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Although historical and literary sources from the Roman age report several cases of femicide, i.e. husbands or lovers killing or having their partners killed, and although we know how restrictive and punitive Roman law was towards women, only two inscriptions have survived that explicitly mention a husband killing his wife.If we look at Roman art, both in painting and sculpture, we often encounter iconography that refers to the exercise of violence and oppression against women.
Through these two types of sources, epigraphy and art, we intend to trace the condition and description of women in Roman times from the point of view of the violence they suffered.
Dr Marina Lo Blundo is an archaeologist at the Archaological Park of Ostia Antica (Ministry of Culture) and archaeology blogger. She has been involved in cultural heritage communication for almost 20 years, including 17 years with her blog Generazione di archeologi, a Telegram channel since 2019 and a podcast channel on Loquis since 2022. She won the Zeus di Ugento prize for archaeology in 2023. Over the years, she has given numerous lectures and conferences on social media and web communication in archaeology and museums. She is editor of the book “Femminicidio e violenza di genere nell’antica Roma” (2024).
Dr Kelsey Madden is a Roman archaeologist and an Early Career Research Associate at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London. Kelsey’s interdisciplinary work combines history, archaeology, and art history, employing feminist, queer, postcolonial, and new materialist theories. She specialises in enslavement, gender, and childhood in the first and second centuries CE, as well as Roman funerary practices. Her PhD thesis examined the representation of wartime sexual violence against women in Roman conquest iconography. Kelsey has extensive experience managing archaeological projects in the UK and Italy. Currently, she is the fieldwork supervisor and collaborative researcher for the British School at Rome on the Falerii Novi Project. Additionally, she is co-editor of the volume Sexual Effects: Mapping Intersections of Sexuality and Imperialism in the Roman World, to be published by Bloomsbury Publishing, and will be an Associate Lecturer in Archaeology of Roman Slavery at Birkbeck, University of London, in Spring 2026.
https://bsr.ac.uk/womens-day-roundtable-femicide-and-gender-violence-in-ancient-rome-evidence-from-epigraphy-and-roman-art/
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