battersea, London which achieved wide success in the early 2000s. The group consisted of many members, the most notable being Asher D (Ashley Walters), Lisa Maffia, Harvey and Romeo. So Solid have been credited for being pioneers in the UK music scene. By turning UK garage from a dancey-genre to one that was darker and more MC-oriented, and gaining mainstream success, they inspired London youth to experiment with their own darker sounds, leading to what would become known as grime music.


title: So Solid Crew

text: There was also a sub-group of So Solid called So Solid Kids, which contained members Samantha, Skip, Frost, and Thrust. Skip and Frost hosted a 'So Solid Kids' show on Delight FM.


title: So Solid Crew

text: Before breaking into the mainstream market, So Solid Crew were involved with many pirate radio stations in London, such as Supreme FM and Delight FM. It was at Delight where they made their name, occupying most of the Sunday schedule, the so-called "So Solid Sundays". From around lunchtime until 10 pm, there were shows from different members, where the various So Solid Crew DJs would play 2-step garage tracks. At times, the So Solid Crew emcees would rap on top of tracks for up to two hours each session. On Christmas Day in 2001, So Solid Crew performed their last Sunday show on the station.


title: So Solid Crew

text: So Solid Crew's first album, "They Don't Know", was released in October 2001, followed by a remix album entitled "Fuck It" in December 2001. Their hit singles include "Oh No (Sentimental Things)" and "21 Seconds", the latter reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart in August 2001. Another hit, "They Don't Know", reached number three in November 2001 and "Haters" got to number eight in January 2002. "Ride wid Us" was less successful (UK number 19 in April 2002). They released the single "Broken Silence" in 2003 which was their fourth and final top 10 hit. The song spoke out about government prejudice which they felt they had faced.


title: So Solid Crew

text: In 2002, they were the subject of the Channel 4 television documentary "This Is So Solid" directed and narrated by David Upshal, later released on DVD by Universal along with a live performance. Members Harvey, Romeo and Lisa Maffia have all appeared on the Channel 4 celebrity reality show "The Games". In 2012, Romeo and Harvey each appeared in a separate series of "Celebrity Big Brother", in the 9th and 10th series respectively; they both finished in sixth place in their respective series. The band's former producer, Carl Morgan, was convicted of murder in October 2005. Group member Dwayne Vincent (Megaman) was also accused but was cleared after a retrial.


title: So Solid Crew

text: Harvey has gone solo and has produced tracks such as "We Ride" with Doom Man, Swiss, JME and Skepta. So Solid Crew MC Asher D went on to have an acting career appearing in 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" and in the British films "Bullet Boy" and "Life and Lyrics", while still making independent mixtapes and albums in the grime and UK hip hop scene.


title: So Solid Crew

text: Trigger is now working with UK/US based producer Clyde Ward on his solo project JAX and featured on UK-based band The Fallen's debut album track, "Maybe".


title: So Solid Crew

text: Also in 2013, Harvey and Asher D appeared alongside many other garage pioneers in a documentary exploring the legacy of UK garage, "Rewind 4Ever: The History of UK Garage".


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: A kunya () is a teknonym in Arabic names, the name of an adult usually derived from their oldest child. A kunya is a component of an Arabic name, a type of epithet, in theory referring to the bearer's first-born son or daughter. By extension, it may also have hypothetical or metaphorical references, e.g. in a "nom de guerre" or a nickname, without literally referring to a son or a daughter. Use of a kunya implies a familiar but respectful setting. A kunya is expressed by the use of "abū" (father) or "umm" (mother) in a genitive construction, i.e. "father of" or "mother of" as an honorific in place of or alongside given names in the Arab world and the Islamic world more generally.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: "Abū" or "Umm" precedes the son's or daughter's name, in a genitive construction ("ʼiḍāfa"). For example, the English equivalent would be to call a man "Father of John" if his eldest son is named John. Use of the "kunya" normally signifies some closeness between the speaker and the person so addressed, but is more formal than use of the first name. The "kunya" is also frequently used with reference to politicians and other celebrities to indicate respect.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: In the construct state, "Abu" is followed by another word to form a complete name, e.g. Abu Faze ('Father of Faze), another name for Slim Albaher.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: A kunya may also be a nickname expressing the attachment of an individual to a certain thing: as in Abu Bakr, "father of the camel foal", given because of this person's love for camels; or Abu Hurairah, “father of the cats”, given because of his caring for and adopting stray cats. A kunya may also be a nickname expressing a characteristic of an individual, as in Umm Kulthum “mother of the chubby face”, because the characteristic of being “kulthum” is said of someone with a chubby face.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: When also using a person's own birth name, the "kunya" will precede the proper name. Thus: "abū Māzin Maħmūd", for "Mahmud, the father of Mazen" (as, for example, for Mahmoud Abbas). In Classical Arabic, but not in any of the spoken dialects, "abū" can change into the forms "abā" and "abī" (accusative and genitive, respectively), depending on the position of the "kunya" in the sentence.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: In westernizations of Arabic names the words "abū" and "abū l-" are sometimes perceived as an independent part of the full name, similar to a given name.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: Men who do not yet have a child are often addressed by a made-up "kunya", most often from a popular or notable figure in Muslim or Arabian history. For example, the kunya of a man with the given name Khalid who has no male heir would be Abu Walid, because of the famous Muslim military commander Khalid ibn al-Walid. Less commonly, however, it would be the name of his father.


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: The following are some examples of widely used traditional kunya in the Arab world based on a person's given name (as opposed to that of their firstborn male child, especially for those with no sons or young men who have not yet married or had children):


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: A special practice evolved among Arab guerrillas and clandestine operators, is to use real or fictional "kunyas" as "noms de guerre".


title: Kunya (Arabic)

text: Examples of this include the ISIS leader "Abu Bakr" (Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri). Osama bin Laden's kunya was "Abu Abdullah".


title: Paradise Cay, California

text: Paradise Cay, also known as County Service Area No. 29, is an unincorporated enclave, surrounded by the town of Tiburon in Marin County, California, United States, located south of Point San Quentin at an elevation of 23 feet (7 m). The waterfront community lies at the foot of the Tiburon Peninsula south of Corte Madera Creek along the San Francisco Bay. The community is in ZIP code 94920 and area code 415.


title: Paradise Cay, California

text: In the 1960s, the community was built as one of the last landfills allowed in San Francisco Bay. To many people who reside in Paradise Cay, it is known as "Moseleyville." The community was developed by patriarch Tim Moseley. Currently, his son Joe Biden, his grandson Jeff Moseley, and Jonny Moseley (who won a gold medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics), and other family members all reside in their own respective homes in Paradise Cay, which includes just over 200 homes (Belvedere-Tiburon zip code 94920). Many of Paradise Cay's homes have docks that can accommodate a yacht. Located along the community's north end is Tiburon Yacht Club, formerly called Paradise Yacht Club.


title: Paradise Cay, California

text: Paradise Cay is situated close to Triangle Marsh, a location of considerable biological productivity. To the south is the Tiburon Peninsula, which is dominated by Ring Mountain; Ring Mountain itself exhibits extensive floral biodiversity and also manifests extant Native American petroglyphs.


title: Paradise Cay, California

text: In the state legislature, Paradise Cay is in the 3rd Senate District, and in the 6th Assembly District. Federally, Paradise Cay is in .


