Giulia Tofana helped Roman women escape unhappy, abusive marriages—by killing their husbands.

In Rome, female infants were much more likely to be exposed (abandoned to die) because daughters required a dowry to wed and did not hand down the family name. Girls from leading families may have ...

Sex, said the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, ‘is the friction of a piece of gut and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus. In Rome, female infants were much more ...