Comparative roles of women in Rome and Han China발음듣기
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Comparative roles of women in Rome and Han China
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출처 : 칸아카데미
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The question I have, Eman, is history often focuses on men but clearly, women were playing a significant role but how much can we know about women, say, 2,000 years ago~?발음듣기
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[Eman] So, when we talk about the lives of women in the Classical Period sometimes we're tempted to compare it to the modern day and that can cause some problems because that's not really a fair comparison.발음듣기
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So it's more useful to see how different women living in different societies in the same time period compare to one another.발음듣기
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[Sal] We have two points of reference here; one from Rome as it transitions from republic to empire; and another from Han China.발음듣기
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Just for a little bit of context this speech that we're gonna talk about this occurs in 42 BCE.발음듣기
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People might remember that in 44 BCE you have Julius Caesar getting assassinated on the Ides of March and it throws the Roman Empire into a civil war.발음듣기
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Because civil wars, they're not just bloody they're also expensive, and to fund that civil war the triumvirs decide to tax the 1400 wealthiest women.발음듣기
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[Eman] Hortensia says: "Why should we pay taxes when we do not share in the offices, honors, military commands, nor, in short, the government, for which you fight between yourselves with such harmful results~?발음듣기
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Our mothers did once rise superior to their sex and made contributions when you faced the loss of the empire and the city itself through the conflict with the Carthaginians.발음듣기
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But they funded their contributions voluntarily from their jewelry not from their landed property, their fields, their dowries, or their houses, without which it is impossible for free women to live...발음듣기
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Let war with the Celts or Parthians come, we will not be inferior to our mothers when it is a question of common safety.발음듣기
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We did not pay taxes to Caesar or to Pompey, nor did Marius ask us for contributions, nor Cinna, nor Sulla, even though he was a tyrant over this country.발음듣기
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[Eman] So, it's interesting that she is saying that by nature of their sex women are absolved from paying taxes.발음듣기
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Because they're normally using jewelry and they're normally using things that they don't necessarily need in order to fight off foreigners.발음듣기
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Here she's really taking issue with having to use her livelihood to support a civil war and she's sort of taking them to task on this that they're worse than tyrants for asking this of her.발음듣기
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Why should we pay taxes when we do not share in the offices, honors, military commands, nor, in short, the government.발음듣기
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That's a really good point, because Rome especially at that point, was continuously conquering other peoples, continuously at war sometimes a civil war, sometimes an external war.발음듣기
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[Eman] Sure, and I think it's interesting how she's pointing to that disparity between the things that men have and women don't have.발음듣기
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And she's just trying to say: "Well, if that's how it's going to be, then we should also be exempt from taxation."발음듣기
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While this might seem very primitive to our modern sensibilities it's really powerful that a woman is taking these government officials to task and being so outspoken and quite scathing in the way she does this.발음듣기
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[Sal] I also like the second part right over here where she is citing that our mothers once also stepped up.발음듣기
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She's referring to, during the Second Punic War and Hannibal was running amuck on the Italian Peninsula and even threatening Rome itself.발음듣기
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[Eman] So, based on this, Sal, what do you think we can learn about Roman women and their lives at this time period?발음듣기
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[Sal] Well, as we pointed out, even in this speech she cites some direct reference to not having equality to men.발음듣기
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I think this is the first time that women were they weren't even allowed there, they just went there and she's sticking it to the triumvirs pretty strongly.발음듣기
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She's saying: "Let war with the Celts or Parthians come, we will not be inferior to our mothers."발음듣기
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We're willing to step up if it's war with external parties. But for civil wars, may we never contribute nor aid you against each other."발음듣기
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So it does show, at least culturally even if officially women do not have a strong role at least these elite women do have enough comfort to be able to go to the three most powerful in the Roman Empire and stick it to them.발음듣기
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[Eman] Yeah, and while this may not seem like a big deal to us now, we have to avoid that comparison, like I said.발음듣기
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If we compare it to some other societies around the same time, this is quite remarkable for a woman to enter a public institution.발음듣기
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Again, she is an elite woman, but let's compare it to say, Athenian women, even elite woman in Athens were not likely to have any involvement in the political institutions were a lot more likely to just remain in the private sphere were not likely to be as educated as Roman women.발음듣기
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And so, the fact that Hortensia can actually enter into the space and be so outspoken is sort of evidence of the fact that Roman women had a degree more freedom than other women who were their contemporaries in other societies.발음듣기
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Let's also go to the other side of almost the other side of the world we'll go to eastern Asia where we are in the Eastern Han Dynasty.발음듣기
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So here we have some text from Ban Zhao who was a female historian, astronomer, mathematician Confucian, philosopher, coauthor of the official history book of Han.발음듣기
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Let a woman modestly yield to others; let her respect others; let her put others first. Herself, last.발음듣기
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Lay the (girl) baby at birth below the bed to plainly indicate that she is lowly and weak, and should regard it as her primary duty to humble herself before others.발음듣기
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[Eman] So, this is very much inline with the Confucian ideal of womanhood and that's very much about a woman being very submissive to her male relatives.발음듣기
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And for her to stay very modest within the power framework of her society and to stay pretty much within her own household and to cultivate a life that is meant to create comfort for the men in her family and her children and not much more than that.발음듣기
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[Sal] Yeah, I could not imagine anyone who read this and took it seriously as doing a lesson for themselves and storming the triumvirs' tribunals even if they are an elite woman in imperial China.발음듣기
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[Eman] Certainly, but I think there's an important thing to remember, and that this kind of document shows a prescriptive approach to women's lives.발음듣기
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The fact that Ban Zhao herself is writing this is sort of ironic because she's a woman who is putting herself out there and writing things and not staying in the private sphere so that's sort of a strange contradiction there.발음듣기
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Older women were likely to have inheritances property, just like their Roman counterparts and they were more likely to engage in trade.발음듣기
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So we can sort of see a tension between the prescriptive Confucian ideals and how women actually lived.발음듣기
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In a lot of ways, having wealth allowed women to buy their way out of these constrictive practices and ideas about women.발음듣기
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It's quite thick here, because she's telling other women to indicate that she is lowly and weak but Ban Zhao herself.발음듣기
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She co-wrote one of the official histories of the Han empire, she's more prominent and has done more than the great majority of men in her time so she's clearly not lowly and weak.발음듣기
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[Eman] Certainly. It's interesting to look at these things because like you said, it gives us a sense of the difference.발음듣기
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And so, making that kind of comparison gives us a lot more information about women's lives than simply saying that there's a single history for all women of this time period and that's simply not the case.발음듣기
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As we can see, there are huge differences between the civilizations; certainly, even within civilizations there can be huge differences.발음듣기
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So, this idea that women are supposed to have a nice home full of family and stay within that only wealthy women could really live up to that.발음듣기
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Because if you have to leave the house to make a living you might not be able to create this idyllic household full of children and spend all your time managing that.발음듣기
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