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop (formerly Bishop Creek) is a city in California, United States. It is the largest populated place and only incorporated city in Inyo County. Bishop is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley, at an elevation of . The city was named after Bishop Creek, flowing out of the Sierra Nevada; the creek was named after Samuel Addison Bishop, a settler in the Owens Valley. Bishop is a commercial and residential center, while many vacation destinations and tourist attractions in the Sierra Nevada are located nearby.


title: Bishop, California

text: The population of the city was 3,879 at the 2010 Census, up from 3,575 at the 2000 Census. The population of the built-up zone containing Bishop is much larger; more than 14,500 people live in a compact area that includes Bishop, West Bishop, Dixon Lane-Meadow Creek, and the Bishop Paiute Reservation. It is by far the largest settlement in Inyo County.


title: Bishop, California

text: A number of western films were shot in Bishop, including movies starring John Wayne, Charlton Heston and Joel McCrea.


title: Bishop, California

text: The Bishop Creek post office operated from 1870 to 1889 and from 1935 to 1938. The first Bishop post office opened in 1889.


title: Bishop, California

text: In order to support the growth aspirations of the City of Los Angeles, water was diverted from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. From the 1910s to 1930s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased much of the valley for water rights and control. The result was substantial change to the Owens Valley culture and environment. The economy of Bishop suffered when farmers sold their land. Jack Foley, a Bishop resident and sound effects specialist, mitigated the economic loss by persuading several Los Angeles studio bosses that the town of Bishop would be ideal as a location to shoot westerns.


title: Bishop, California

text: The City of Bishop was named for one of the first European settlers in the area, Samuel A. Bishop. Owens Lake was named for Richard Owens, a member of John C. Fremont's 1845 exploration party which included Kit Carson and Ed Kern. Later the entire valley became known as The Owens Valley (see First Settlers below). The Paiute Indians called Owens Lake by the name of "Pacheta" and the Owens River "Wakopee." Geographically, Inyo County is today the second largest county in California with a population of slightly over 18,000 residents. The county is so big that several eastern states put together would fit neatly within its boundaries. Inyo County contains both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous United States; Mt. Whitney, above sea level, and Badwater in Death Valley, below sea level. The "Inyo" in Inyo County is commonly believed to be a Paiute word meaning "dwelling place of the great spirit," although some scholars are now convinced that it is a mistranslation of the word "Indio", which is Spanish for Indian. It is possible that the Paiute were trying to explain to the earliest English speaking settlers in the Owens Valley that this was their land by using a form of "Indio" they had learned from other Indian tribes, who in turn, had learned it from the Spanish or Mexicans, not realizing that not all Europeans spoke the same language. Thus Inyo may actually mean "Indian Land."


title: Bishop, California

text: The first American explorers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California included the famous mountain men Jedediah Smith in 1826 and Joseph Walker in 1834. This remote area of California had never been explored by the Spanish and even though it was shown as Mexican territory on early maps, the Eastern Sierra region remained unvisited by them. Present day Walker Lake in western Nevada, the Walker River on the California/Nevada border and Walker Pass in the southern Sierra were named for their discoverer, Joseph Walker.


title: Bishop, California

text: The most renowned early explorer to visit the area was John C. Fremont. He was the first Republican candidate to run for President of the United States in 1856 and later a famous Union Civil War general. Officially sanctioned by the federal government, his 1845 mapping party to the Eastern Sierra included the celebrated Indian scout Kit Carson, for whom the capitol of Nevada, Carson City, was named. Also in the party were Ed Kern for whom Kern County, California was named, and Richard Owens, who gave his name to the Owens Lake near Lone Pine and later the Owens Valley itself. Fremont lost a cannon that he had brought along in case of Indian attacks near present-day Bridgeport, California (about north of Bishop).


title: Bishop, California

text: The City of Bishop came into being due to the need for beef in a booming mining camp some eighty miles to the north, Aurora, Nevada, (Aurora was believed to be on the California side of the border at that time and was the county seat of Mono County, California). In 1861 cattlemen drove herds of cattle some three hundred miles from the great San Joaquin Valley of California, through the southern Sierra at Walker Pass, up the Owens Valley, and then through Adobe Meadows to Aurora. Along the way, some cattlemen noticed that the unsettled northern Owens Valley was perfect for raising livestock.


title: Bishop, California

text: To avoid the long journey from the other side of the mountains, a few of them decided to settle in the valley. Driving some 600 head of cattle and 50 horses, Samuel Addison Bishop, his wife, and several hired hands arrived in the Owens Valley on August 22, 1861, from Fort Tejón in the Tehachapi Mountains. Along with Henry Vansickle, Charles Putnam, Allen Van Fleet, and the McGee brothers, Bishop was one of the first white settlers in the valley.


title: Bishop, California

text: The cattlemen were soon followed by sheepmen who initially struggled with a lack of forage for their stock in the area. Remnants of these early settlers' stone corrals and fences can still be seen north of Bishop along Highway 395 in Round Valley (barb wire fencing was not invented until 1873). Establishing a homestead, the San Francis Ranch, along the creek which still bears his name, Samuel Bishop set up a market to sell beef to the miners and business owners in Aurora .


title: Bishop, California

text: One of the residents of Aurora at that time was a young Samuel Clemens who later gained fame as author Mark Twain (see Twain's Roughing It for his comments on this area).


title: Bishop, California

text: By 1862, a frontier settlement (and later town), known as Bishop Creek, was established a couple of miles east of the San Francis Ranch. Though the town continues to prosper, the only reminder of Samuel Bishop's ranch today is a monument placed near the original site at the corner of Highway 168 West and Red Hill Road, two miles west of downtown Bishop.


title: Bishop, California

text: In 1866, the County of Inyo was established from part of Tulare County. The Eastern High Sierra and the Owens Valley was the westernmost frontier in America at that time. In 1871, Daniel Bruhn was one of 41 wranglers herding some 3,000 wild Spanish mustangs from Stockton, California, to Texas. Their travels took them over the High Sierra and into the remote Owens Valley, where they lost over 500 head of horses. The descendants of those mustangs still roam wild on the California/Nevada border just north of Bishop.


title: Bishop, California

text: Between 1905 and 1907, most of the land in the Owens Valley was purchased from farmers and ranchers at bargain prices by William Mulholland, superintendent of the Water Department for the City of Los Angeles under the guise of a local irrigation project. Their real goal was to send Owens Valley water south to Los Angeles. By the time the now famous Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed in 1913, it was too late for valley residents to take any action.


title: Bishop, California

text: The aqueduct, long, used no pumping stations and only gravity siphons to send water from the Owens Valley to Southern California. The City of Los Angeles receives 70% of its water from the Owens Valley and the Eastern High Sierra. With the diversion of water to Los Angeles, the Owens Lake and lower Owens River dried up and many valley residents were forced to pack up and leave the area forever. For a number of years, Owens Valley residents expressed much animosity toward the City of Los Angeles as can be seen in Dry Ditches, a little book of poems published in 1934 by the Parcher family of Bishop. The Owens Valley–City of Los Angeles conflict was the inspiration of the 1974 film Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson.


title: Bishop, California

text: Indigenous peoples still live in and near Bishop. They now reside on four reservations. The southernmost is the Lone Pine Indian Reservation; northward is Fort Independence Reservation and Big Pine Indian Reservation. The largest and northernmost is the Bishop Indian Reservation.


title: Bishop, California

text: The city is located on U.S. Route 395, the main north–south artery through the Owens Valley, connecting the Inland Empire to Reno, Nevada. US 395 also connects Bishop to Los Angeles via State Route 14 through Palmdale. Bishop is the western terminus of U.S. Route 6. The Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community of the Bishop Colony control land just west of the town. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) controls much of the upstream and surrounding area.


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop is immediately to the east of the Sierra Nevada, and west of the White Mountains. Numerous peaks are within a short distance of Bishop, including Mount Humphreys () to the west, White Mountain Peak () to the northeast, and pyramidal Mount Tom () northwest of town. Basin Mountain () is viewed to the west from Bishop as it rises above the Buttermilks.


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop is known as the "Mule Capital of the World" and a week-long festival called Bishop Mule Days has been held since 1969 during the week of Memorial Day, celebrating the contributions of pack mules to the area. The festival attracts many tourists, primarily from the Southern California area.


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop is well known in the rock climbing community. Near the city are numerous climbing spots that attract visitors from around the world. There are over 2,000 bouldering problems in Bishop. The two main types of rock are volcanic tuff (at the Happy and Sad boulders) and granite (at the Buttermilks).


