The Romans generally did not conceptualise what in the modern day we term ‘social history’ – that is, a history which prioritises the evolution of societal relations and identities rather than the story of public events. Thus, when historians such as Livy or Tacitus incorporate women or other socially marginalised people into their writings, they do so to the degree their activities are connected to those of the men around them. Sometimes those women's activities are understood as furthering the movement of public history, such as when at the end of AUC 1, Lucretia's rape spurs the Roman state to shift from monarchic governance to a republic; sometimes they appear to resist or sidestep male political processes, as when the co-conspirator Plancina in Annals 3 is saved from the fate of her husband by the intercession of the empress Livia. To a certain degree, the stories we can tell about ancient women will always be framed by the male-authored sources on which we depend and will therefore always appear in this ‘relational’ frame. Here, however, I would like to approach the historical role of women from a different standpoint, one which prioritises not the ways that women fit into traditional historical narratives but rather moments when they disrupt them.