Roman Female Writers: Interesting Points and Texts

Abstract

Written and spoken word belonged to men in ancient Rome, and, therefore, canonical works of Roman literature were written by and for men. However, in patriarchal ancient Rome a few women —especially of the highest ranking families— also used written word as a form of self-expression. Like many texts written at that time by male authors, most of the texts created by these Roman women have been lost; however, we keep few of them. In this work, we offer a Basque translation of the texts left by Roman female writers, as well as various information about each of them. We want to achieve two main goals with that: on the one hand, to bring some Latin texts closer to Basque readers, believing that these texts can be a source of enjoyment; on the other hand, to provide the Basque educational community with material on certain Roman women, in the hope that it will help to promote education based on gender equality in the subjects of Classical Culture and Latin.