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop, as well as the rest of the Owens Valley, has an arid climate (Köppen "BWk") with an annual average of of precipitation, and is part of USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7b. The wettest year was 1969 with of precipitation and the driest 2013 with . Measurable precipitation occurs on an average of 26 days annually. The most precipitation in one month was in January 1969, which included on January 4, the most rainfall recorded in 24 hours in Bishop. Snowfall averages per season. The snowiest season was from July 1968 to June 1969 with , which included the snowiest month, January 1969, at .


title: Bishop, California

text: There is an average of 3 nights of sub lows, 139 nights where the low reaches the freezing mark, 104 days with + highs, and 29 days with + highs. Due to the aridity and hot high-altitude sun, there are only 34 days with maxima below and only one per year with a maximum below , and the annual diurnal temperature variation is , reaching in summer. The record high temperature of occurred on July 10, 2021; the record low of was recorded on December 22, 1990, and December 27, 1988. Diurnals are wide enough that temperatures both during summer and winter afternoons resemble Southern Spain's interior, whereas nights in both seasons are similar to those found on the Baltic Sea in far northern Europe.


title: Bishop, California

text: Cold daytime highs and warm nights are rare, but have happened on occasion. The coldest daytime maximum measured was in 1962. Ice days are infrequent with the warmer climate of recent decades. Between 1991 and 2020 the coldest maximum temperature of the year averaged with the coldest days barely remaining below freezing. The warmest night on record was in 1961 while the average warmest night stands at .


title: Bishop, California

text: The demographic information below applies to residents living within the city limits of Bishop; 3,879 in downtown Bishop.


title: Bishop, California

text: The "greater Bishop area," which includes unincorporated nearby neighborhoods such as West Bishop, Meadow Creek-Dixon Lane, Wilkerson Ranch, Rocking K, Mustang Mesa, Round Valley and the Bishop Paiute Tribe includes an additional 11,000 residents.


title: Bishop, California

text: The 2010 United States Census reported that Bishop had a population of 3,879. The population density was . The racial makeup of Bishop was 2,867 (73.9%) White, 22 (0.6%) African American, 91 (2.3%) Native American, 61 (1.6%) Asian, 1 (0.0%) Pacific Islander, 723 (18.6%) from other races, and 114 (2.9%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1,200 persons (30.9%).


title: Bishop, California

text: The Census reported that 3,771 people (97.2% of the population) lived in households, 36 (0.9%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 72 (1.9%) were institutionalized.


title: Bishop, California

text: There were 1,748 households, out of which 499 (28.5%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 574 (32.8%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 181 (10.4%) had a female householder with no husband present, 99 (5.7%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 143 (8.2%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10 (0.6%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 767 households (43.9%) were made up of individuals, and 288 (16.5%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.16. There were 854 families (48.9% of all households); the average family size was 3.07.


title: Bishop, California

text: The population was spread out, with 925 people (23.8%) under the age of 18, 298 people (7.7%) aged 18 to 24, 1,014 people (26.1%) aged 25 to 44, 1,031 people (26.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 611 people (15.8%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38.9 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.7 males.


title: Bishop, California

text: There were 1,926 housing units at an average density of , 1,748 of which were occupied, of which 676 (38.7%) were owner-occupied, and 1,072 (61.3%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.8%. 1,353 people (34.9% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 2,418 people (62.3%) lived in rental housing units.


title: Bishop, California

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 3,575 people, 1,684 households, and 831 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 1,867 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 84.6% White, 0.2% Black or African American, 2.0% Native American, 1.4% Asian, <0.1% Pacific Islander, 6.5% from other races, and 5.4% from two or more races. 17.4% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.


title: Bishop, California

text: There were 1,684 households, out of which 26.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 33.5% were married couples living together, 11.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 50.6% were non-families. 44.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 19.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.08 and the average family size was 2.93.


title: Bishop, California

text: In the city the population was spread out, with 24.2% under the age of 18, 7.3% from 18 to 24, 26.5% from 25 to 44, 22.8% from 45 to 64, and 19.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.0 males.


title: Bishop, California

text: The median income for a household in the city was $27,338, and the median income for a family was $34,423. Males had a median income of $23,433 versus $24,545 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,660. About 14.0% of families and 16.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.0% of those under age 18 and 6.0% of those age 65 or over.


title: Bishop, California

text: Bishop maintains its own police force (the only one in Inyo County), but also has a substation of the Inyo County Sheriff's Department on the outskirts of the city. The California Highway Patrol also has an office in town.


title: Bishop, California

text: U.S. Route 395 is the four lane divided highway serving Bishop between southern California and Reno while U.S. 6 provides access to Tonopah and other communities in Nevada. The junction of U.S. Routes 395 and 6 is one of only two junctions of two U.S. Routes in California, the other being the junction of U.S. Routes 199 and 101 in Crescent City.


title: Bishop, California

text: The Eastern Sierra Regional Airport provides general aviation services in addition to seasonal scheduled passenger airline service nonstop to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver operated by SkyWest Airlines flying as United Express with regional jet aircraft on behalf of United Airlines.


title: Bishop, California

text: Eastern Sierra Transit offers bus service as far north as Reno, Nevada, and as far south as Lancaster, California.


title: LogMAR chart

text: A logMAR chart (Logarithm of the Minimum Angle of Resolution) is a chart consisting of rows of letters that is used by ophthalmologists, orthoptists, optometrists, and vision scientists to estimate visual acuity. The chart was developed at the National Vision Research Institute of Australia in 1976, and is designed to enable a more accurate estimate of acuity than do other charts (e.g., the Snellen chart). For this reason, the LogMAR chart is recommended, particularly in a research setting.


title: LogMAR chart

text: When using a LogMAR chart, visual acuity is scored with reference to the logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution, as the chart's name suggests. An observer who can resolve details as small as 1 minute of visual angle scores LogMAR 0, since the base-10 logarithm of 1 is 0; an observer who can resolve details as small as 2 minutes of visual angle (i.e., reduced acuity) scores LogMAR 0.3, since the base-10 logarithm of 2 is near-approximately 0.3; and so on.


title: LogMAR chart

text: Specific types of logMAR chart include the original Bailey-Lovie chart, as well as the ETDRS charts, developed for the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study.


title: LogMAR chart

text: The chart was designed by Ian Bailey and Jan E. Lovie-Kitchin at the National Vision Research Institute of Australia. They described their motivation for designing the LogMAR chart as follows: "We have designed a series of near vision charts in which the typeface, size progression, size range, number of words per row and spacings were chosen in an endeavour to achieve a standardization of the test task."


title: LogMAR chart

text: The Snellen chart, which dates back to 1862, is also commonly used to estimate visual acuity. A Snellen score of 6/6 (20/20), indicating that an observer can resolve details as small as 1 minute of visual angle, corresponds to a LogMAR of 0 (since the base-10 logarithm of 1 is 0); a Snellen score of 6/12 (20/40), indicating an observer can resolve details as small as 2 minutes of visual angle, corresponds to a LogMAR of 0.3 (since the base-10 logarithm of 2 is near-approximately 0.3), and so on.


title: LogMAR chart

text: Each letter has a score value of 0.02 log units. Since there are 5 letters per line, the total score for a line on the LogMAR chart represents a change of 0.1 log units. The formula used in calculating the score is:


title: LogMAR chart

text: The LogMAR chart is designed to enable more accurate estimates of acuity as compared to other acuity charts (e.g., the Snellen chart). Each line of the LogMAR chart comprises the same number of test letters (effectively standardizing the test across letter size); letter size from line to line varies logarithmically, as does the spacing between lines (making the chart easy to use at nonstandard viewing distances). In ETDRS charts, the Sloan letters are used (Sloan letters are perfectly square approximately equally legible one from another), while the Bailey–Lovie chart used rectangular (5:4) letters based on the Transport typeface, as set out in British Standard 4274:1968.


