A woman draped in modestly and elegantly in a palla.
[Source: vroma.org]

Roman women’s clothing was in some ways similar to what Greek women wore.  Tunics similar to the chiton and the peplos were very popular, not surprising given their how easy they were to make.  That said, there were several differences.  Roman women’s garments were generally fuller (that is, they had more fabric in them) than what most Athenian women would have worn and were therefore probably easier to move in.  On the other hand, no respectable Roman woman would wear an outer tunic that was open at the side or shorter than ankle length, as Spartan women sometimes did.
 
Women and girls of all ages generally wore several layers of clothing.  An undertunic formed the lowest layer.  It generally only fell to the knee and was usually solid in color.  A band of cloth could be wrapped around the upper chest over or under this tunic to support the breasts.  A second, floor-length outer tunic went over everything.  If she stayed inside, this was all a respectable woman needed.  Out of doors and in cooler weather she added a palla, a large, usually woolen, rectangular shawl.  This was generally draped over the left shoulder from behind, wrapped around the back of the body, drawn over or under the right arm, and then thrown over the left shoulder or arm.  It could be pulled up to cover the head or not.  An additional scarf or shawl could also go over the head.

Notice the fastenings along the top of her sleeve, how her stola is a separate garment from her undertunic, and how she's presented as the traditional Roman matron.
[Livia Drusilla, 1st century CE, National Archaeological Museum of Spain, source: Wikimedia Commons]

A woman who had the status of matron had the right to wear a stola, a sleeveless tunic generally held up by narrow bands of cloth over the shoulders.  To wear one of these was to show one’s respectability and support of tradition.  A woman convicted of adultery, on the other hand, may have been required to wear a toga instead.
 
Generally speaking, women’s clothing wasn’t particularly ornamental.  It was all generally the same shape and usually solid in color.  When a woman wanted to show off her appearance, she turned to jewelry and elaborate hairstyles instead.  While the Roman women’s clothing stayed generally the same over time, hairstyles changed drastically, from the poofy orbis comarum of the Flavian period to simpler-looking* buns or looped braids.
 
 
*Though not necessarily actually simpler.

Sources/Further Reading:
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Roman Clothing: Women - VRoma.org
Clothing of Women and Girls - Classics Unveiled
Roman Clothing for Women -Tribunes and Triumphs

Beatrice of Bar (d. 1076), also known as Beatrice of Lorraine was among the first women to rule an Italian March on her own.  She paved the way for her daughter Matilda of Tuscany to follow in her footsteps as sole ruler of Tuscany and Lorraine.  Like her daughter after her, she remained a firm supporter of the papacy in its conflicts with Holy Roman Emperors Henry III and Henry IV.
 
Beatrice was the daughter of Frederick II of Upper Lorraine and Matilda of Swabia.  After their father’s death when she was about 9 or so, she and her sister Sophie were raised at the Imperial Court by their mother’s sister Empress Gisela.*  She married Boniface of Tuscany c.1037 as his second wife and went on to have three children with him: Beatrice, Frederick, and Matilda.
 
They were married for only five years before Boniface was assassinated, leaving Beatrice with three very small children.  She remarried Godfrey of Lorraine to strengthen her position.  Unfortunately for her, this marriage came with several troubles.  First, since Godfrey was her fourth cousin, they were violating incest laws, which led many to question the validity of the marriage.**  Second, Henry III considered Godfrey a traitor and their marriage a threat to his power and promptly arrested Beatrice for marrying him and summoned the young Frederick to court.
 
Beatrice and Matilda, who was with her, were imprisoned.  Frederick died before he could decide whether or not to appear before the Emperor.  Her daughter Beatrice died sometime between her father’s death and her brother’s.***  Matters only changed when Henry III died and Godfrey reconciled with him, allowing the family to return to Italy.
 
