The presentation focuses on an examination of the methods women in the upper classes of Roman society used to exercise power and control during the early empire. In addition to analyzing the ways women used power in a male-dominated society, the various circumstances that allowed these women to achieve power and the consequences of their actions are also examined. The presentation is broken up into three categories of power: military, domestic, and political, through the prism of the lives of five different women: Livia, Octavia, Fulvia, Agrippina Major and Agrippina Minor.