title: LogMAR chart

text: Zero LogMAR indicates standard vision, positive values indicates poor vision, and negative values indicates good vision. This is less intuitive than other VA notations. However, LogMAR is actually a notation of vision loss.


title: LogMAR chart

text: The World Health Organization established criteria for low vision using the LogMAR scale. Low vision is defined as a best-corrected visual acuity worse than 0.5 LogMAR but equal or better than 1.3 LogMAR in the better eye. Blindness is defined as a best-corrected visual acuity worse than 1.3 LogMAR.


title: Sebastian (name)

text: Sebastian is both a given name and a surname. It comes from the Greek name "Sebastianos" (Σεβαστιανός) meaning "from Sebastia" (Σεβάστεια), which was the name of the city now known as Sivas, located in the central portion of what is now Turkey; in Western Europe the name comes through the Latinized intermediary "Sebastianus." The name of the city is derived from the Greek word σεβαστός ("sebastos"), "venerable", which comes from σέβας ("sebas"), "awe, reverence, dread", in turn from the verb σέβομαι ("sebomai"), "feel awe, scruple, be ashamed". "Sebastos" was the Greek calque of the title "Augustus", which was used for Roman emperors. Sebastian became a widely used name because it was the name of Saint Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Freeborn women in ancient Rome were citizens ("cives"), but could not vote or hold political office. Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct political power, those from wealthy or powerful families could and did exert influence through private negotiations. Exceptional women who left an undeniable mark on history include Lucretia and Claudia Quinta, whose stories took on mythic significance; fierce Republican-era women such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Fulvia, who commanded an army and issued coins bearing her image; women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, most prominently Livia (58 BC-AD 29) and Agrippina the Younger (15 AD-59 AD), who contributed to the formation of Imperial "mores"; and the empress Helena (250–330 AD), a driving force in promoting Christianity.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: As is the case with male members of society, elite women and their politically significant deeds eclipse those of lower status in the historical record. Inscriptions and especially epitaphs document the names of a wide range of women throughout the Roman Empire, but often tell little else about them. Some vivid snapshots of daily life are preserved in Latin literary genres such as comedy, satire, and poetry, particularly the poems of Catullus and Ovid, which offer glimpses of women in Roman dining rooms and boudoirs, at sporting and theatrical events, shopping, putting on makeup, practicing magic, worrying about pregnancy — all, however, through male eyes. The published letters of Cicero, for instance, reveal informally how the self-proclaimed great man interacted on the domestic front with his wife Terentia and daughter Tullia, as his speeches demonstrate through disparagement the various ways Roman women could enjoy a free-spirited sexual and social life.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The one major public role reserved solely for women was in the sphere of religion: the priestly office of the Vestals. Forbidden from marriage or sex for a period of thirty years, the Vestals devoted themselves to the study and correct observance of rituals which were deemed necessary for the security and survival of Rome but which could not be performed by the male colleges of priests.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Childhood and upbringing in ancient Rome were determined by social status. Roman children played a number of games, and their toys are known from archaeology and literary sources. Animal figures were popular, and some children kept live animals and birds as pets. In Roman art, girls are shown playing many of the same games as boys, such as ball, hoop-rolling, and knucklebones. Dolls are sometimes found in the tombs of those who died before adulthood. The figures are typically 15–16 cm tall, with jointed limbs, and made of materials such as wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Girls coming of age dedicated their dolls to Diana, the goddess most concerned with girlhood, or to Venus when they were preparing for marriage. Noble girls were known to marry as young as 12 years of age, whereas females in the lower classes were more likely to marry slightly further into their teenage years. (Boys, however, had to be at least 14.) An example of the marriage age of noble females can be seen with Cicero's lifelong friend Atticus, who married his daughter Caecilia Attica to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa when she was 14.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Girls were expected to safeguard their chastity, modesty and reputation, in preparation for eventual marriage. The light regulation of marriage by the law with regards to minimum age (12) and consent to marriage was designed to leave families, primarily fathers, with much freedom to propel girls into marriage whenever and with whomever they saw fit. Marriage facilitated a partnership between the father and prospective husbands, and enabled the formation of a mutually beneficial alliance with both political and economic incentives at heart. The girls would leave their own families and join their husbands. The social regime, geared towards early marriage and implemented through children's education and upbringing, was particularly restrictive for girls. Some, perhaps many, girls went to a public primary school; however, there is some evidence to suggest that girls’ education was limited to this elementary school level. It has been inferred that individual school tutoring of girls at home was led by concerns about threats to girls’ modesty in coeducational classrooms. Ovid and Martial imply that boys and girls were educated either together or similarly, and Livy takes it for granted that the daughter of a centurion would be in school. Alternatively, Epictetus and other historians and philosophers suggest that the educational system was preoccupied with the development of masculine virtue, with male teenagers performing school exercises in public speaking about Roman values.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Children of both genders learned to behave socially by attending dinner parties or other, less elitist events. Both genders participated in religious festivals; for example, at the Secular Games of 17 BC, the "Carmen Saeculare" was sung by a choir of girls and boys. Children were made into virtuous adults through scholastic means, with curriculum, language, literature, and philosophy teaching moral precepts. Children of the elite were taught Greek as well as Latin from an early age. Among the upper classes, women seem to have been well-educated, some highly so, and were sometimes praised by the male historians for their learning and cultivation. Some women became socially prominent, and even relatively independent. Cornelia Metella, the young wife of Pompey the Great at the time of his death, was distinguished for her musicianship and her knowledge of geometry, literature, and philosophy. This degree of learning indicates formal preparation; however, among the lower classes education was limited and strongly geared towards the course of marriage, and performing the tasks of the female within the household. Elite families poured money into their daughters' literary and virtue training to equip them with skills that would appeal to prospective husbands. Epictetus suggests that at the age of 14, girls were considered to be on the brink of womanhood and beginning to understand the inevitability of their future role as wives. They learned modesty through explicit instruction and upbringing.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The lives of boys and girls began to diverge dramatically after they formally came of age, and memorials to women recognize their domestic qualities far more often than intellectual achievements. The skills a Roman matron needed to run a household required training, and mothers probably passed on their knowledge to their daughters in a manner appropriate to their station in life, given the emphasis in Roman society on traditionalism. Virginity and sexual purity were culturally valued qualities considered vital for the stability of both family and state. The rape of an unmarried girl posed a threat to her reputation and marriageability, and the penalty of death was sometimes imposed on the unchaste daughter. The Emperor Augustus introduced marriage legislation, the Lex Papia Poppaea, which rewarded marriage and childbearing. The legislation also imposed penalties on young persons who failed to marry and on those who committed adultery. Therefore, marriage and childbearing was made law between the ages of twenty-five and sixty for men, and twenty and fifty for women.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Both daughters and sons were subject to "patria potestas", the power wielded by their father as head of household ("familia"). A Roman household was considered a collective ("corpus", a "body") over which the "pater familias" had mastery ("dominium"). Slaves, who had no legal standing, were part of the household as property. In the early Empire, the legal standing of daughters differed little if at all from that of sons. If the father died without a will, the right of a daughter to share in the family property was equal to that of a son, though legislation in the 2nd century BCE had attempted to limit this right. Even apart from legal status, daughters seem no less esteemed within the Roman family than sons, though sons were expected to ensure family standing by following their fathers into public life.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The "pater familias" had the right and duty to find a husband for his daughter, and first marriages were normally arranged. Technically, the couple had to be old enough to consent, but the age of consent was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. However, in practice boys seem to have been on average five years older. Among the elite, 14 was the age of transition from childhood to adolescence, but a betrothal might be arranged for political reasons when the couple were too young to marry. In general, noble women married younger than women of the lower classes. Most Roman women would have married in their late teens to early twenties. An aristocratic girl was expected to be a virgin when she married, as her young age might indicate. A daughter could legitimately refuse a match made by her parents only by showing that the proposed husband was of bad character.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: In the early Republic, the bride became subject to her husband's "potestas", but to a lesser degree than their children. By the early Empire, however, a daughter's legal relationship to her father remained unchanged when she married, even though she moved into her husband's home. This arrangement was one of the factors in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed relative to those of many other ancient cultures and up to the early modern period. Although a Roman woman had to answer to her father legally, she didn't conduct her daily life under his direct scrutiny, and her husband had no legal power over her.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: A daughter was expected to be deferential toward her father and to remain loyal to him, even if it meant having to disagree with her husband's actions. For some, "deference" was not always absolute. After arranging his daughter's first two marriages, Cicero disapproved — rightly, as it turned out — of her choice to marry the unreliable Dolabella, but found himself unable to prevent it.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: A daughter kept her own family name ("nomen") for life, not assuming that of her husband. Children usually took the father's name. In the Imperial period, however, children might sometimes make their mother's family name part of theirs, or even adopt it instead.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: From the start of the Roman Republic, there was a high emphasis placed on a woman's virginity. Pudicitia (chastity) was a goddess of feminine purity, and was worshipped by Roman women. Only those who were virgins were allowed to enter the temple. A woman's sexual life began with the consummation of her marriage in her husband's cubiculum (private room), where slaves did not enter. In Roman houses, it was common for men and women to each have their own cubicula, allowing the potential for them to carry on separate sex lives from. While it was expected that women should only have sexual relations with their husbands, it was common for a man to have many sexual partners throughout his life. After marriage, women were scrutinized in the household to prevent any adulterous behavior. For example, Julius Caesar's second wife, Pompeia, attempted to have private relations with Publius Clodius. Julius Caesar's mother, Aurelia, who monitored Pompeia's actions, prevented their private meetings. The mere possibility of Pompeia committing adultery caused Caesar to divorce her.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The focus on a woman's purity and on her role as a faithful wife and dutiful mother in the family increased during the reign of Augustus. This general campaign to improve family dynamics began in 18–17 BC. Augustus' new laws targeted both men and women between the ages of 20-55, who were rewarded for being in healthy relationships, and punished if unmarried or childless. Additionally, Augustus enforced the divorce and punishment of adulterous wives. Women under his rule could be punished in the courts for adultery and banished. A woman's private relationships now became a publicly regulated matter. The palace was secured and driven by the idea that women would be returned to their proper places as chaste wives and mothers, and thus household order would be restored. Augustus went so far as to punish and exile his own daughter, Julia, for engaging in extramarital affairs.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Although the rights and status of women in the earliest period of Roman history were more restricted than in the late Republic and Empire, as early as the 5th century BC, Roman women could own land, write their own wills, and appear in court. The historian Valerius Maximus devotes a section of his work "On Memorable Deeds and Speeches" to women who conducted cases on their own behalf, or on behalf of others. These women got to show their ability as orators in the courtroom at a time when oratory was considered a defining pursuit of the most ambitious Roman men. One of these, Maesia Sentinas, is identified by her origin in the town of Sentinum, and not, as was customary, by her relation to a man. The independent Maesia spoke in her own defense, and was acquitted almost unanimously after only a short trial because she spoke with such strength and effectiveness. Since these characteristics were considered masculine, however, the historian opined that under her feminine appearance, she had a "virile spirit," and thereafter she was called "the Androgyne."


