(It was 114 BC)
So in the last part of Chapter 3, Part II Du Beauvoir seems to describe some sort of Feminist revolution in Rome. She seems to make the following essential claims:
In Rome women were legally unequal, because they were considered legally the guardians of the men in their family or of their husbands.
However, all citizens of Rome were afforded some dignity and economic purpose and women were considered an important asset of the Roman Empire.
The contradiction between general social and cultural respect vs. relatively little legal power caused women to march in the street in protest: "They sort out the statue of the Mother of Gods and bore it along the Tiber."
This was all brought to a halt in 114 with the Scandal of the Vestal Virgins.
The actual passage is a half dozen pages long or so and she lists a variety of laws and a variety of dates and it's quite hard for me to work out the exact story without much of a frame of reference about the Roman Empire to base this on. So how much of what's listed above is true and what is the ELI5 explanation of this whole Roman 0th wave feminist movement?
Are you sure de Beauvoir is actually talking about the empire (114 AD)?
I am asking for clarification because there was a big scandal in 114 BC: link
I think you might be thinking 114 BC where three Vestal Virigins (Aemilia, Marcia and Licinia) were accused of breaking their vows of chastity. If you're not familiar with the Vestal Virgins, they were brought as young girls to the temple and required to be priestesses to Vesta (goddess of the hearth). They had many duties, but also held a very respected position in society - they could testify without being questioned and considered 100% pure. They had to keep an eternal fire going, and if the fire went out or they went against their chastity vows they were scourged or buried alive. Sometimes, when major things went wrong - plague, losing battles - the Vestal Virgins were used as scapegoats, assuming that they had broken their chastity vows. Back to 114BC - Aemilia supposedly led the other two to break their vows and was condemned immediately, the other two were first acquitted, but were retried and sentenced to death. It's widely accepted that the trials -especially the retrials were bogus and politically motivated. I can't find where the quote about the mother of gods and the tiber, but hopefully a background might help you interpret.