Roman Women on the Home Front in the Second Punic War

Abstract

The Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) was remembered even centuries later for Roman women’s wartime contributions. When, during this profoundly traumatic war, Carthage was threatening Rome’s very existence, Roman authorities needed women to take on new domestic and public roles. Yet they also policed women’s actions and took a new interest in traditionally familial matters such as mourning and reproduction. Informed by scholarship on gender and warfare in the fields of sociology, feminist international relations, and modern history, this project integrates ancient literary, epigraphic, and material evidence with demographic modeling and analysis of comparative evidence from more recent conflicts. Investigating the war’s impact on household structure and management, wartime communication, mourning practices, religious activity, and financial contributions, it reveals a society struggling during the Second Punic War to respond through ad hoc innovation to new realities on the home front, and co-opting women’s bodies and labor to provide material and ideological support for the war effort.