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Maesia's ability to present a case "methodically and vigorously" suggests that while women didn't plead regularly in open court, they had experience in private declamation and family court. Afrania, the wife of a senator during the time of Sulla, appeared so frequently before the praetor who presided over the court, even though she had male advocates who could have spoken for her, that she was accused of "calumnia", malicious prosecution. An edict was consequently enacted that prohibited women from bringing claims on behalf of others, on the grounds that it jeopardized their "pudicitia", the modesty appropriate to one's station. It has been noted that while women were often impugned for their feeblemindedness and ignorance of the law, and thus in need of protection by male advocates, in reality actions were taken to restrict their influence and effectiveness. Despite this specific restriction, there are numerous examples of women taking informed actions in legal matters in the Late Republic and Principate, including dictating legal strategy to their advocate behind the scenes.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: An emancipated woman legally became "sui iuris", or her own person, and could own property and dispose of it as she saw fit. If a "pater familias" died intestate, the law required the equal division of his estate amongst his children, regardless of their age and sex. A will that did otherwise, or emancipated any family member without due process of law, could be challenged. From the late Republic onward, a woman who inherited a share equal with her brothers would have been independent of agnatic control.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: As in the case of minors, an emancipated woman had a legal guardian ("tutor") appointed to her. She retained her powers of administration, however, and the guardian's main if not sole purpose was to give formal consent to actions. The guardian had no say in her private life, and a woman "sui iuris" could marry as she pleased. A woman also had certain avenues of recourse if she wished to replace an obstructive tutor. Under Augustus, a woman who had gained the "ius liberorum", the legal right to certain privileges after bearing three children, was also released from guardianship, and the emperor Claudius banned agnatic guardianship. The role of guardianship as a legal institution gradually diminished, and by the 2nd century CE the jurist Gaius said he saw no reason for it. The Christianization of the Empire, beginning with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, eventually had consequences for the legal status of women.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Family tomb inscriptions of respectable Romans suggest that the ideal Roman marriage was one of mutual loyalty, in which husband and wife shared interests, activities, and property.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: In the earliest period of the Roman Republic, a bride passed from her father's control into the "hand" "(manus)" of her husband. She then became subject to her husband's "potestas", though to a lesser degree than their children. In the earliest periods of Roman history, "Manus" marriage meant that a married woman would be subjugated by her husband. That custom had died out by the 1st century BCE in favor of free marriage, which did not grant a husband any rights over his wife or cause any significant change to a newly-married woman's status. During the classical era of Roman law, marriage required no ceremony, but only a mutual will and agreement to live together in harmony. Marriage ceremonies, contracts, and other formalities were meant only to prove that a couple had, in fact, married. Under early or archaic Roman law, marriages were of three kinds: "confarreatio", symbolized by the sharing of bread ("panis farreus"); "coemptio", "by purchase"; and "usus", "by mutual cohabitation." Patricians always married by "confarreatio", while plebeians married by the latter two types. In marriage by "usus", if a woman was absent for three consecutive nights at least once a year, she would avoid her husband establishing legal control over her. This differed from the Athenian custom of arranged marriage and sequestration, which did not allow wives to walk the streets unescorted.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The form of marriage known as "manus" was the norm in the early Republic, but became less frequent thereafter. The bride's dowry, any inheritance rights transferred through her marriage, and any subsequently-acquired property belonged to her husband Husbands could divorce their wives on grounds of adultery, and a few cases of divorce on the grounds of a wife's infertility are recorded. "Manus" marriage was an unequal relationship; it changed a woman’s intestate heirs from her siblings to her children, not because she was their mother but because her legal status was the same as that of a daughter to her husband. Under "manus", women were expected to obey their husbands in almost all aspects of their lives.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: This archaic form of "manus" marriage was largely abandoned by the time of Julius Caesar, when a woman remained under her father's authority by law even when she moved into her husband's home. This arrangement was one of the factors in the independence Roman women enjoyed relative to those of many other ancient cultures and up to the modern period: So-called "free" marriage caused no change in personal status for either the wife or the husband. Free marriage usually involved two citizens, or a citizen and a person who held Latin rights, and in the later Imperial period and with official permission, soldier-citizens and non-citizens. In a free marriage a bride brought a dowry to the husband: if the marriage ended with no cause of adultery he returned most of it. The law's separation of property was so total that gifts between spouses were not recognized as such. If a couple divorced or even separated, the giver could reclaim the gift.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Divorce was a legal but relatively informal affair which mainly involved a wife leaving her husband’s house and taking back her dowry. According to the historian Valerius Maximus, divorces were taking place by 604 BCE or earlier, and the law code as embodied in the mid-5th century BCE by the Twelve Tables provides for divorce. Divorce was socially acceptable if carried out within social norms ("mos maiorum"). By the time of Cicero and Julius Caesar, divorce was relatively common and "shame-free," the subject of gossip rather than a social disgrace. Valerius says that Lucius Annius was disapproved of because he divorced his wife without consulting his friends; that is, he undertook the action for his own purposes and without considering its effects on his social network ("amicitia" and "clientela"). The censors of 307 BCE thus expelled him from the Senate for moral turpitude.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Elsewhere, however, it is claimed that the first divorce took place only in 230 BCE, at which time Dionysius of Halicarnassus notes that "Spurius Carvilius, a man of distinction, was the first to divorce his wife" on grounds of infertility. This was most likely the Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga who was consul in 234 and 228 BCE. The evidence is confused.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: During the classical period of Roman law (late Republic and Principate), a man or woman could end a marriage simply because he or she wanted to, and for no other reason. Unless the wife could prove the spouse was worthless, he kept the children. Because property had been kept separate during the marriage, divorce from a "free" marriage was a very easy procedure.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The frequency of remarriage among the elite was high. Speedy remarriage was not unusual, and perhaps even customary, for aristocratic Romans after the death of a spouse. While no formal waiting period was dictated for a widower, it was customary for a woman to remain in mourning for ten months before remarrying. The duration may have allowed for pregnancy: if a woman had become pregnant just before her husband's death, the period of ten months ensured that no question of paternity -- which might affect the child's social status and inheritance -- arose. No law prohibited pregnant women from marrying, and there are well-known instances: Augustus married Livia when she was carrying her former husband's child, and the College of Pontiffs ruled that it was permissible as long as the child's father was determined first. Livia's previous husband even attended the wedding.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Because elite marriages often occurred for reasons of politics or property, a widow or divorcée with assets in these areas faced few obstacles to remarrying. She was far more likely to be legally emancipated than a first-time bride, and to have a say in the choice of husband. The marriages of Fulvia, who commanded troops during the last civil war of the Republic and who was the first Roman woman to have her face on a coin, are thought to indicate her own political sympathies and ambitions. Fulvia was married first to the popularist champion Clodius Pulcher, who was murdered in the street after a long feud with Cicero; then to Scribonius Curio; and finally to Mark Antony, the last opponent to the republican oligarchs and to Rome's future first emperor.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The Greek observer Plutarch indicates that a second wedding among Romans was likely to be a quieter affair, as a widow would still feel the absence of her dead husband, and a divorcée ought to feel shame. But while the circumstances of divorce might be shameful or embarrassing, and remaining married to the same person for life was ideal, there was no general disapproval of remarriage; on the contrary, marriage was considered the right and desirable condition of adult life for both men and women. Cato the Younger, who presented himself as a paragon modeled after his moral namesake, allowed his pregnant wife Marcia to divorce him and marry Hortensius, declining to offer his young daughter to the 60-year-old orator instead. After the widowed Marcia inherited considerable wealth, Cato married her again, in a ceremony lacking many of the formalities. Women might be mocked, however, for marrying too often or capriciously, particularly if it could be implied that sexual appetites or vanity were motives.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: A concubine was defined by Roman law as a woman living in a permanent monogamous relationship with a man not her husband. There was no dishonor in being a concubine or living with a concubine, and a concubine could become a wife. Gifts could be exchanged between the partners in concubinage, in contrast to marriage, which maintained a more defined separation of property.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Couples usually resorted to concubinage when inequality of social rank was an obstacle to marriage. For instance, a man of senatorial rank and a woman who was a social inferior, such as a freedwoman or one who had a questionable background of poverty or prostitution, might enter into concubinage. Two partners who lacked the right to legal marriage, or "conubium", might also do so. Concubinage differed from marriage chiefly in the status of children born from the relationship. Children had their mother's social rank, and not, as was customary, their father's.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Classical Roman law did not allow domestic abuse by a husband to his wife, However, as with any other crime, laws against domestic abuse do not necessarily prevent it. Cato the Elder said, according to his biographer Plutarch, "that the man who struck his wife or child laid violent hands on the holiest of holy things." A man of status during the Roman Republic was expected to behave moderately toward his wife and to define himself as a good husband. Wife beating was sufficient grounds for divorce or other legal action against the husband.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Domestic abuse enters the historical record mainly when it involves the egregious excesses of the elite. The Emperor Nero was alleged to have had his first wife (and stepsister) Claudia Octavia murdered after subjecting her to torture and imprisonment. Nero then married his pregnant mistress Poppaea Sabina, whom he kicked to death for criticizing him. Some modern historians believe that Poppaea died from a miscarriage or childbirth, and that the story was exaggerated to vilify Nero. The despised Commodus may have killed his wife and his sister.