Hortensia

▪ Roman heroine

flourished 1st century BC

      daughter of the Roman orator Quintus Hortensius, known for her speech against the taxation of women without representation, related by the 1st-century-AD Roman historian Valerius Maximus and by the 2nd-century Greek historian Appian (Civil Wars). In 42 BC the triumvirate of Mark Antony, Octavian (later the emperor Augustus), and Lepidus proposed to raise money for the war against the assassins of Julius Caesar by taxing the property of 1,400 rich women. Hortensia delivered an oration in the Roman Forum, rebuking the triumvirs for proposing to tax women to support wars that they had no part in initiating or conducting. She declared that women would enthusiastically help resist a foreign enemy but would never pay for civil wars. The speech angered the triumvirs, but they reduced the number of women liable to the tax to 400 and imposed a similar levy on men.

* * *