Examples of "homo" used for a woman

Question

Any beginning Latin learner discovers that English "man" has two translations: homo, when referring to a man as opposed to another species, and vir, when referring to a man as opposed to a woman.

I am curious about how well this distinction works, though. For instance, consider the following line from Plautus:

Homo hic ebrius est, ut opinor. (Amphitruo, 574)

^{This man is drunk, I think.}

In my mind--perhaps because of the hic--this could only refer to a male. The following two contrived sentences, though, strike me as incorrect:

Helena homo est.

Hae mulieres homines sunt.

My question: Are there are any cases where homo alone refers to a single woman or where homines refers to a group of just women?

Addendum

To add some clarity about my question, I am primarily curious about the word homo itself: whether it can refer to an individual woman. Here's a Corpus search for "homo es[t]": I wonder if any of the 94 results refer to a woman, e.g.:

Iulia, homo es!

Assuming this is possible, a second interesting question (addressed by many of the below answers) is whether this homo is epicene (always masculine, regardless of who it refers to) or if it is common (masculine or feminine, depending on who it refers to). In other words, should I write:

Iulia, homo es bonus!

or

Iulia, homo es bona!

Answer 1

In the Plautus passage, it has to be a man because of not only hic, but also ebrius.

L&S's entry for homo lists several examples:

Of females: mater, cujus ea stultitia est, ut eam nemo hominem appellare possit,” Cic. Clu. 70, 199: “quae (Io) bos ex homine est,” Ov. F. 5, 620; Juv. 6, 284: “dulcissimum ab hominis camelinum lac,” Plin. 28, 9, 33, § 123: homines feminae (opp. mares homines), Aug. Civ. Dei, 3, 3.—

Answer 2

Gender assignment in Latin is an issue too complex to cover in one post.

I follow Greville Corbett (e.g. Corbett 1991) in maintaining the difference between common nouns (grammatical gender varies between feminine or masculine, depending on the biological sex of the referent) and epicene nouns (grammatical gender is fixed and cannot be overwritten by the biological sex of the referent).

Tronskii 1960 (2001 ed.) writes that auctor and heres were originally used as epicene nouns but later started being used as common nouns. Homo was used as an epicene noun (p. 317).

As for the idiomatic, actual use of homo in Latin as a form of address, here's an illustrative entry from Dickey 2002 ("Latin forms of address: From Plautus to Apuleius"):

Answer 3

Genus hominum is the race of (all) mankind. Homo is a common noun, but its meaning is restricted in the same kind of way as 'woman' in English : that is to say, in the way that all ladies are women, but not all women are ladies (!), all mulieres are homines, but not all homines are mulieres. Everything else follows, and I'm sure that your instinct is correct; though I think the point is too narrow to be worth the effort of chasing down examples to show that homo/homines is ever used to refer to a woman/women.

The whole, splendid denunciation from Cicero pro Clu. 70, 199 may interest and even amuse you. My interpretation is that the lady (or woman!) being attacked isn't worthy of the name of human :

At quae mater? Quam caecam crudelitate et scelere ferri videtis; cuius cupiditatem nulla umquam turpitudo retardavit; quae vitiis animi in deterrimas partes iura hominum convertit omnia; cuius ea stultitia est ut eam nemo hominem, ea vis ut nemo feminam, ea crudelitas ut nemo matrem appellare possit. Atque etiam nomina necessitudinum, non solum naturae nomen et iura mutavit, uxor generi, noverca filii, filiae pelex; eo iam denique adducta est ut sibi praeter formam nihil ad similitudinem hominis reservarit.

Answer 4

Are there are any cases where homo alone refers to a single woman or where homines refers to a group of just women?

I'm no Latin specialist, though i remember something, and I know several other languages. Traditionally and historically, the word for man is applied to mankind (even in English). Thus group of men are derived from the stam of man/mankind.

So to answer your question, I think to avoid misunderstandings it's a clear NO, they didn't mix concepts when possible.

EDIT:

Iulia bonus homo est << this is correct, Iulia is a good person
"Iulia" (Iulia - substantive) "bonus homo" (a good person - adjective) "est" (is - verb)
see "bonus homo" as an expression as a whole, a composed adjective with it's own gender, and who's gender does not adapt to the subjective in the phrase. 

Iulia bona homo est  << this is wrong, homo needs to be handled as grammatical male, 
though you can use it for a female

EDIT: Whereas, however, ἄνθρωπος (anthropos in greek) really is a common noun, being used freely to refer specifically to both men and women, homo is rarely, if ever, feminine other than in grammar books.

EDIT: even though homo is handled as a grammatical male, a female can be part of it. In this sense it is to be seen as an epicene. It is declined and adjectivized as male, but can be used as an adjective for female subjects. Now: turning your question around: It would be gramatically correct to use homo when refering to one woman or a group of women, BUT ONLY if the feminine gender would be clearly understandable within the context... otherwise i would recommend the use of femina or mulier as much more appropriate choice to avoid misunderstanding and to be clear what gender your are referring to...

femina - feminae , mulier - muliebris

are common concepts for a woman, and a group of women. It thus may be in a philosophical discussion you could find references using homo.

The same applies for example in Spanish:

El hombre = mankind & the man, la mujer = the woman, hombres = a group of men, mujeres = a group of women

Now, to spice it up, there are exceptions: For example when a group of people is integrated by men and one or more women, there it could be possible that the term homines could be used. At least in Spanish, for simplicity's sake, most people would refer to such a group as "un grupo de hombres", and thus implicitly including 0 to several female in this group, nowadays it probably would be specified "un grupo de hombres y dos mujeres"...

A male-centered world view, I think, gave us this legacy.