4.1 Gender
Among other social and cultural identities, gender played a great role in defining how people in antiquity acted and were represented in the literary or in the visual sources. Great differences existed in the role of women in society between the Greek and the Roman world or according to the social status of the individual. Understanding how gender played an important role in defining people’s identity and status may reveal new aspects of ancient society that have been long overlooked.
EPQ Suggested Questions
In your EPQ essay you may want to discuss the following questions:
- How were women represented in the Roman literary sources or in the visual arts?
- How far portraits reflected notions about women’s status and their role in Roman society?
Sources
- Euripides, Medea
- Sappho, Lyrics
- Latin love elegiac poetry (Catullus, Tibullius, Propertius, Ovid)
Material culture
- Roman silver denarius of Lucius Hostilius Saserna (open 4.1 L. Hostilius Saserna coin woman pdf)
- Statue of Aphrodite and portrait of a Roman woman (open 4.1 Roman woman statue pdf)
- Portraits of Matidia and of a roman woman (open 4.1 Portrait of Matidia pdf)
References
References – Greek
- Lardinois, A. and McClure, L. eds., 2001. Making silence speak: women's voices in Greek literature and society. Princeton University Press.
- Henderson, J., 2010. Three Plays by Aristophanes: staging women. Routledge.
- Lee, M.M., 2015. Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press[TR1] .
- References – Women in Greek and Latin literature
- Budelmann, F. ed., 2009. The Cambridge companion to Greek lyric (p. 173). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Gerber, D.E. ed., 1997. A companion to the Greek lyric poets. Brill.
- Gold, B.K. and Wiley, J. eds., 2012. A companion to Roman love elegy (p. 303). Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Haynes, K., 2003. Fashioning the feminine in the Greek novel. Routledge.
- Keith, A.M., 2000. Engendering Rome: women in Latin epic. Cambridge University Press.
- Thorsen, T.S. ed., 2013. The Cambridge companion to Latin love elegy. Cambridge University Press.
- Whitmarsh, T. ed., 2008. The Cambridge companion to the Greek and Roman novel. Cambridge University Press.
References – Roman women
- Allason-Jones, L., 1989. Women in Roman Britain (p. 130). London: British Museum Publications.
- Archer, L.J., Fischler, S. and Wyke, M. eds., 1994. Women in ancient societies: an illusion of the night. Springer.
- Bauman, R.A., 2002. Women and politics in ancient Rome. Routledge.
- Culham, P., 2004. Women in the Roman Republic. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, pp.139-159.
- D'ambra, E., 2007. Roman women. Cambridge University Press.
- Evans, J.K., 2014. War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
- Grubbs, J.E., 2002. Women and the law in the Roman Empire: a sourcebook on marriage, divorce and widowhood. Routledge.
- Hallett, J.P., 2014. Fathers and Daughters in Roman society: women and the elite family. Princeton University Press.
- Hemelrijk, E. and Woolf, G. eds., 2013. Women and the Roman city in the Latin West. Brill.
- Peachin, M. ed., 2011. The Oxford handbook of social relations in the Roman world. Oxford Handbooks in Classics.
- Rowlandson, J. and Bagnall, R.S. eds., 1998. Women and society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a sourcebook. Cambridge University Press.
- Salisbury, J.E., 2013. Perpetua's passion: The death and memory of a young Roman woman. Routledge.
- Sawyer, D.F., 2002. Women and religion in the first Christian centuries. Routledge.
- Wilkinson, K., 2015. Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
References on Roman female portraits
- Allason-Jones, L., 1989. Women in Roman Britain (p. 130). London: British Museum Publications.
- Bartman, E., 1999. Portraits of Livia: imaging the imperial woman in Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Birk, S., 2013. Depicting the dead: self-representation and commemoration on Roman sarcophagi with portraits. Aharus University Press.
- Culham, P., 2004. Women in the Roman Republic. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, pp.139-159.
- D'ambra, E., 2007. Roman women. Cambridge University Press.
- Fejfer, J., 2009. Roman portraits in context (Vol. 2). Walter de Gruyter.
- Kleiner, D.E. and Matheson, S.B. eds., 2000. I Claudia II: women in Roman art and society (Vol. 2). MBI Publishing Company.
- Kleiner, E.E., Kleiner, D.E. and Matheson, S.B., 1996. I, Claudia: women in ancient Rome (Vol. 1). University of Texas Press.
- Olson, K., 2012. Dress and the Roman woman: self-presentation and society. Routledge.