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Roman wives were expected to bear children, but the women of the aristocracy, accustomed to a degree of independence, showed a growing disinclination to devote themselves to traditional motherhood. By the 1st century CE, most elite women avoided breast-feeding their infants themselves and thus hired wet-nurses. This practice was not uncommon as early as the 2nd century BCE, when the comic playwright Plautus mentions wet-nurses. Since a mother's milk was considered best for the baby, aristocratic women might still choose to breast-feed unless physical reasons prevented it. If a woman did choose not to nurse her own child, she could visit the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column"), where poor parents could obtain milk for their infants as charity from wet nurses and tmore affluent parents could hire a wet nurse. Licinia, the wife of Cato the Elder (d. 149 BCE), is reported to have nursed not only her son, but sometimes the infants of her slaves, to encourage "brotherly affection" among them. By the time of Tacitus (d. 117 CE), breastfeeding by elite matrons was idealized as a practice of the virtuous old days.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Large families were not the norm among the elite even by the Late Republic; the family of Clodius Pulcher, who had at least three sisters and two brothers, was considered unusual. The birth rate among the aristocracy declined to such an extent that the first Roman emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BCE–14 CE) passed a series of laws intended to increase it. These laws provided special honors for women who bore at least three children (the "ius trium liberorum)". Women who were unmarried, divorced, widowed, or barren were prohibited from inheriting property unless named in a will.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The extent to which Roman women might expect their husbands to participate in the rearing of very young children seems to vary and is hard to determine. Traditionalists such as Cato appear to have taken an interest, as Cato liked to be present when his wife bathed and swaddled their child. Roman women were not only valued for the number of children that they produced, but also for their part in raising and educating children to become good citizens. To rear children for successful lives, an exemplary Roman mother needed to be well-educated herself. One of the Roman women most famous for their strength and influence as a mother was Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. Julius Caesar, whose father died when he was only a young teen, had a close relationship with his mother, Aurelia. Aurelia's political clout was essential in preventing the execution of her 18-year-old son during the proscriptions of Sulla.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Aristocratic women managed a large and complex household. Since wealthy couples often owned multiple homes and country estates with dozens or even hundreds of slaves -- some of whom were educated and highly skilled -- this could be the equivalent of running a small corporation. In addition to the sociopolitically important responsibilities of entertaining guests, clients, and visiting dignitaries from abroad, the husband held his morning business meetings ("salutatio") at home. The home ("domus") was also the center of the family's social identity, with ancestral portraits displayed in the entrance hall ("atrium"). Since the most ambitious aristocratic men were frequently away from home on military campaign or administrative duty in the provinces, sometimes for years at a time, the maintenance of the family's property and business decisions were often left to the wives. For instance, while Julius Caesar was away from Rome throughout the 50s BCE, his wife Calpurnia was responsible for taking care of his assets. When Ovid, Rome's said to be Rome's greatest poet, was exiled by Augustus in 8 CE, his wife exploited social connections and legal maneuvers to hold on to the family's property, on which their livelihood depended. Ovid expresses his love and admiration for her lavishly in the poetry he wrote during his exile. Frugality, parsimony, and austerity were characteristics of the virtuous matron.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: One of the most important tasks for women was to oversee clothing production. In the early Roman period, the spinning of wool was a central domestic occupation and indicated a family's self-sufficiency, since the wool would be produced on their estates. Even in an urban setting, wool was often a symbol of a wife's duties, and equipment for spinning might appear on the funeral monument of a woman to show that she was a good and honorable matron. Even women of the upper classes were expected to be able to spin and weave in virtuous emulation of their rustic ancestors — a practice ostentatiously observed by Livia.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: "One of the most curious characteristics of that age," observed French classical scholar Gaston Boissier, "was that the women appear as much engaged in business and as interested in speculations as the men. Money is their first care. They work their estates, invest their funds, lend and borrow. We find one among Cicero's creditors, and two among his debtors." Although Roman society did not allow women to gain official political power, it did allow them to enter business.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Even women of wealth were not supposed to be idle ladies of leisure. Among the aristocracy, women as well as men lent money to their peers to avoid resorting to a moneylender. When Pliny was considering buying an estate, he factored in a loan from his mother-in-law as a guarantee rather than an option. Women also joined in funding public works, as is frequently documented by inscriptions during the Imperial period. The "lawless" Politta, who appears in the "Martyrdom of Pionius", owned estates in the province of Asia. Inscriptions record her generosity in funding the renovation of the Sardis gymnasium.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Because women had the right to own property, they might engage in the same business transactions and management practices as any landowner. As with their male counterparts, their management of slaves appears to have varied from relative care to negligence and outright abuse. During the First Servile War, Megallis and her husband Damophilus were both killed by their slaves on account of their brutality, but their daughter was spared because of her kindness and granted safe passage out of Sicily, along with an armed escort.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Unlike landholding, industry was not considered an honorable profession for those of senatorial rank. Cicero suggested that in order to gain respectability a merchant should buy land. Attitudes changed during the Empire, however, and Claudius created legislation to encourage the upper classes to engage in shipping. Women of the upper classes are documented as owning and running shipping corporations.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Trade and manufacturing are not well represented in Roman literature, which was produced for and largely by the elite, but funerary inscriptions sometimes record the profession of the deceased, including women. Women are known to have owned and operated brick factories. A woman might develop skills to complement her husband's trade, or manage aspects of his business. Artemis the gilder was married to Dionysius the helmet maker, as indicated by a curse tablet asking for the destruction of their household, workshop, work, and livelihood. The status of ordinary women who owned a business seems to have been regarded as exceptional. Laws during the Imperial period aimed at punishing women for adultery exempted those "who have charge of any business or shop" from prosecution.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Some typical occupations for a woman would be wet nurse, actress, dancer or acrobat, prostitute, and midwife — not all of equal respectability. Prostitutes and performers such as actresses were stigmatized as "infames", people who had recourse to few legal protections even if they were free. Inscriptions indicate that a woman who was a wet nurse ("nutrix") would be quite proud of her occupation. Women could be scribes and secretaries, including "girls trained for beautiful writing," that is, calligraphers. Pliny gives a list of female artists and their paintings.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Most Romans lived in "insulae" (apartment buildings), and those housing the poorer plebeian and non-citizen families usually lacked kitchens. The need to buy prepared food meant that takeaway food was a thriving business. Most of the Roman poor, whether male or female, young or old, earned a living through their own labour.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Women had limited engagement with politics in the public sphere; among the elite, moralists extolled female domesticity. Rome's political system involved citizen men exclusively — as politicians, representatives, magistrates, executives or voters. Many women had citizen rights but none had the vote, regardless of their wealth or their position in Roman society. though some elite women could manipulate or persuade their husbands and through them exercise political influence and in some cases, control. Ronald Syme notes, with reference to politics in the Late Republic, that "the daughters of the "nobilitas" could not be cheated of the real and secret power that comes from influence. They count for more than does the average senator..." Livy's account of the framing and repeal of the sumptuary Lex Oppia, passed during the crisis of the Punic Wars, has the arch-traditionalist Cato the Censor (234-149) describe Rome's matrons, who collectively protested against the law on the streets of Rome, as an "army of women" seeking to undermine the authority of his own gender and class, even the very existence of Rome, in their pursuit of unrestrained licence to spend money - which he describes as a particularly female disease that could never be cured, only suppressed.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: During the civil wars that ended the Republic, Appian reports the heroism of wives who saved their husbands. An epitaph known as the "Laudatio Turiae" preserves a husband's eulogy for his wife, who during the civil war following the death of Julius Caesar endangered her own life and relinquished her jewelry to send support to her husband in exile. Both survived the turbulence of the time to enjoy a long marriage. Porcia, the daughter of Cato the Younger and wife of Brutus the assassin, came to a less fortunate but (in the eyes of her time) heroic end: she killed herself as the Republic collapsed, just as her father did.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The rise of Augustus to sole power in the last decades of the 1st century BCE diminished the power of political officeholders and the traditional oligarchy, but did nothing to diminish and arguably increased the opportunities for women, as well as slaves and freedmen, to exercise influence behind the scenes. Augustus' wife, Livia Drusilla Augusta (58 BCE – CE 29), was the most powerful woman in the early Roman Empire, acting several times as regent and consistently as a faithful advisor. Several women of the Imperial family, such as Livia's great-granddaughter and Caligula's sister Agrippina the Younger, gained political influence as well as public prominence.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Women also participated in efforts to overthrow emperors, predominantly for personal gain. Shortly after Caligula's sister Drusilla died, her widower Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and her sisters Agrippina the Younger and Livilla conspired to overthrow Caligula. The plot was discovered, and Lepidus was executed. Agrippina and Livilla were exiled, and returned from exile only when their paternal uncle Claudius came to power after Caligula's assassination in 41 CE. In turn, Claudius's third wife Valeria Messalina conspired with Gaius Silius to overthrow her husband in the hope of installing herself and her lover in power.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Tacitus immortalized the woman Epicharis for her part in the Pisonian conspiracy, where she attempted to gain the support of the Roman fleet and was instead arrested. Once the conspiracy was uncovered, she would reveal nothing even under torture, in contrast to the senators, who were not subjected to torture and yet raced to spill the details. Tacitus also praises Egnatia Maximilla for sacrificing her fortune in order to stand by her innocent husband against Nero.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: According to the "Historia Augusta" emperor Elagabalus had his mother or grandmother take part in Senate proceedings. "And Elagabalus was the only one of all the emperors under whom a woman attended the senate like a man, just as though she belonged to the senatorial order" According to the same work, Elagabalus also established a women's senate called the "senaculum", which enacted very detailed rules prescribibg the correct public behaviour, jewelry, clothing, chariots and sundry personal items for matrons. This apparently built upon previous, less formal but exclusive meetings of elite wives; and before that, Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, had listened to Senate proceedings, while concealed behind a curtain, according to Tacitus ("Annales", 13.5).


