Matrons in Ancient Rome

Holding the title of “matron” in Ancient Rome was a sign of a certain status.  A matron was a woman with a certain amount of distinction.  She was freeborn and usually either married or a widow.  These are, however, ideals and the problem with ideals is that everybody references them but nobody explicitly defines them.  People are simply expected to understand the concept.  The status of Matron was a powerful concept to reference, but not a static one.

[Fresco of a woman with a tray, Villa San Marco at Stabiae, photographed by Luiclemens]
[Source: Wikimedia Commons]

There were some concrete markers of this status, especially in terms of clothing.  During the late Republic and throughout the time of the Empire a matron generally wore two tunics covered by a long dress known as a stola.  When she went out she would add a palla, a mantle draped over the shoulders and sometimes over the head as well.  Young girls, prostitutes, and those who had forfeited the title of matron (usually through being caught in adultery) were not permitted to wear either of these garments.*

Livia Drusilla in a stola and palla.
[Livia Drusilla, early 1st century CE, National Archaeological Museum of Spain]
[Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Though matrons were generally expected to occupy themselves with running their households, as a group they also granted various honors and responsibilities on certain occasions and could get their voices heard in ways other women could not.  A Vestal Virgin who fell seriously ill would be given into the care of some well-respected and wealthy matron.  One of the reasons Hortensia and the women who accompanied her were listened to was because they were respected matrons.

[Fresco of women hanging clothes to dry, found in a dyer's shop, Pompeii]
[Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, source: Wikimedia Commons]

As I mentioned above, one could lose this status.  An adultery conviction was the most obvious way this could happen, but there were other reasons.  Cicero argued that that to use the title “matron” with any connection to Clodia, whom he accused of poisoning and seduction was the height of impropriety.  Concubinage, however, seems not to have necessarily caused a woman to forfeit the title of matron.  The jurist Ulpian, at least, argues that a concubine’s patron can only accuse her of adultery as a third party and then only if she has not already forfeited the name of matron.  So perhaps the title of matron and the ideal behind it had some flexibility, at least by the 2nd century CE.

*Young girls wore tunics while prostitutes and women convicted of adultery were required to wear togas.

Sources/Further Reading:
Papinian, Adultery, book 2 (Digest 48.5.11) - Diotima
Ulpian, On Adultery, book 2 (Digest 48.5.14) - No link available (found in Lefkowitz & Fant, see below)
Cicero, Pro Caelio 13-16. L - Wikisource (Latin text - Latin Library)
Pliny the Younger, Letters 7.19. L - Diotima
Excerpts from Sarah Pomeroy's "The Roman Matron of the Late Republic and Early Empire" - Stetson.edu
Women in Ancient Rome - Wikipedia
Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Maureen B. Fant. Women's Life in Greece & Rome: A sourcebook in translation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.