ABSTRACT
With a few exceptions, all Roman women were for their entire lives subject to some degree of limitation on their capacity for independent legal action. Authority to act must either be obtained from, or was vested in, a man-father, husband or guardian (tutor). Until the time of Augustus, the only exceptions were the six Vestal Virgins; after Augustus, freeborn women who had borne three children, or freedwomen who had borne four, and who were sui iuris (‘independent’, in the sense of being subject to the control neither of a father nor of a husband), were able to dispense with tutors. In the absence of statistics on the birthrate and the longevity of Roman men, we cannot determine what proportion of women benefited from this concession.
