Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder’s Reviews > Perpetua: The Woman, the Martyr > Status Update
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 25% done
If the main narrator’s style in The Suffering of the Holy Perpetua and Felicitas is arresting but not odd to our ear, it is because, centuries before modern writers thought they were inventing it, she had the intimate literary voice down flawlessly: She is not like a literary disciple: not traditional, not institutional, not collegial, and not emulative. She is just strikingly herself on paper.
— Feb 03, 2026 06:20PM
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Alan (the Lone Librarian)’s Previous Updates
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 72% done
Perpetua has been a popular figure from the first, inspiring many versions of her story and many more reactions to it. Since this present book is a biography, I concentrate on the Latin work Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, widely thought to be the earliest account of her martyrdom and to include her own narration.
— 58 minutes ago
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 60% done
I at first doubted I could find much to write about that would interest nonspecialist readers. Perpetua is not, after all, a female figure like Sappho or Cleopatra who has ricocheted noisily through a number of subsequent cultures. ... But then I came across a work of eye-popping exuberance, The Martyrs of Carthage: A Tale of the Times of Old, by Mrs. J. B. Webb, a British vicar’s wife...
— 6 hours, 41 min ago
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 50% done
Juvenal’s famous question, “Who’s going to guard those guards of yours?” is about corruptible slaves set to watch over women prone to adultery.
[Today's "Who polices the police?" has its origins in Juvenal's "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" from The Satires (100-127 AD).]
— 18 hours, 33 min ago
[Today's "Who polices the police?" has its origins in Juvenal's "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" from The Satires (100-127 AD).]
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 48% done
A standard proviso for reading ancient texts is that “the more difficult reading is the stronger one”; as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot would insist, an incongruous clue should be taken seriously, not jammed in to “fit” with other facts that may themselves have been falsified in order to support each other.
[Nice to see a shoutout to Christie & Poirot! 🕵🏻♂️]
— 22 hours, 55 min ago
[Nice to see a shoutout to Christie & Poirot! 🕵🏻♂️]
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 34% done
Surprise, curiosity, prurience may be first impressions, but they are not the means by which a story sticks; and certain women’s stories stick like nothing else.
— Feb 04, 2026 05:05PM
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 20% done
The Suffering does not include palaver of this specific kind, but the etiquette demanding displays of joyful gratitude for the gift of martyrdom as a guarantee of heaven results in huge gaps in plausibility. As far as the text itself is a performance, it breathes desperate pride but also psychic strain and division.
— Jan 29, 2026 12:02PM
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 5% done
She has had no real biography prior to this attempt of mine, even though, among other distinctions, she appears to be the first female prose author in Western history whose work we still possess.
— Jan 29, 2026 07:15AM
Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder
is 2% done
I come to Perpetua from several starting points—and I hope that does not remind readers of Stephen Leacock’s Lord Ronald, who “flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”
— Jan 28, 2026 10:04AM