Beatrice ruled Tuscany alongside Godfrey for the next several years.  When he died in 1069, his son Godfrey technically became Margrave of Tuscany and Duke of Lorraine, but in practice Godfrey stayed in Lorraine while Beatrice ruled Tuscany with Matilda at her side and was considered by some to rule in her own right.  She and Godfrey both died in 1076, leaving Tuscany to Matilda.
 
 
*Wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II.
**The two of them were each required by the Pope to found a monastery and vow celibacy.
***Some claimed that both Frederick and the younger Beatrice had been murdered.

Sources/Further Reading:
Beatrice of Lorraine - Epistolae
Lazzari, Tiziana. "Before Matilde: Beatrice of Lorena 'Dux et Marchio Tusciae'" - Academia.edu
Barber, Malcolm. The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320. London: Routledge, 1993.

Among the best medieval sources we have on what making a pilgrimage was like are what are sometimes called “pilgrims’ guidebooks”.  Generally these were written by someone who had actually made the pilgrimage and varied in the amount and quality of their commentary, at least in terms of their usefulness to someone wanting to follow in their footsteps.  They range from simple lists of must-see sites to detailed descriptions of what can feel like every minor shrine along the way and the distances between them.
 
Most of the works we have describe the trip to one of the three great pilgrimage destinations of the time: Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela.  All three of these destinations offer the opportunity to describe several sites (and perhaps the writer’s reactions to them) both along the way and at the city in question.  Jerusalem seems to have been the most popular destination to write about, but the best-known guidebook these days is the Pilgrim’s Guide in the Codex Calixtinus, describing the route to Santiago de Compostela.  The funny thing, though, is that this one was probably never actually used by pilgrims on their way there.  It almost never appears in manuscripts except as a part of the larger Codex Calixtinus and there are no shorter, more portable versions that a pilgrim might actually carry with them, as there are of a few other texts.
 
Some of these works, don’t give the reader more than a simple list of sites to visit at their destination or along the way.  Others are far more detailed.  Still others include very little information that might be useful to someone wanting to actually make the pilgrimage, focusing much more on the writer’s personal experiences.  Many of these accounts, both the ones that might be useful to travelers and those that certainly weren’t, seem to be written as much for people who just wanted to read about a holy adventure as for those who wanted to travel themselves.  Pilgrim accounts, then, may well have been used as much for entertainment as for navigating the actual pilgrimage.

Sources/Further Reading:
Webb, Diana. Medieval European Pilgrimage. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Barber, Malcolm. The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320. London: Routledge, 1993.

I wonder if it would be worth trying to do my hair like that.
[Coin depicting Arsinoë III, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Arsinoë III Philopator* (c. 246/5-204 BCE) was a popular queen in her time.  Like Arsinoë II before her and several Ptolemaic princesses after her, she married her brother, Ptolemy IV Philopator, and may well have ruled alongside him.  The two of them had several serious disagreements about Ptolemy’s extravagance and Arsinoë’s disapproval thereof.
 
Arsinoë and her brother were the children of Ptolemy III and Berenike II.  Given the poets, priests and intellectuals her mother chose to surround herself with, it would be surprising if she weren’t highly educated.  Her brother took the throne in 222, beginning his reign by having Berenike murdered.**  He fought the battle of Raphia against the Seleukids in Palestine in 217 with Arsinoë at his side.  Whether or not she actually fought is uncertain, but she was certainly there.
 
We also don’t know if she was married to him at this point.  On the one hand, even once they married she was still his sister in addition to being his wife and such a marriage would give both of them legitimacy as rulers, stabilizing Ptolemy’s position in the early years of his reign.  On the other hand, several accounts of the battle name Arsinoë his sister, not his wife.  Regardless, they have to have been married sometime before 215 or so, when the pair of them were deified and incorporated into the dynastic cult.  Their son and only known child Ptolemy V was born five years later in 210.
 
