It is difficult to assess or generalize with confidence about women's education in ancient Rome. Experience varied with time period, location (urban, regional, provincial), and particularly class. Evidence is haphazard, tends to the anecdotal and extraordinary, and is often prescriptive if not critical, as public displays of learning were popular targets for women's censure. Accomplishments which won praise for a matrona were practical and shifted over time from weaving (Lucretia) to wise maternal counsel (Cornelia) to patronage and benevolence (notably the empresses). Since women could not enter politics or pursue professional careers, upper-class fathers had little incentive beyond affection to provide formal education for the females in their family. Although some attended primary schools (ludi), girls had little time for formal education since marriage could occur as early as puberty. Some may have shared their brothers' tutors, explored their father's library or been instructed by female relatives in areas other than rituals, decorous behavior, and domestic management. While care of the home and moral training of her sons and daughters were the focus of a woman's education during the early Republic, by the first century BCE, with the advent of abundant slaves, all but the poorest households had servants to carry out the tasks involved in upkeep of the domus. Three justifications for educating females gained currency under the Empire: mothers were the first teachers of their children and therefore needed to be as educated as possible (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.6); education helped women acquire and maintain matronal virtues; possession of educated women was one of the few acceptable forms of family display. While their primary function remained the production of legitimate heirs, young matronae in noble families were afforded opportunities to continue their education — through private tutoring or encouragement by their learned older husbands (e.g., Calpurnia, wife of Pliny the Younger) or through the social and political activities in which their families were obligated to participate. Lower-class freeborn young women would have been trained at home in domestic skills and the family business or sent out to work or apprentice to a trade. For further information on this topic see Hemelrijk (1999), Snyder (1989), and Caldwell (2015) in the Bibliography; see also Images of Learning below.

Text-Commentaries	Additional Readings
M. Valerius Martialis, Epigrammata IX. 68: girls at school	See the Latin reader The Worlds of Roman Women for the following texts:
Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilia VIII.3.3: Hortensia	C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus (minor), Epistulae 4.19: Calpurnia's literary leanings
C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus (minor), Epistulae I.16.6: a literary wife	M. Valerius Martialis, Epigrammata 3.69.5-8: poetry read in school
Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilia VIII.3.2: Afrania	P. Ovidius Naso, Tristia 3.7: Perilla
Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilia VIII.3.1: Amesia	C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Vita Divi Augusti 64.2-3: a daughter's training
M. Tullius Cicero, De Oratore III.12.45: Laelia	M. Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria 1.1.4, 6: eloquent women
Sextus Propertius, Elegiae III.23: the lost love tablets	M. Junius Juvenalis, Saturae 6.434-56: the intellectual woman
Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.1-5, 9: Julia, daughter of Augustus	Sulpiciae Conquestio lines 7-11: a woman poet succeeds
Q. Horatius Flaccus, Carmina I.11: Leuconoe
C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Epistulae 3.3: Corellia Hispulla
C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina 36: Lesbia	See De Feminis Romanis at Diotima for the following on-line Latin texts:
M. Cornelius Fronto, Epistulae ad Marcum Caesarem II.2, IV.6: Domitia Lucilla	M. Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria 1.1.6: Women's Eloquence
P. Cornelius Tacitus, Agricola IV.1-3: Julia Procilla	Vindolanda Letter of Claudia Severa

IMAGES of LEARNING

So-Called Sappho fresco. The young woman holds in her hands 4 wax tablets bound into a book and pensively lifts a stylus to her mouth. She wears a hairnet of woven gold threads typical of the Neronian period. From Pompeii, Regio VI (insula occidentalis), c. 60 CE. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
" Poet," a marble bust of an unidentified woman ( side view of her hair coiled in braids on top of her head), wearing on her tunic a symbol of the goddess Victory, holding a wreath in one hand and a palm in the other. 120-30 CE. Paris, Louvre Museum.
Proculus and his Wife, a politically influential family, are posed in a wall painting as a learned couple in citizen dress, holding writing implements: a stylus, wax tablets, and a scroll. From Pompeii, House of Paquius Proculus (insula 7, no.1). 1st century CE. Pompeii. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
Bust of a young girl in the center panel of a marble sarcophagus relief; she holds a scroll, with a seashell behind her; below a boy & girl play with 2 lambs; left St. Peter blesses the waters, right Christ raises Lazarus. 325-350 CE. Rome, Vatican Museum (Christian).
Older Woman, the deceased, pictured holding scrolls on a marble sarcophagus relief in three panels. In the center, in a kind of aedicula, she stands veiled, with a child at her knee seeking her attention. In the two side panels she is unveiled, in conversation with the same bearded male who is seated on a podium and holds scrolls in his lap (a teacher/philosopher? her husband?); between and behind them stands a younger woman (fellow student? daughter?), watching and also holding a scroll. Rome: Vatican Museum.
Woman holding a scroll on a marble sarcophagus relief, representing the learning and culture of a wife and husband. She occupies the left panel, with two muses beside her and a tragic mask at her feet; on the right the seated young man holds a scroll, with two muses beside him, an epic mask and scrolls at his feet. Between them is a doorway to the underworld decorated with Medusa heads and lion head knockers. Rome: Vatican Museum. Museum
Sarcophagus base in high relief depicts girls and boys holding masks, musical instruments and scrolls, perhaps symbolizing Muses. On the left, a boy holds a mask and another holds a cithara and plectrum (pick); in the center, the dead youth sits on stool holding an open scroll, while a boy on his left writes on a wax tablet with a stylus and a girl on his right holds a closed scroll with a bundle of scrolls at her feet. Rome, Vatican Museum, Gallery of the Candelabrum.
Child Reading: in this detail of a room fresco depicting the mysteries associated with Dionysus, an older woman holding a rolled scroll looks down at a child reading an open scroll. Roman, 1st century CE. Pompeii, House of the Mysteries.
Women holding scrolls (students/disciples?) in a sarcophagus relief, standing among men around a seated male (teacher?) with a scroll open on his lap. Roman, late imperial/Christian. Rome, Vatican Museum.
Veiled woman pointing to an open book (?bible) in a relief on a marble sarcophagus; to her left are scenes from the Old Testament and the New to the right. 4th century CE. Rome, Vatican Museum (Christian).
Student and Teacher: relief on a marble sarcophagus. Found in Via Praenestina. 3rd Century CE. Rome, Tabularium.
Fragment of a Letter from Claudia Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus, to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Flavius Cerealis, Prefect of the ninth cohort of Batavians stationed at the Roman fort in Vindolanda, Britain (see the tablets online), inviting her friend Lepidina to Severa's birthday party. This detail, the conclusion of her letter, is added in her own hand, the earliest extant example of writing in Latin by a woman: sperabo te soror uale soror anima mea ita ualeam karissima et haue (“I will expect you, sister. Hail and farewell, sister, my dearest soul, so may I prosper”). Roman, 97-103 CE. London, British Museum.
Tablets and Rolls: the fresco depicts two types of writing materials: a wooden tablet with 4 waxed surfaces (the central bosses kept the pages from touching when the tablet was closed) and a spatula for erasing; a double inkwell with a reed pen and a filled scroll (volumen). Pompeii, first century CE. Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

THE WORLD OF LEARNING

IMAGES of LEARNING