City Patronesses in the Roman Empire

All throughout history, a woman’s role in the community and family has changed drastically. Back in AD 242, women were sometimes considered city patronesses and in order to be respected they had to talk about their male relatives. Female city patronage was relatively rare, with only roughly 1,200 altogether. A city patroness was a female that protected an entire city or person. This rank derived from a woman’s wealth and reputation and their wide range of family and friend connections. In order to distinguish what type of patron a woman was, you have to look at the type of protections that she gives; was it for a community or a private person. If she protected an entire community then she was considered to be a patrona and if she gave protection to a private person then she was a patroness. 

Many scholars believed that patronage was considered to be a family affair but in reality, it was not considered to be hereditary. There have been examples of multiple patronesses within a single family but that does not point to the fact that patronage is directly related to particular families. In the article, it described that 8 out of 12 patronesses in North Africa were from one family who was highly distinguished. The one aspect of family relations that played a role in patronage was the amount of connections that a woman could have from her family. While woman tended to surround themselves with patronesses who had similar duties, but men tried to stay as far away from other male patrons as they could. Males derived their rank and duties by their careers, age, and personal capacity and like I said before, woman had to refer to their male relatives in order to be seen within the community. 

To express the cities gratitude, client cities would give all types honors to the patron that completed the tasks. These honors included a seat at the public theater, citizenship, a public funeral, or even the greatest honor of all time; a public statue. Most of the time, males were the ones that received a statue because they were considered to be the one that achieved the highest tasks. If a woman was the receive a statue, her figure was draped heavily in clothing and her facial features were idealized. These statues raised red flags for many people because they believed that they took away the modesty that woman should have. It is clear that woman have always had a very modest role in communities but as history continues, their roles/modesty is changing in hundreds of different ways.