The pair of them did not get along very well and disagreed about how the Egypt should be ruled.  Ptolemy loved extravagant parties and had several favorites he liked to reward with wealth and influence.  Arsinoë disapproved of his wild expenditures and free handing out of power, perhaps understanding that it would lead to a weakening of their centralized government.  The two never reconciled and Arsinoë had retreated from government by early 204.  Ptolemy died of unknown sometime that spring or summer.  Arsinoë was murdered late in the summer that same year, either on Ptolemy’s orders, if he was still alive, or by his supporters after his own death.***  Her popularity was such that a mob gathered in reaction and executed some of Ptolemy’s favorites.


*Justin calls her Eurydice.  Since she isn’t referred to this way by any other ancient historian and the name had really no significance to the Ptolemaic dynasty at all, there’s really no reason to assume that was actually one of her names.
**Which makes his title rather ironic.  Father, yes, mother, no.
***We don’t actually know who died first.

Sources/Further Reading:
Polybius 5.83-84 - Lacus Curtius
Polybius 15.25 - Lacus Curtius
Justin, Historiarum Philippicarum libri 30.1-2 - Forum Romanum
3 Maccabees 1-4 - University of Michigan
Arsinoë III - Egyptian Royal Genealogy
Portrait of a Ptolemaic Queen, possibly Arsinoë III - Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
Arsinoe III - Encyclopedia Britannica

Illegitimate children in Ancient Rome were the offspring of any two parents who weren’t bound by Roman marriage.  And this was specifically Roman marriage, so the children of concubines, citizen/non-citizen pairs, and other couples living in de-facto marriages (see here and here) were all illegitimate under Roman law, regardless of whether their parents considered themselves wed.  Unlike in later periods, there was no particular social stigma against illegitimacy, but they received less from public assistance programs and were subject to different laws regarding patria potestas, citizenship, and inheritance, some of which placed them at a disadvantage.  Most notably, legitimate children belonged to their father and his family, while illegitimate ones belonged to the mother and her family.*
 
A couple things follow from this.  First, where legitimate children were under the patria potestas of their father, illegitimate children had no famila and were in no one’s power unless their father or some other man legally adopted them.  Second, they inherited their status and citizenship from their mother.  So if she was free, her children were freeborn.  If she was a slave, so were they.  If the mother was a Roman citizen, so too were her children.  So, for example, if a free citizen woman had children with a non-citizen man,** they would be free citizens, regardless of his free or slave status.***  Third, since they were legally their mother’s offspring but not their father’s, under the Leges Iuliae they counted towards the number of children she needed to be free from guardianship, but did not contribute to the benefits a man could get from having more children.
 
Since they weren’t part of their father’s family, illegitimate children couldn’t inherit from him if he died without making a will.  And until the second century CE, the same went for the inheritance of a woman’s property (except her dowry) by any of her children, legitimate or illegitimate.  Unless she made a will, any of a woman’s children had as much right to her property as her parents and siblings, sometimes less.  It was only in the second century CE that the law changed, giving children priority in the inheritance of their mother’s property if she died intestate.


*A married woman’s husband had the right to choose whether to raise a child or expose it.  Children he raised were usually considered to be his own.
**Since under Roman law marriage was only between two citizens, the children of any relationship between a citizen and a non-citizen would always be illegitimate.
***Marriage-like relationships between free women and slave men were common enough to seriously concern certain moralists, especially 2nd-4th centuries.  These de-facto marriages, along with those between two slaves, were known as contubernium.

Sources/Further Reading:
Gardner, Jane F. "Legal Stumbling-Blocks for Lower-Class Families in Rome." In The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space, edited by Beryl Rawson and Paul Weaver, 35-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Rawson, Beryl. "Adult-Child Relationships in Roman Society." In Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 7-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.

Isabella of Hainaut (1170-1190) didn’t last long as Queen of France, but she seems to have known how to use popular opinion in her own favor.  She was a well-connected woman, first wife of Phillip Augustus, niece of the Count of Flanders, and daughter of the both Count of Hainaut and the heir to the county of Flanders.*  She was also elder sister of two Latin Emperors of Constantinople, Baldwin and Henry, and one Empress Yolanda, aunt to two suo jure countesses of Flanders and Hainaut, Jeanne and Marguerite, and mother of the next French king, Louis VIII of France.

