What were the roles of ancient Roman women and what roles were not open to them?

I am jumping all over history so forgive me but here is a basic answer-

The Vestal Virgins were a BIG DEAL. They were very powerful women who had some serious standing in society. They were exempt from pater familias, so they could own property and vote, their word was automatically assumed to be true and incorruptible, they could free condemned prisoners, and they were considered sacrosanct (any assault on them was punished by death). Of course, you could never get married and if you had sex they buried you alive (because you couldn't spill her blood!).

But not everyone was a Vestal Virgin! Wealthy women both had and didn't have freedom. They had to answer to their husbands and were very much a representation of their family. They had more to lose in reputation than a lower class of women, so they largely stayed home and took care of their family. Traditional Rome had very "traditional family values" of a quiet, docile woman who would do whatever a man told her. Look at the story of Lucretia- she was married, then a foreign invader snuck into her room at night and raped her, then she killed herself to save her family from dishonor. She was considered an ideal woman in Roman society.

But, as in most cases, real life was different from the stories. Look at Cornelia, who is another "ideal" Roman woman. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus and the mother of the Gracchi. After her husband died, she chose not to remarry- instead she educated herself and was revered in society. She had serious influence on her sons political careers and her writing [probably] survives to this day. Women really did start to get more freedom. There is a really interesting book called "Roman Wives, Roman Widows" that talks about the emergence of a new class of woman who is basically free to explore her own pleasure and social life. Women actually had ownership of property and could retain wealth after their husband died. A wealthy widow was a hot commodity in Rome.

Now don't get me wrong, a woman was never going to be Caesar or the most politically powerful person, but she definitely had influence (this is all pretty much for wealthy, upper class women right now. I'll get to common women in a second). I really love the role of the concubine- a man married a woman for her social status and her family's money, but she wasn't always interesting or very pretty, so he had a concubine who was young and beautiful BUT she also had to be very well read and educated so she could go to dinner parties and entertain his guests. The concubines were expected to be a little firey and their children could be adopted as legal children. Read "Roman Concubine and other De Facto Marriages" by Beryl Rawson.

As for more common women, we (maybe only I?) don't have as much information, but adultery wasn't punished as harshly as it was in the upper classes, so women could spread their seed a little bit. They could work in shops or on farms that their husbands or families owned. A freewoman and a Roman citizen was considered to be socially above a foreign man.

All in all, a roman woman had some stuff open to her, spending on how much money she had and the time in which she lives (obviously, this is always the answer). But I think we tend to think of the past as women having no rights and not being able to have any say or own anything. We imagine that women were totally oppressed and just barely above slave status. But fear not, Roman Women knew what they were doing.