Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome

Download or read book Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome written by Angela Hug and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-05-15 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman women bore children not just for their husbands, but for the Roman state. This book is the first comprehensive study of the importance of fecunditas (human fertility) in Roman society, c. 100 BC - AD 300. Its focus is the cultural impact of fecunditas, from gendered assumptions about infertility, to the social capital children brought to a marriage, to the emperors’ exploitation of fecunditas to build and preserve dynasties. Using a rich range of source material - literary, juristic, epigraphic, numismatic - never before collected, it explores how the Romans shaped fecunditas into an essential female virtue.