Isabella’s parents were Baldwin V of Hainaut and Margaret I of Flanders.  Her maternal uncle, Phillip of Flanders, then advisor to Phillip Augustus, made arrangements with her parents for her to marry the king.  They were wed in 1180, with Isabella bringing Artois as her dowry.  She was crowned Queen of France at the age of ten.

Four years later, when she was fourteen, Phillip decided to repudiate her and marry someone else.  He had two major reasons for this.  First, her father supported the county of Flanders in its war against him.  Second, she, a fourteen year old, had not yet given him a male heir.  Isabella knew she had to act and knew that in doing so she could use the favor the populace.  She went out into the streets of Sens, where they were staying, dressed as a penitent, barefoot and in only a shift, begging for mercy, shaming him for trying to get rid of her.  The people of the town rose in her favor.

It was this action and her uncle’s reminder that if Phillip repudiated her, he would lose Artois as well that saved her position as Queen.  She finally did have a son in 1187, the future Louis VIII and husband of Blanche of Castile.  She died only three years later at the age of 19, from complications related to childbirth.


*With her brother Baldwin’s inheritance of Hainaut from their father and Flanders from their mother (who inherited the title after her own brother died childless a year after Isabella’s death), the two counties were ruled together.  They would be separated again a few generations later, divided between the Avesnes and Dampierre sons of Marguerite.

Sources/Further Reading:
Earenfight, Theresa. Queenship in Medieval Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Barber, Malcolm. The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320. London: Routledge, 1993.
Flanders, Counts - Medieval Lands
Isabelle of Hainault - Wikipedia

At its simplest, a vow of pilgrimage was exactly what it sounds like: a promise to undertake a pilgrimage to a particular shrine at a later date.  Such a simple thing, though, could be followed by a number of complications, in carrying it out as well as in avoiding having to make good on the promise.  The specifics of the vow usually included the destination and could also cover conditions that would have to be fulfilled before the person would actually have to go.
 
The person making the vow could be from any class in society, though some might have more trouble fulfilling it than others, especially when the pilgrimage in question was a long one.  Married women usually had responsibilities at home and usually had to get the permission of their husbands.  Nuns needed permission from their abbess and sometimes the bishop.  Priests had responsibilities to their parishes, while many nobles needed the permission of their king.
 
A vow of pilgrimage could be made privately to oneself, in the presence of a few witnesses, or publicly.  Some were made with the serious intention of going, but it was not unknown for people to make these vows more frivolously, without thinking things through, and then find themselves bound by them.  Women especially were warned against it, partially due to the common belief that they were less likely to really think things through and partially because it was simply harder for women to get away to go on pilgrimage.  When people did find themselves unable to keep their vows, they would have to apply to a Church authority to be freed from them.
 
It was almost impossible to prove that someone had made a private vow.  If making the pilgrimage turned out to be impossible and one’s conscience didn’t see it as a problem, nobody ever had to know.  On the other hand, it was also impossible to prove someone hadn’t made a vow.  So it was probably equally easy to claim the vow had been made and, provided there wasn’t too much to do at home, take a day off by going to visit some nearby shrine.  A vow, after all, had to be fulfilled.

Sources/Further Reading:
Webb, Diana. Medieval European Pilgrimage. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Webb, Diana.  Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West. London: I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2001.

Her face and upper body have been damaged, but you can still see her hand, her crown, and the outline of her head.
[Relief depicting Cleopatra I at El Kab, Egypt, photographed 2010, source: Wikimedia Commons]

The marriage of Cleopatra I Syra (before 212-178/177 BCE) to Ptolemy V was in part a result of the earlier conflicts between her Seleukid ancestors and the Ptolemaic kings over Antiochos II’s marriages to Laodike I and Berenike Phernophoros.  With this legacy hanging over her, she ruled first at her husband’s side, then as regent for her son, Ptolemy VI, becoming the first Ptolemaic Queen to rule Egypt on her own.
 
