Women in Ancient Rome

by Paul Chrystal

The history of women in ancient Rome is fascinating and exhilarating. It gives a unique insight into one of the world’s most dynamic, successful superpower civilisations and illuminates a considerable number of admirable, exciting, evil, slatternly and dangerous women fighting to be heard and seen against insurmountable odds in a world run by men for men.‘Silent’ is a word that is sometimes used to describe these women, because of the paucity of their own first-hand evidence for their lives; ‘silent’ can also be used to describe how the typical Roman male liked his women. Some women, though, broke that silence and forged an identity of their own in a largely suspicious, paranoid, patronising and critical world.It is those women whom we meet in this intriguing book. Paul Chrystal examines aspects of the Roman woman’s lifestyle and her evolving role in the family. We meet the assertive, brave, pernicious and outrageous women in the public arena; we learn about women’s education and of artistic, cultured women; we meet women soothsayers, witches and ghosts; we examine the role of women in religion and in the mystery cults. We learn of women as health professionals; women’s medicine; women’s sexuality; woman as mistress, prostitute and pimp.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Classics

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 19, 2013

About the author

Paul Chrystal attended the Universities of Hull and Southampton where he took degrees in Classics. For the next thirty-five years he worked in medical publishing, much of the time as an international sales director for one market or another while latterly creating medical educational programmes for the pharmaceutical industry. He worked for companies such as Churchill Livingstone, Wiley-Blackwell, CRC Press, Academic Press and Elsevier.

Reviews

[Tomas Riklius · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good and wide selection of original sources that reveals the daily life of women in Ancient Rome. A good introduction into understanding the topic

[Melynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chrystal states that he wants this book to appeal to academics and the everyday person and that is achieved on some level. But to really understand the vast amount of statesmen, writers, and poets sourced in this book and really get an understanding of the time some of the mentioned women are living in, a pretty solid knowledge base of the history of the Roman Empire and Republic are necessary. This book is filled with anecdotes about women, in a lot of cases, further investigation was necessary to really get a sense of particular women or whatever they did to get mentioned in this book. The history of women in a patriarchial society like ancient Rome is unfortunately unavoidably going to be viewed from a male perspective, but Chrystal has managed almost to magnify that and somehow make the subject of his book secondary to the men he is quoting. That said, there's still a lot of interesting information to be found. I just don't think it is very everyday person friendly nor very friendly to the women that are supposed to be the subject of the book in the sense that their stories aren't really told. They are generalizations, which is probably unavoidable for the most part, but more could have done to work against that grain. There is also very little if any sense of chronology in this book, so if you aren't familiar with, say, Cicero and when he lived and was active, you have no real sense in what Rome any women who might be mentioned in conjunction with him were living in.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Xanthe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, well, well. Where do I even start with this book. I think the bottom line of the issues with this book is it somehow manages to sideline women in a book about women. Obviously with the nature of the sources 99% being written by wealthy elite men the book is in some senses going to inevitably written through this gaze Chrystal amplifies that by a thousand and the subject of the book becomes more what ancient Roman men think of women. There were multiple times that he mentions an interesting ancient Roman women and then just moved onto Martial or Juvenal again instead of exploring their lives or writings. But aside from all that Chrystal had this sleaziness to him, which was more displayed in the female sexuality chapter. He curiously seems to align himself with the ancient Roman writers, several times referring to sex workers as whores without quoting anyone but as a casual use of that phrase. He also perpetrates the million brothels in Pompeii myth, when archeological evidence to only building that can be conclusively called a brothel. He also just can’t conceive of a complex person also being women for some reason and typecasts women either as a whore, Puella Doctra (interesting hot women), and a matra (boring housewives). Through his subpar, lazy and sometimes unprofessional historical research and writing he communicates an extremely rudimentary understanding of the female experience and what it might of felt like to be a women even though he thinks himself a great big feminist. The only reason I’m giving it 2 stars it because I found Sulpica through him so he deserves credit for that.

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of interesting facts but often lacking in context and analysis - it might be better to have fewer examples from the literature but deal with them in more detail. As it is, this can sometimes seem like a breathless list of references. There are some good points made, but I would have liked more exploration of the implications of the examples cited.

[Chloeemagic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction into the lives of Roman women. Every chapter explores a different aspect, and all include helpful explanations of Latin terms. A really informative yet compact read. I highly recommend!!