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Imperial Women of Rome: Power, Gender, Context
The Imperial Women of Rome explores the constraints and activities of the women who were part of Rome's imperial families from 35 BCE to 235 CE, the Roman principate. Boatwright uses coins, inscriptions, papyri, material culture, and archaeology, as well as the more familiar but biased ancient authors, to depict change and continuity in imperial women's pursuits and representations over time. Focused vignettes open each thematic chapter, emphasizing imperial women as individuals and their central yet marginalized position in the principate. Evaluating historical contingency and personal agency, the book assesses its subjects in relation to distinct Roman structures rather than as a series of biographies. Rome's imperial women allow us to probe the meanings of the emperor's authority and power; Roman law; the Roman family; Roman religion and imperial cult; imperial presence in the city of Rome; statues and exemplarity; and the military and communications. The book is richly illustrated and offers detailed information in tables and appendices, including one for the life events of the imperial women discussed in the text. Considered over time and as a whole, Livia, the Agrippinas and Faustinas, Julia Domna, and others closely connected to Rome's emperors enrich our understanding of Roman history and offer glimpses of fascinating and demanding lives.
- GenresHistory
400 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2025
my roman empire is that we will never really know the real lives of the imperial women and never know what could have been of the roman empire if it had girlbossed 3
November 29, 2025
Fans of the Constantinian dynasty will be disappointed that the imperial women studied in this book are only from the Principate. It’s kind of a shame, as I would have liked to see Boatwright’s opinions on the possible empress-regnant Ulpia Severina, or the power imperial women developed because of the increasing number of child emperors. Boatwright’s conception of family is less inclusive than the Romans, and so imperial freedwomen like Acte and Caenis are given a very short shift.
This book is detailed and easy to read; I can imagine a general reader who enjoyed popular books like Domina and wanted a more holistic view of imperial women as a whole could get through it without much difficulty. But to be blunt, I sometimes wondered if Boatwright was reading what she wrote. Her favorite word is “marginal” and its relatives, and she repeatedly denies that imperial women had power or agency despite writing a nearly 300 page book detailing their participation in various spheres of life. She is right to say, for instance, that being on a coin doesn’t make you powerful, and some time periods boasted more femmes de pouvoir than others, but it reaches a point where you have to wonder why the sexist Romans were more willing to believe that women had power than a modern female scholar. Part of this is because there is very little theory in the book–although she never says anything as lacking in class consciousness as Joan Smith, feminist relational theory would have qualified the alleged marginality of imperial women by showing how they nonetheless had more power and visibility than most other Romans, male or female. The other part is that Boatwright is just a pessimist when it comes to ancient women, as evident in her other work. This pessimism also leads her to make strange statements that aren’t directly related to the power of imperial women (like crediting Augustus’ destruction of his granddaughter’s country house to discomfort with independent women despite the reasoning Suetonius gives, saying that Roman women had little control over their fertility and no “safe” contraception despite most forms of Roman contraception being pretty benign ones that women were responsible for, and attributing the interest of some imperial women in foreign religions to Roman cultural ideas about women’s weakness of mind, even though some of the evidence about this is not hostile or even Roman).
It is true that imperial women had less power and influence than imperial men, but again, I do not feel like it is overly helpful to allow modern feminist indignation that the most powerful women were still not as powerful as the most powerful men to get the better of us moderns. Some might argue that the fact they featured in imperial ideology and iconography at all was significant: as Achaemenid sources show, this is not inevitable even in an unambiguous monarchy. I also felt that Boatwright was too reliant on legal definitions when assessing power, as well as reliance on sources like Tacitus when describing norms, when they had no influence on the contemporary perception of the women they wrote about on account of many of them being born long after they lived.
An important contribution to the scholarship on imperial women, no doubt, but by no means the last word. Already, other scholars, like Carlos Norena, cite Boatwright’s book as evidence of the high degree of power imperial women wielded.
This book is detailed and easy to read; I can imagine a general reader who enjoyed popular books like Domina and wanted a more holistic view of imperial women as a whole could get through it without much difficulty. But to be blunt, I sometimes wondered if Boatwright was reading what she wrote. Her favorite word is “marginal” and its relatives, and she repeatedly denies that imperial women had power or agency despite writing a nearly 300 page book detailing their participation in various spheres of life. She is right to say, for instance, that being on a coin doesn’t make you powerful, and some time periods boasted more femmes de pouvoir than others, but it reaches a point where you have to wonder why the sexist Romans were more willing to believe that women had power than a modern female scholar. Part of this is because there is very little theory in the book–although she never says anything as lacking in class consciousness as Joan Smith, feminist relational theory would have qualified the alleged marginality of imperial women by showing how they nonetheless had more power and visibility than most other Romans, male or female. The other part is that Boatwright is just a pessimist when it comes to ancient women, as evident in her other work. This pessimism also leads her to make strange statements that aren’t directly related to the power of imperial women (like crediting Augustus’ destruction of his granddaughter’s country house to discomfort with independent women despite the reasoning Suetonius gives, saying that Roman women had little control over their fertility and no “safe” contraception despite most forms of Roman contraception being pretty benign ones that women were responsible for, and attributing the interest of some imperial women in foreign religions to Roman cultural ideas about women’s weakness of mind, even though some of the evidence about this is not hostile or even Roman).
It is true that imperial women had less power and influence than imperial men, but again, I do not feel like it is overly helpful to allow modern feminist indignation that the most powerful women were still not as powerful as the most powerful men to get the better of us moderns. Some might argue that the fact they featured in imperial ideology and iconography at all was significant: as Achaemenid sources show, this is not inevitable even in an unambiguous monarchy. I also felt that Boatwright was too reliant on legal definitions when assessing power, as well as reliance on sources like Tacitus when describing norms, when they had no influence on the contemporary perception of the women they wrote about on account of many of them being born long after they lived.
An important contribution to the scholarship on imperial women, no doubt, but by no means the last word. Already, other scholars, like Carlos Norena, cite Boatwright’s book as evidence of the high degree of power imperial women wielded.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews