The study of women in Graeco-Roman antiquity has a long history but many recent developments—prominent among which are the rise of feminist theory and theoretical and interpretive work in material culture—have transformed approaches to the study of women’s lived experiences in antiquity. This four-volume collection brings together the best scholarship that has both established the field and moved it forward.
The articles collected here are interdisciplinary, bringing into conversation the full range of evidence for women in the classical world: historical, literary, legal, medical, inscriptional, mythic, artistic (e.g., sculpture, frescoes, paintings, terracottas), and the material found in archaeological excavations, including evidence from burials, finds from houses, and the remains of food processing and textile production. Ideology is relevant to each volume, as both Greek and Roman societies had highly developed ideologies and cultural ideals that exercised profound and pervasive influence over women’s lives. Social class is implicated in these ideologies in ways that are made evident in every genre of source material.
Women in the Classical World, edited by two of the leading scholars in the field, presents in one reference source a complete picture of women in Ancient Greece and Rome, based on a vast of array of sources. This material has not been collected together in one place before.
Volume I: Women in Myth
1. Arthur, M. B. 1973. "Early Greece: The Origins of the Western Attitude toward Women." Arethusa 6, 1973, pp 7-58
2. Carson, A. "Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire." in David Halperin, Jack J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds. Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)
3. Mangieri, Anthony F. "Legendary Women and Greek Womanhood: The Heroines Pyxis in the British Museum." American Journal of Archaeology 114, 2010, pp429-445
4. Hurwit, J.M. "Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos." American Journal of Archaeology 99, 1995, pp171-186
5. Stewart, Andrew "Imag(in)ing the Other: Amazons and Ethnicity in Fifth-Century Athens." Poetics Today 16, 1995, pp571-97
6. Ferrari, G. "Myth and Genre on Athenian Vases." Classical Antiquity 22, 2003, pp37-54.
7. Scodel, Ruth. "The Captive’s Dilemma: Sexual Acquiescence in Euripides’ Hecuba and Troades." HSCP 98, 1998, pp137-54.
8. Scafuro, Adele "Discourses of Sexual Violation in Mythic Accounts and Dramatic Versions of ‘The Girl’s Tragedy.’" differences 2, 1990, pp126-59.
9. Zeitlin, Froma "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia of Aeschylus." Arethusa 11, 1978, pp49-84.
10. Stevenson, Tom "Women of Early Rome as Exempla in Livy, Ab urbe condita Book 1." Classical World 104, 2011, pp175-89
11. Klindienst, Patricia "Ritual Work on Female Flesh: Livy’s Lucretia and the Rape of the Body Politic." Helios 17, 1990, ppp51-70
12. Beard, Mary "The Erotics of Rape: Livy, Ovid and the Sabine Women." in Setälä, Päivi and Liisa Savunen, eds. Female Networks and the Public Sphere in Roman Society (Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 1999)
Volume II: Women in Religion
13. Talalay, L.E. "A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory," Gender & History 6, 2, 1994, pp165-183.
14. Davis, E. 1986. "Youth and Age in the Frescoes of Thera." American Journal of Archaeology 90, 1986, pp399-406
15. Cole, S.G. "Women, Dogs, and Flies." Ancient World 26, 1995, pp182-191
16. Maurizio, Lisa "Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Role at Delphi." Journal of Hellenic Studies 115, 1995, pp69-86
17. Nielsen, I. "The Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia: Can Architecture and Iconography help locate the settings of the Rituals?" Acta Hyperborea 12, 2009, pp83-116
18. Stehle, E.M. and A. Day "Women looking at women: women's ritual and temple sculpture," in N. Kampen ed., Sexuality in ancient art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
19. Stehle, Eva "Women and Religion in Greece." In Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, ed., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2012)
20. Holland, Lora "Women and Roman Religion." in Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, ed., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2012)
21. Schultz, Celia "Social Status and Religious Participation." in C. Schultz, Women’s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
22. Scheid, John "The Religious Roles of Roman Women." in Schmitt Pantel, Pauline, ed. A History of Women, From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints (Harvard University Press, 1992)
Volume III: Women in Public Life
23. Henry, Madeleine "The Traffic in Women: From Homer to Hipponax." in Allison Glazebrook and Madeleine Henry, edd., Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE-200 CE (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011)
24. Liston, M.A. and J.K. Papadopoulos "The Rich Athenian Lady was Pregnant: The Anthropology of a Geometric Tomb," Hesperia 73, 1, 2004, pp7-38
25. Ridgway, B.S. "Ancient Greek Women and Art: The Material Evidence," American Journal of Archaeology 91, 3, 1987, pp399-409
26. Nevett, L. 2011. "Towards a Female Topography of the Ancient Greek City: case-studies from Late Archaic and Early Classical Athens (ca. 520-400 BCE)," Gender and History 23, 3, 2011, pp577-597
27. Gaca, Kathy "Martial Rape, Pulsating Fear, and the Sexual Maltreatment of Girls (paides), Virgins (parthenoi), and Women (gynaikes) in Antiquity." American Journal of Philology 135, 2014, pp303-57
28. Foley, Helene "The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama." in Helene Foley, ed. Reflections of Women in Antiquity (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1981)
29. Kosmopoulou, Angeliki "‘Working Women’: Female Professionals on Classical Attic Gravestones." Annual of the British School at Athens 96, 2001, pp281-319
30. Leader, R.E. "In Death Not Divided: Gender, Family and State on Classical Athenian Grave Stelae." American Journal of Archaeology 101, 1997, pp683-699.