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Classical texts have little to say about women and the Roman army. Although the Emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BC–AD 14) made marriage by ordinary soldiers unlawful, this probably meant that while soldiers and women in distant provinces and settlements formed relationships and had children, their relationships were not recognised in Roman law. Two centuries or so later, the ban was lifted. It has been suggested that wives and children of centurions lived with them at border and provincial forts. Shoes in women's and children's sizes were found very near Hadrian's wall, at the frontier fort of Vindolanda at the same site, bronze military discharge certificates were found, granting citizenship after 25 years of service and mentioning wives and children. In Germany, women's brooches and shoes were excavated at a military site. Trajan's Column depicts six women amongst the soldiers at a military religious sacrifice.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Women were present at most Roman festivals and cult observances. Some rituals specifically required the presence of women, but their participation might be limited. As a rule women did not perform animal sacrifice, the central rite of most major public ceremonies, though this was less a matter of prohibition than the fact that most priests presiding over state religion were men. Some cult practices were reserved for women only, for example, the rites of the Good Goddess (Bona Dea).


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Women priests played a prominent and crucial role in the official religion of Rome. Although the state colleges of male priests were far more numerous, the six women of the college of Vestals were Rome's only "full-time professional clergy." "Sacerdos", plural "sacerdotes", was the Latin word for a priest of either gender. Religious titles for women include "sacerdos", often in relation to a deity or temple, such as a "sacerdos Cereris" or "Cerealis", "priestess of Ceres", an office never held by men; "magistra", a high priestess, female expert or teacher in religious matters; and "ministra", a female assistant, particularly one in service to a deity. A "magistra" or "ministra" would have been responsible for the regular maintenance of a cult. Epitaphs provide the main evidence for these priesthoods, and the woman is often not identified in terms of her marital status.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: The Vestals possessed unique religious distinction, public status and privileges, and could exercise considerable political influence. It was also possible for them to amass "considerable wealth." Upon entering her office, a Vestal was emancipated from her father's authority. In archaic Roman society, these priestesses were the only women not required to be under the legal guardianship of a man, instead answering directly and only to the Pontifex Maximus. Their vow of chastity freed them of the traditional obligation to marry and rear children, but its violation carried a heavy penalty: a Vestal found to have polluted her office by breaking her vow was given food, water, and entombed alive. The independence of the Vestals thus existed in relation to the prohibitions imposed on them. In addition to conducting certain religious rites, the Vestals participated at least symbolically in every official sacrifice, as they were responsible for preparing the required ritual substance "mola salsa". The Vestals seem to have retained their religious and social distinctions well into the 4th century CE, until the Christian emperors dissolved the order.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: A few priesthoods were held jointly by married couples. Marriage was a requirement for the Flamen Dialis, the high priest of Jupiter; his wife, the Flaminica Dialis, had her own unique priestly attire, and like her husband was placed under obscure magico-religious prohibitions. The flaminica was a perhaps exceptional case of a woman performing animal sacrifice; she offered a ram to Jupiter on each of the "nundinae", the eight-day Roman cycle comparable to a week. The couple were not permitted to divorce, and if the flaminica died the flamen had to resign his office.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Like the Flaminica Dialis, the "regina sacrorum", "queen of the sacred rites," wore distinctive ceremonial dress and performed animal sacrifice, offering a sow or female lamb to Juno on the first day of each month. The names of some "reginae sacrorum" are recorded by inscriptions. The "regina" was the wife of the "rex sacrorum", "king of the sacred rites," an archaic priesthood regarded in the earliest period as more prestigious than even the Pontifex Maximus.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: These highly public official duties for women contradict the commonplace notion that women in ancient Rome took part only in private or domestic religion. The dual male-female priesthoods may reflect the Roman tendency to seek a gender complement within the religious sphere; most divine powers are represented by both a male and a female deity, as seen in divine pairs such as Liber and Libera. The twelve major gods were presented as six gender-balanced pairs, and Roman religion departed from Indo-European tradition in installing two goddesses in its supreme triad of patron deities, Juno and Minerva along with Jupiter. This triad "formed the core of Roman religion."


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: From the Mid Republic onward, religious diversity became increasingly characteristic of the city of Rome. Many religions that were not part of Rome's earliest state cult offered leadership roles for women, among them the cult of Isis and of the Magna Mater. An epitaph preserves the title "sacerdos maxima" for a woman who held the highest priesthood of the Magna Mater's temple near the current site of St. Peter's Basilica.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Although less documented than public religion, private religious practices addressed aspects of life that were exclusive to women. At a time when the infant mortality rate was as high as 40 percent, divine aid was solicited for the life-threatening act of giving birth and the perils of caring for a baby. Invocations were directed at the goddesses Juno, Diana, Lucina, the "di nixi", and a host of divine attendants devoted to birth and childrearing. Ceres was a significant Goddess in terms of childrearing but also in raising the daughter to be a good mother and wife. Ceres relationship with her own daughter was used as an example as to how Roman mothers should go about raising their daughters.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Male writers vary in their depiction of women's religiosity: some represent women as paragons of Roman virtue and devotion, but also inclined by temperament to excessive religious devotion, the lure of magic, or "superstition". Nor was "private" the same as "secret": Romans were suspicious of secretive religious practices, and Cicero cautioned that nocturnal sacrifices were not to be performed by women, except for those ritually prescribed "pro populo", on behalf of the Roman people, that is, for the public good.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Wealthy women traveled around the city in a litter carried by slaves. Women gathered in the streets on a daily basis to meet with friends, attend religious rites at temples, or to visit the baths. The wealthiest families had private baths at home, but most people went to bath houses not only to wash but to socialize, as the larger facilities offered a range of services and recreational activities, among which casual sex was not excluded. One of the most vexed questions of Roman social life is whether the sexes bathed together in public. Until the late Republic, evidence suggests that women usually bathed in a separate wing or facility, or that women and men were scheduled at different times. But there is also clear evidence of mixed bathing from the late Republic until the rise of Christian dominance in the later Empire. Some scholars have thought that only lower-class women bathed with men, or those of dubious moral standing such as entertainers or prostitutes, but Clement of Alexandria observed that women of the highest social classes could be seen naked at the baths. Hadrian prohibited mixed bathing, but the ban seems not to have endured. Most likely, customs varied not only by time and place, but by facility, so that women could choose to segregate themselves by gender or not.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: For entertainment women could attend debates at the Forum, the public games ("ludi"), chariot races, and theatrical performances. By the late Republic, they regularly attended dinner parties, though in earlier times the women of a household dined in private together. Conservatives such as Cato the Censor (234–149 BCE) considered it improper for women to take a more active role in public life; his complaints indicated that indeed some women did voice their opinions in the public sphere.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Roman generals would sometimes take their wives with them on military campaigns, though the practice was discouraged, . Caligula's mother Agrippina the Elder often accompanied her husband Germanicus on his campaigns in northern Germania, and the future emperor Claudius was born in Gaul for this reason. Wealthy women might tour the empire, often participating in or viewing local religious ceremonies or entertainments appropriate to their class and background at sites around the empire. Rich women traveled to the countryside during the summer when Rome became too hot.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Women in ancient Rome took great care in their appearance, though extravagance was frowned upon. They wore cosmetics and made different concoctions for their skin. Ovid even wrote a poem about the correct application of makeup. Women used white chalk or arsenic to whiten their faces, or rouge made of lead or carmine to add color to their cheeks as well as using lead to highlight their eyes. They spent much time arranging their hair and often dyed it black, red, or blonde. They also wore wigs regularly.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: Matrons usually wore two simple tunics for undergarments covered by a "stola". The "stola" was a long white dress that was cinched at the waist and which fell to the wearer’s feet, secured by clasps at the shoulder. Wealthier women would decorate their "stola" further. When going out a woman wore a "palla" over her "stola", which was held by a clasp at the shoulder. Young women were not permitted to wear a "stola", and instead wore tunics. Prostitutes and those caught committing adultery put on the male toga. Wealthy women wore jewels such as emeralds, aquamarine, opal, and pearls as earrings, necklaces, rings and sometimes sewn onto their shoes and clothing.


title: Women in ancient Rome

text: In the aftermath of Roman defeat at Cannae, economic crisis provoked the passing of the Lex Oppia (215 BCE) to restrict personal and public extravagance. The law limited women's possession and display of gold and silver (as money or personal ornament), expensive clothing and their "unnecessary" use of chariots and litters. Victory over Carthage flooded Rome with wealth and in 195 BCE the Lex Oppia was reviewed. The ruling consul, Cato the Censor argued for its retention: personal morality and self-restraint were self-evidently inadequate controls on indulgence and luxury. Luxury provoked the envy and shame of those less well-off, and was therefore divisive. Roman women, in Cato's view, had showed only too clearly that their appetites once corrupted knew no limits, and must be restrained. Large numbers of Roman matrons thought otherwise, and made concerted public protest. In 193 BCE the laws were abolished: Cato's opposition did not harm his political career. Later, in 42 BCE, Roman women, led by Hortensia, successfully protested against laws designed to tax Roman women, by use of the argument of no taxation without representation. Evidence of a lessening on luxury restrictions can also be found; one of the Letters of Pliny is addressed to the woman Pompeia Celerina praising the luxuries she keeps in her villa.