Women in ancient Rome challenge the historian. Widely
represented in literature and art, they rarely speak for
themselves. Amy Richlin, among the foremost pioneers in ancient
studies, gives voice to these women through scholarship that scours
sources from high art to gutter invective.
In "Arguments with Silence, " Richlin presents a linked
selection of her essays on Roman women's history, originally
published between 1981 and 2001 as the field of "women in
antiquity" took shape, and here substantially rewritten and
updated. The new introduction to the volume lays out the historical
methodologies these essays developed, places this process in its
own historical setting, and reviews work on Roman women since 2001,
along with persistent silences. Individual chapter introductions
locate each piece in the social context of Second Wave feminism in
Classics and the academy, explaining why each mattered as an
intervention then and still does now.
Inhabiting these pages are the women whose lives were shaped by
great art, dirty jokes, slavery, and the definition of adultery as
a wife's crime; Julia, Augustus' daughter, who died, as her
daughter would, exiled to a desert island; women wearing makeup,
safeguarding babies with amulets, practicing their religion at home
and in public ceremonies; the satirist Sulpicia, flaunting her
sexuality; and the "praefica, " leading the lament for the
dead.
Amy Richlin is one of a small handful of modern thinkers in a
position to consider these questions, and this guided journey with
her brings surprise, delight, and entertainment, as well as a fresh
look at important questions.
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