Martial's Lucreti Roman Expectations Of Women

As a patriarchy that based sexuality in gender roles and social class, Roman society viewed women as less than men of equal or higher social class. As per gender roles, women were held to standards and virtues founded in histories of outstanding Roman women like the Sabine Women or Lucretia. However, when it came to Roman expectations of wives, society further constricted women. In Martial’s Epigrams, Martial also encapsulates Roman gender norms and sexuality. In particular, 11.104, denominated by translators Christopher Francese and R. Scott Smith, Epigram 50: A Prudish Wife and Her Adventurous Husband, perpetuates Roman expectations of female gender norms in marital relationships through a cautionary tale about a wife who does not sexually

The narrator concludes stating, “If gravitas is what you want, go ahead, be Lucretia all day. But at night, what I want is Laïs.” In this comparison, the narrator compares his wife’s lack of sexuality to Lucretia, the Roman apotheosis of chastity, who in Livy’s historical account, The History of Rome from Its Foundations, killed herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius. Instead, the narrator demands his wife be more promiscuous like the Corinthian courtesan, Laïs, to satisfy his sexual

While Roman history glorifies virtuous women like the Sabine Women and Lucretia for their chastity, Roman gender norms in marital relationships expected wives to concede their sexual needs and agency so that their husbands receive romantic and sexual gratification. In this sense, Martial contradicts Roman virtues of female chastity, while simultaneously upholding Roman gender norms, in terms of romantic and sexual relations between a married couple. Furthermore, in 11.104, as the narrator prefaces his demands as not difficult by contrasting them to those of powerful rulers like Numa and Taitus, Martial exhibits that these sexual demands should be implied by the nature of a marital relationship rather than begged for by the narrator. This implication also upholds the Roman expectation that wives must follow their husbands’ demands, whether sexual in nature or not. In addition, through the juxtaposition between the narrator’s sexual frustrations and historic Roman couples, Martial implies that the common denominator between noble rulers and politicians like Hector, Pompey, Brutus, and even a god, Juno is a wife that sexually pleasures their husband, further upholding Roman gender norms and expectations of