Women and the Law
There is an inscription (though badly damaged) which is the funeral eulogy of
a prominent Roman matron, whose name is most likely Turia. If so, then her
husband would be Quintus Lucretius Vespillo, a Roman senator. The document is
remarkable for it's startlingly realistic indication of the dangers of the civil
wars.
In the eulogy, her husband indicates they were married right at the time of
Caesar's invasion of Italy in 49 BC and that the wedding was saddened by the
loss of her parents in the Civil War. Since her husband sided with Pompey, he
had to flee immediately to Greece, leaving his wife and her sister to cope with
a very difficult situation.
The eulogy descibes how Turia and her sister sought out the murderers of their
parents and brought them to justice:
'Although I had gone to Macedonia and your sister's husband, Gaius Cluvius,
had gone to the province of Africa, the murder of your parents did not remain
unavenged. You carried out this act of piety with such great diligence - asking
questions, making inquiries, demanding punishment - that if we had been there,
we could have not done better.'
On the death of her parents, Turia was named, along with her fiance, as heir to
her father's will. This is not insignificant since wills were the primary means
of transferring wealth. The will was attacked on extremely legal grounds. The
attackers claimed that the father's will had become invalid. Under the rules of
intestate succession, only Turia would have been an heir. But she would have
required a guardian. The attackers claimed to be distant family relations and as
such, were petitioning to be named her guardians according to the rules of
intestate succession. These folks had one purpose - to claim the guardianship of
Turia and control her fortune.
Once again, she fights and wins, though we aren't certain of what means she took
to achieve these ends. What this shows us, however is that the institution of
guardianship has, by this time, weakened substantially to the point that women
could name their own tutors (or guardians) or under certain circumstances be
allowed to not have one.
Later on, even though her husband has been pardoned by Augustus, his colleague
Lepidus opposed the pardon and marked him for death. Her husband proclaims her
next act as her greatest act of heroism. He describes it:
'You lay prostrate at his feet, and you were not only not raised up, but were
dragged away and carried off brutally like a slave. But although your body was
full of bruises, your spirit was unbroken and you kept reminding him of Caesar's
edict......you pronounced the words of the edict in a loud voice, so that it
should be known who was the cause of my deadly perils. This matter was soon to
prove harmful for him.'
What we have here is one woman, who used her courage, tenacity and conviction,
along with the confidence and education her status gave her to accept and handle
the very public roles she kept finding herself in and at least three times in
her life, to challenge men and win and it's very likely that at least one,
perhaps two of these events saw their way into the court system.