A kiss to detect wine on her breath: the violent policing of women drinking in Ancient Rome

• It was accessible to the masses, a fundamental staple of mainstream life and an indispensable part of the Roman economy and trade.
• Despite its centrality to the everyday life of the Romans, the ancient sources continuously attest it was a problematic drink when consumed by women.
• One of the ways in which this control over women was codified was through their drinking practices.

Punishment for drinking

• In the customary laws of early Rome, the discipline of female sobriety was instilled through punishment.
• During the earliest periods of Rome’s history and up until the Middle Republican period, it was a socially sanctioned custom for husbands to punish their wives for drinking.
• Many Ancient Roman sources speak of female drinking and adultery concurrently.

Acceptable drinking

• Archaeological evidence attests to their drinking practices as far back as the ancient written sources state otherwise.
• Certain types of wine, such as passum, a type of sweet raisin wine, were perhaps acceptable in the strict confines of gendered drinking parameters.
• Yet even here drinking wine was shrouded in innuendo, invariably described as “milk” and carried in a “honey-pot”.

A socially acceptable drink

• The male authors of these texts heavily mythologised the past, often to convey the inferred wickedness of their present day.
• By the time of the transition from Republic to Empire (around the first century B.C.E), it was customary for women to drink wine.
• Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus, is said to have credited her longevity to a wine varietal from Istria.