Evidence of Women Lawyers in Ancient Rome

There was a hint of a long battle for woman’s legal equality in Quintilian’s four books, now available in the Harvard edition. Quintilian (35-95 AD) influenced his early Roman oratory students, many of whom later acted as early Roman lawyers and teachers of rhetoric, but he influenced uncountable teachers and students of oratory through the ages. He molded broad educational theories describing his suggested studies necessary to produce great speakers.

One sentence in Quintilian’s books noted that the women in his rhetoric classes were very good. Were there woman lawyers in male dominated ancient Rome? Until recently there were few hints that women acted as lawyers in early Rome, much less that some were highly skilled.

Caia Afrania was born during the Roman chaotic governmental transition from a republic to a dictatorship empire. Writers differ whether she was born into a plebian or an ancient noble Roman family. The better evidence favors a noble family. She was obviously articulate and married a Roman Senator, Licinius Buccius. She died in 48 AD. Roman law schools were not founded until much later. However, Romans kept a version of Greek procedure allowing friends to appear for a person in court. The Roman version of arguments in court had matured because of the presence of sophisticated oratory schools. Quintilian, born 23 years after Afrania died, had one of the most famous.

There is no evidence Caia Afrania attended one of those schools of oratory but as a member of a noble family it is possible she was exposed to the advanced learning of the time. According to modern writer Jordan Kisner, when Afrania was summoned to court she insisted on speaking for herself. Little is known about that first case, but she must have experienced the thrill of speaking, as advocates do, and she must have been a persuasive speaker because she started a busy practice of speaking for others in courts. Demand for the services of a lawyer is often a reflection of that lawyer’s proven talents. That must have been true of the skills of Caia Afrania.

One day a women came to Afrania and asked her to represent her in a criminal case. On the face of the complaint the woman appeared guilty. She was charged with killing her husband, a capital case. We get a hint of Afrania’s character from the fact that she agreed to represent her.

When she gained the client’s freedom Afrania reputation grew to prominence. Jordan Kisner in an article entitled “Can a Woman’s Voice Ever Be Right?” wrote,

“The hostility she suffered for this perceived imprudence was tremendous. They turned her into a noun: an Afrania became slang for an unpleasant woman. Rome passed a law in which she was referred to as improbissima fema- the infamous women. The law forbade women from pleading cases other than their own. The rancor was directed not just to the fact of her speech but at the sound of her voice. The first century writer Valeriu’s Maximus called it an ‘unnatural yapping,’ ‘a bark,’ a ‘constant harassment of the magistrate.’ Detractors pronounced her shameless for exposing her voice before so many.”

May the author add a question or two to the dead Maximus? If all your slanders were true, why did so many Romans choose her as their advocate and why did she have such success? Did you feel threatened by her talent?

There were other women who served as friends appearing for litigants. In a strange way we cannot shake Maximus because he is the source of examples of women advocates contained in his own Harvard classics. Maximus wrote a chapter devoted to women who defended themselves or others in courthouses in which he used women’s obvious achievements as accusations against allowing women to appear for others.

Hortensia, a Roman woman raised in a home with books and the advantages of high-level social culture, gave a speech in a courthouse that was studied by leading speakers and scholars. Quintilian, Cicero, and the Roman historian Appian of Alexandria are thought to have admired the speech and there is a rumor that Cicero thought so highly of it that he memorized Hortensia’s words. Her speech was given in a civil rights case on behalf of Roman women. No man would take the case for fear of irritating Roman leaders.

                The Case:

In 42 BC 3 people ruled Rome, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus. Taxing unrepresented women must have been attractive, and they placed a tax on 1400 patrician women to defray the costs of the civil war the men were fighting. There was another reason for the tax: the reduction of extreme luxury that patrician women enjoyed.

A group of women tried to lobby the wives of the Roman leaders to have this tax removed. That did not work. Women were not allowed to speak in the forum, so Hortensia proceeded to a courthouse and gave her speech.

“You have deprived us of our fathers, our sons, our husbands, and our brothers, whom you accused of having wronged you. If you take away our property also, you reduce us to a condition unbecoming our birth, our manners, our sex. If we have done you wrong, as you say our husbands have, proscribe us as you do them. If we women have not voted you public enemies, have not torn down your houses, destroyed your army, or led another one against you; if we have not hindered you in obtaining offices and honors, -- why do you visit upon us the same punishment as upon the guilty, whose offences we have not shared? Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the state-craft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful results? 'Because this is a time of war,' do you say? When have there not been wars, and when have taxes ever been imposed on women, who are exempted by their sex among all mankind? Our mothers once for all rose superior to their sex and made contributions when you were in danger of losing the whole empire and the city itself through the conflict with the Carthaginians. But then they contributed voluntarily, not from their landed property, their fields, their dowries, or their houses, without which life is not possible to free women, but only from their own jewelry, and not according to fixed valuation, not under fear of informers or accusers, not by force and violence, but what they themselves were willing to give. Who now causes you alarm for the empire or the country? Let war with the Gauls or the Parthians come, and we shall not be inferior to our mothers in zeal for the common safety; but for civil wars may we never contribute, nor ever assist you against each other. We did not contribute to Cæsar or to Pompey. Neither Marius nor Cinna imposed taxes upon us. Nor did Sulla who held despotic power in the state, do so, whereas you say that you are reestablishing the commonwealth."

Maximus reports that the leaders reduced the tax to 400 matrons and a law was passed that women could not speak for other women. Imagine such a law in our society. Voices in the courts silenced, poor women required to deal with a sophisticated legal system without legal training. In fact, that happens daily in our courts today.

Maximus also left us the story of Maesia who defended herself of a crime with so much courage that she was absolved by a unanimous verdict. Maximus then adds the unkindest cut of all when he claims she had only the guise of a woman; she had the virile spirit, (of a man presumably). At the heart of all prejudice, we see in the Roman culture the exclusion of talent from bringing new voices to society. Another point. Anyone who believes men, as a group, have better voices then women as a group has never taught trial practice in a law school.