The uilica between literary and epigraphic sources: unveiling female slaves in leading positions in the Roman countryside

The treatises on the countryside by Cato, Varro, and Columella are our best sources for studying the Roman ruling class's rural estates. They emphasize hierarchies when dealing with workers, mainly enslaved workers. The uilica is a crucial female leading position that appears in these treatises. In general, this figure has received little attention from historiography, being considered a relational position determined by the uilicus, which is central in traditional analyzes of the Roman rural economy. In this perspective, the uilica would be nothing more than the wife of the uilicus. However, the studies of the Austrian historian Ulrike Roth convincingly put this premise down. This text presents this debate, showing how new approaches to traditional literary sources are essential.