Cleopatra was the daughter of Antiochos III and (most likely) Laodice III.  It’s likely that she was their third or fourth child and probably second daughter.  Her father announced her betrothal to Ptolemy V in 196 BCE.  The announcement itself was undoubtedly a political move.  He was hosting Roman envoys at the time and Rome supported the Ptolemies over the Seleukids.
 
The actual marriage took place in 194 or 193 BCE, two or three years later, and Cleopatra joined her husband in Egypt.  Here she was named Syra as a reference to where she had come from.  Almost immediately, Ptolemy had her incorporated into the dynastic cult, granting her the same religious honors he held.  They had at least three children together: Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II,* and Ptolemy VIII.
 
Ptolemy V died in 180 BCE, leaving Cleopatra I and Ptolemy VI as co-rulers.  In practice this meant that Cleopatra ruled alone as regent, as her son was only six at the time, and as such was named before him in all official documents. She minted coins with her own image and dealt with the precarious diplomatic situation between Egypt and the Seleukid Empire.  In the last years of his reign, Ptolemy V had been planning war against is brother-in-law.  On her ascension as regent, Cleopatra put an end to those plans, preferring the diplomatic route.  She died in 178, the first Ptolemaic queen to rule on her own.
 
 
*Some scholars are reluctant to definitively consider Cleopatra II as Cleopatra I’s daughter because she is never named as such, unlike her brothers.  Considering, though, that Cleopatra II is named as Ptolemy V’s daughter, that she had to have been legitimate, and that Ptolemy V never had any wife but Cleopatra I, there really is no other option.

Sources/Further Reading:
Appian, Civil Wars 1.5 - Perseus
Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History 35.2 - Forumromanum.org
Polybius 18 - Lacus Curtius
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 33, 35 - Marquette University
Cleopatra I - Egyptian Royal Genealogy

Since divorce, widow(er)hood, and remarriage were so common in Rome, it should come as no surprise that what we would now call “blended families” were very common and, quite frankly, ordinary.  This isn’t to say that nobody gave any thought to it or that there wasn’t concern and anxiety over the potential preference for blood relations over step-relations (e.g. the fear that a woman would give her blood children preferential treatment over her stepchildren was not uncommon), but it also created networks between families, which could potentially be used to political advantage.
 
When a marriage ended, the children stayed with and were legally part of their father’s family.  So a woman who remarried generally would not raise her own biological children.  When Pompey divorced his third wife Mucia Tertia, her children (then in their early teens) stayed with him.  She herself remarried the brother of Pompey’s second wife, Aemeluis Scaurus and had children by him as well.  Though now attached to a different family, we might wonder how much connection she still had to her children by Pompey.
 
Many remarriages seem to have happened only once the children of the previous union were at least in their early teens.  When Julia Caesaris became Pompey’s fourth wife, his children by Mucia gained a stepmother very close to their own age.  Marcia’s second husband had a daughter, Hortensia, old enough to already have been widowed, by the time she married him.
 
There were also, however, several cases of people raising quite young stepchildren.  Marcia’s own father, Lucius Marcius Phillipus, only remarried to Atia Balba Casonia after Marcia herself had married Cato the Younger, though in this case he gained two young stepchildren: Octavia Minor and Gaius Octavius.  Octavia herself wound up raising quite the large brood of children including her biological children by Marcellus and Antony and her stepchildren through Antony’s unions with Fulvia and Cleopatra VII.

Sources/Further Reading:
Bradley, K. R. "Remarriage and the Structure of the Upper-Class Roman Family." In Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 79-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Corbier, Mireille. "Divorce and Adoption as Roman Familial Strategies. In Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 47-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Pomeroy, Sarah. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.