memes

Rome existed over a super long period of time, so there is some degree of variation but women were generally identified by a feminized version of their family name. That's why when looking at Roman history when women are mentioned you see a lot of the same name repeated. The Ancient World comprises of quite a lot more than Rome as well, they're right at the very tail end of what we'd call ancient, there's thousands of years of civilization prior to that and quite a few contemporary civilizations. As for the role of women in Rome, you can pretty much just Google it and you'll get alright results, the HBO Rome series does a decent job in that regard for drama and it's all generally super easy to find if you look for it. For a comparison to the mideval period, I'd check out the podcast We're Not So Different and search for related episodes. One of the hosts is an actual mideval scholar and has done a better job than me. Debt the First 5000 Years by Graebar covers the economic change between the times of slave empires and feudal/manorial rule, things got very regional during mideval times, centralized power was way down and most people's economic output was based more or less within their family and immediate community giving women a greater input just by pure material consequence but there being diminished institutional force in general also meant that these family or communal units were less bound by previous social contracts. The puritanical repression of women and in its more extreme and explicit form came post reformation and was more of an early modern period thing. It was still crazy fucking patriarchal but comparatively it was leaps and bounds beyond the Romans. Other ancient societies, thst kinds depends but that's worldwide over a 5000 year span