Birthing Romans: childbearing and its risks in Imperial Rome : Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome

""Here I lie, a matron... I was wife to Fortunatus, my father was Veturius. Unlucky woman, born twenty-seven years ago and married for sixteen - one bed, one marriage - I died after six births, just one child remains." This epitaph of a Roman woman named Veturia, who died in the 3rd century BCE, starkly captures the relentless cycle of birthing, rearing, and burying children that defined the lives of ancient Mediterranean women.

In this book, Anna Bonnell Freidin asks: how would Veturia and her family have understood such losses, child after child?

What kinds of strategies might she have employed to protect herself and her infants, to equip them for better futures?

How would she, her family, and any caretakers have worked to mitigate the dangers of pregnancy and birth?

Put more generally, how did Romans approach the risks of childbearing?

Freidin demonstrates how the perceptions of these fears and risks not only affected the ways indivi