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ALJ 1/2017 Leo Peppe 36 ever, this may be an understatement, as the activities of some of these women had a different and far greater impact. But above all, two important figures are of interest here. Evelyn Höben- reich has recently written about one of them in depth.53 They are Plancia Magna of Perge and her descendant Plancia Aurelia Motoxaris of Selge, both towns in the vicinity of present-day Antalya. These two ladies of the II century CE come to hold the post of demiurge, are the eponymous magistrates of their town, “representing the city to the world, and so constituting the very top of the whole pyramid of offices”.54 Plancia Magna was certainly also a priestess of the imperial cult. We can ascribe to Plancia the magnificent reconstruction of the city gate at her expense in around 120 CE:55 women constitute the majority of the statues decorating this gate and the inscriptions refer to Plancia, even preceding her male relatives. Equally generous was Motoxaris, who had the upper agora of her town rebuilt at her costs.56 In the inscriptions, these women are referred to respectively as “daughter of the city” and “mother of the city”. Another aspect of civic spaces concerned the participation of women as spectators in events such as games, public banquets and theatrical performances. There were never any restrictions in this regard, beyond that of decent behaviour. Already in the II century BCE, the leader of a theatre company remarked in a comedy by Terence that among the various reasons for the comedy’s lack of success, when first performed in 165 BCE, was the chattering of women.57 However, we should always remember that spectacles and games in Rome had a primarily religious signifi- cance: the priests of the deities in whose honour they were held participated in these events, whereas head priests and the Vestal Virgins had reserved seats.58 VII. Complementarity, Christianity: two final remarks The first remark concerns the potential for linking together all the threads of this paper into a single word. In my view, this word exists, and it is complementarity, or “Komplementarität”. This word may have many different nuances in different disciplines: the role of a complementary element within a system may vary from a “mere accessory” to “cooperation on an equal footing”. In the case of Roman women, we see their integration into Roman society as non-egalitarian but necessary for this social system. This complementarity subordinates the condition of women to that of men. A second final consideration: I have spoken of the importance of women in Roman state reli- gion, but only in the context of paganism. In fact, the birth of Christianity and its later estab- lishment did not radically alter the legal status of women, and only substantially impacted the 53 Evelyn Höbenreich, Les femmes dans le droit romain, in DONNE, CIVITÁ SISTEMI GIURIDICI 48–49 (Donatella Curtotti, Criseide Novi & Giunio Rizzelli eds., 2007) and previously ead., Familie und Gesellschaft, in SCYLLA. FRAGMENTE EINER JURISTISCHEN GESCHICHTE DER FRAUEN IM ANTIKEN ROM 9, 66–67 (E. Höbenreich & G. Rizzelli eds., 2003); on Plancia Magna and Motoxaris see also Johannes Nollé, Frauen wie Omphale? Überlegungen zu politischen Ämtern von Frau- en im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien, in REINE MÄNNERSACHE? FRAUEN IN MÄNNERDOMÄNEN DER ANTIKEN WELT 229, respective- ly 247 et seq. and 238 et seq. (M.H. Dettenhofer ed., 1994). 54 Ramsay MacMullen, Women in Public in the Roman Empire, 29 HISTORIA 208, 208–213 (1980). (Yet, no unanimous explanation exists of the reasons and causes for this role of women in this area and in this time.) 55 PAOLO BARRESI, PROVINCIE DELL’ASIA MINORE: COSTO DEI MARMI, ARCHITETTURA PUBBLICA, COMMITTENZA 521 (2003). 56 Id. at 539–540. 57 TER. Hec. 35: clamor mulierum. 58 CIC. Mur. 35.73 as cited in ROBIN LORSCH WILDFANG, ROME’S VESTAL VIRGINS. A STUDY OF ROMAN’S VESTAL PRIESTESSES IN THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EARLY EMPIRE 32 (2006).