Women in the Classical World Image and Text

by Fantham, Elaine; Foley, Helene Peet; Kampen, Natalie Boymel; Pomeroy, Sarah B.; Shapiro, H. A.

• ISBN13: 9780195067279
• ISBN10: 0195067274
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-09-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Bits of information about women are scattered throughout the fragmented mosaic of ancient history. The vivid poetry of Sappho survived antiquity on remnants of damaged papyrus, riddled with gaps. The inscription on a beautiful fourth century B.C.E. grave praises the virtues of Mnesarete, an Athenian woman who died young, but we do not know if the grave's marble stele shows Mnesarete, or simply a ready-made design chosen by her family. We read that on one occasion in the fourth century a great number of Roman wives were given a collective public trial and found guilty of poisoning their husbands, but we can only guess whether these "poisonings" were linked to a high occurrence of accidental food poisoning, or disease, or something more sinister. Apart from the legends of Cleopatra, Dido and Lucretia, and images of graceful maidens dancing on urns, the evidence about the lives of women of the classical world--visual, archaeological, and written----has remained uncollected and uninterpreted. Now, the lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched Women in the Classical World lifts the curtain on the women of ancient Greece and Rome, from slaves and prostitutes, to Athenian housewives, to Rome's imperial family. The first book on classical women to give equal weight to written texts and artistic representations, it brings together a great wealth of materials--poetry, vase painting, legislation, medical treatises, architecture, religious and funerary art, women's ornaments, historical epics, political speeches, even ancient coins--to present women in the historical and cultural context of their time. Written by leading experts in the fields of ancient history and art history, women's studies, and Greek and Roman literature, the book's chronological arrangement allows the changing roles of women to unfold over a thousand year period, beginning in the eighth century B.C.E. The authors seek out literature that preserves women's own voices. Both the art and the literature highlight women's creativity, sexuality and coming of age, marriage and childrearing, religious and public roles, and other themes. Fascinating chapters probe revealing aspects of the classical world: the ubiquitous reports of wild behavior on the part of Spartan and Etruscan women and the mythical Amazons; the changing views of the female body presented in male-authored gynecological treatises; the "new woman" represented by the love poetry of the late Republic and Augustan Age; and the traces of upper and lower-class life in Pompeii, miraculously preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Provocative, surprising, filled with timeless examples of the rich legacy of classical art, Women in the Classical World is a masterly foray into the past, and a definitive statement on the lives of women in ancient Greece and Rome.

Author Biography

About the Authors:

Elaine Fantham is Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University. Helene Peet Foley is Olin Professor of Classics at Barnard College. Natalie Boymel Kampen is Professor of Women's Studies and Art History at Barnard College. Sarah B. Pomeroy is Professor of History at Columbia University. H. Alan Shapiro is Professor of Classics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

I WOMEN IN THE GREEK WORLD	1	(206)
Women in Archaic Greece: Talk in Praise and Blame	10	(46)
Excursus Spartan Women: Women in A Warrior Society	56	(12)
Women in Classical Athens: Heroines and Housewives	68	(60)
Excursus Amazons: Women in Control	128	(8)
The Hellenistic Period: Women in a Cosmopolitan World	136	(47)
Excursus Medicine: the ``Proof'' of Anatomy	183	(24)
Lesley Dean-Jones
II WOMEN IN THE ROMAN WORLD	207	(188)
Republican Rome I: From Marriage by Capture to Partnership in War---The Proud Women of Early Rome	216	(27)
Excursus Etruscan Women	243	(17)
Larissa Bonfante
Republican Rome II: Women in a Wealthy Society---Aristocratic and Working Women From the Second Century B.C.E.	260	(20)
Excursus the ``New Woman'': Representation and Reality	280	(14)
Women, Family, and Sexuality in the Age of Augustus and the Julio-Claudians	294	(36)
Excursus the Women of Pompeii	330	(15)
Women of the High and Later Empire: Conformity and Diversity	345	(50)
Chronology	395	(6)
Art Credits	401	(10)
Index	411