Classics - Role of Women in the Aeneid and Odyssey

Role in marriage - Odyssey

she wept for Odysseus

Role in marriage - Aeneid

let him keep it for himself

Sychaeus

Married off for political reasons - Odyssey

Send your mother away and make her marry the man whom her father chooses

Antinuous

Married off for political reasons - Aeneid

was now grown to womanhood and at the age for marriage

King Latvius on his daughter Lavinia

Motherhood - Odysseus

pining over his glorious son

Anticleia dying over her son

Motherhood - Aeneid

if only you had given me a child before you abandon me

Dido to Aeneas

Submissive role - Odyssey

Making decisions must be men’s concern

Telemachus to his mother

Submissive/Inferior role - Aeneid

there is no fame worth remembering to be won by punishing a woman

Female leadership - Odyssey

slip past him and clasp my mothers knees

Nausica telling Odysseus to go to Arete

Female leadership - Aeneid

Queen Dido in all her beauty arrived at the temple with a great crowd of warriors around her