A Rome of One's Own Quotes

“Because Roman stories always included women. Women were always an integral part of Roman culture and the Roman Empire”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“But the story of Rome as told through women reveals a city”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Theodosius I changed this in 383 CE when he presented his wife”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Boniface was officially consecrated as pope in April 419 CE.25 The whole affair”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Two letters written by Placidia and sent to bishops in Africa and Nola asking them to attend the synod have survived in papal archives. To St Augustine and other bishops from Africa she wrote:”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Rome’s Urban Prefect – who wasn’t even a Christian – tapped out of dealing with the whole thing immediately and wrote to Placidia asking for help. Placidia got Honorius involved and then launched herself into trying to resolve the year of the two popes.”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“The first of these occurred in 419 CE and involves one of my all-time favourite things: anti-popes.”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“This kind of behaviour makes a girl incredibly popular among bishops and that could have been the only engagement Placidia had with the Church. She could have been an imperial patron who glorified both God and herself through the ostentatious donation of beautiful golden things with her name and face on them and spent the rest of her life lying in a comfy chair being fed grapes. Instead”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“She built a Church of the Holy Cross and a Church of St John the Evangelist in Ravenna. The latter still exists as San Giovanni Evangelista”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“But that soft power when exerted via bishops and popes meant much”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Christians really leaned into the whole executions thing once they stopped being on the receiving end”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Athaulf died of something known colloquially in the fifth-century west as ‘the Gothic disease’ but more often called political assassination.14”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“The Gothic Wars”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Roman woman with the means and will could now walk away from her house full of ancient obligations”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Zenobia suddenly learned that she was an enemy of Rome and Roman power”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Young men raised to be emperor”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Balbilla considered herself a woman and a poet equally”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“had a traditionally up and down relationship with the Romans”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Julia was thirty-seven when she was exiled. She had been married three times”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Julia had been a useful womb”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Julia’s misfortune was being born to a man who spent his entire adult life”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“the empire and began ruling as an official entity known as the Triumvirate in 44 BCE. Their rule was a reign of terror”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“A common quip about the Bloomsbury set is that ‘they lived in squares”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Did you ever wonder why the main road in and out of Rome was called the Via Appia? Because it was named after an Appius Claudius”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Without these three women”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Lucretia”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Lucius”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“Worst of all, when Lucius Tarquinius engaged in public building projects, like the Great Sewer, he forced free people to work instead of using enslaved labour. Romans found this to be wildly offensive: what was the point of enslaving people if they didn’t do all the work?”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“For as long as women have drawn sanctity and power from virginity, men have wanted to take those things from them;”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire

“This all sounds pretty bad, but the glorious Republic cannot rise unless the monarchy falls and the monarchy cannot fall unless two women bring it down.”
― Emma Southon, A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire