Tudor Humanists, London Printers, and the Status of Women: The Struggle over Livy in the Querelle des Femmes

Abstract

This essay discusses a novel contribution to the Renaissance debate over women. In 1551, William Thomas translated a brief but significant moment from Livy’s History of Rome concerning the repeal of the Lex Oppia, a sumptuary law targeting women in particular. Thomas thereby adapted one of the most arresting examples of women’s engagement in Roman politics. The episode shows the women of Rome taking to the streets to demand the law’s repeal, forcing senators and tribunes alike to acknowledge their protest. By contextualizing Thomas’s translation amid Quattrocento debates over female apparel and contemporary, female-centric works printed by Thomas Berthelet, Thomas’s translation emerges as a clear though hitherto-unacknowledged intervention in the English querelle des femmes.

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