31. Schaps, David "What Was Free about a Free Athenian Woman?" Transactions of the American Philological Association 128, 1998, pp161-88.
32. Roselli, David "Women and the Theater Audience" in Theater of the People (University of Texas Press, 2011)
33. Ogden, D. "Controlling Women’s Dress: Gynaikonomoi," in L. Llewellyn-Jones ed., Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World (Duckworth, 2002)
34. Kampen, N. "Hellenistic Artists. Female." Archeologia classica 27, 1975, pp9-17
35. Bonfante, Larissa "Etruscan Couples and their Aristocratic Society." in Foley, Helene Reflections of Women in Antiquity (Routledge, 1981)
36. Dixon, Suzanne "Representations of Female Sexualities." in Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life (Routledge, 2001)
37. Sebesta, J.L. "Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome," in M. Wyke ed., Gender and History 9, 3, 1997, pp529-41
38. Flory, M. "Livia and the History of Public Honorific Statues for Women in Rome," Transactions of the American Philological Association 123, 1993, pp287-308
39. Boatwright, M.T. "Women and Gender in the Forum Romanum." Transactions of the American Philological Association 141, 2011, pp105-141
40. Dillon, S. "Women on the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and the Visual Language of Roman Victory," in S. Dillon and K. Welch eds., Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
41. Bartman, E. "Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment," American Journal of Archaeology 105, 1, 2001, pp1-25.
Volume IV: Women in Private Life
42. Scheidel, Walter "The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women’s Life in the Ancient World." Pt 1: G&R 42, 2, 1995, pp202-217; Pt II: G&R 43, 1, 1996, pp1-10.
43. Levick, Barbara "Women and Law." in Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, ed., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2012)
44. Liston, M.A. "Reading the Bones: Interpreting the Skeletal Evidence for Women’s Lives in Ancient Greece," in S.L. James and S. Dillon eds., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2012)
45. Toscano, M.M. "The Eyes Have It: Female Desire on Attic Greek Vases." Arethusa 46, 2013, pp1-40
46. Dean-Jones, Lesley "The Politics of Pleasure: Female Sexual Appetite in the Hippocratic Corpus." Helios 19, 1992, pp72-91.
47. Cole, Susan G. "Could Greek Women Read and Write?" Women’s Studies 8, 1981, pp129-55
48. Schaps, David "The Woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women’s Names." Classical Quarterly 27, 2, 1977, pp323-30
49. Reilly, J. "Many Brides: ‘Mistress and Maid’ on Athenian Lekythoi." Hesperia 58, 1989, pp411-44.
50. Walker, S. "Women and Housing in Classical Greece: The Archaeological Evidence," in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Routledge, 1993)
51. Antonaccio, C. "Architecture and Behavior: Building Gender into Greek Houses," The Classical World 93, 5, 2000, pp517-533
52. Cohen, David "Seclusion, Separation, and the Status of Women in Classical Athens." Greece & Rome 36, 1989, pp3-15
53. Nevett, L. "Separation or seclusion?: Towards an archaeological approach to investigating women in the Greek house in the fifth to third centuries B.C.," in M. Parker Pearson and C. Richards eds., Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space (Routledge, 1994)
54. Llewellyn-Jones, L. "House and Veil in Ancient Greece," in N. Fisher, R. Westgate & J. Whitley eds., Building Communities: House, settlement and society in the Aegean and beyond (British School at Athens, 2007)
55. Stehle, E. "The Good Daughter: Mothers’ Tutelage in Erinna’s Distaff and Fourth Century Epitaphs," in A. Lardinois and L. McClure eds., Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton University Press, 2001)
56. Salowey, C. "Women on Hellenistic Grave Stelai: Reading Images and Texts," in S.L. James and S. Dillon eds., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell, 2012)
57. Pomeroy, Sarah "Elite Women" and "Lower Class Women." in Pomeroy, Sarah, Spartan Women (Oxford University Press, 2002)
58. Clark, Gillian "Roman Women." Greece & Rome 28, 1981, pp193-212
59. Kampen, N. "Material Girl. Feminist Confrontations in Roman art." Arethusa 27, 1994, pp111-137
60. D’Ambra, E. "The Cult of Virtues and the Funerary Relief of Ulpia Epigone," Latomus 48, 2, 1989, pp392-400
61. Evans-Grubbs, Judith "‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ Marriage: the State of the Question." Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, 1994, pp361-412
62. James, Sharon "Slave-Rape and Female Silence in Ovid’s Love Poetry." Helios 24, 1997, pp60-76.
63. Elsner, J "Viewing Ariadne: From Ekphrasis to Wall Painting in the Roman World." Classical Philology 102, 2007, pp20-44.
64. Cooper, Kate "Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy." Journal of Roman Studies 82, 1992, pp150-64
Biography
Sheila Dillon is Professor of Art History and Classical Studies, and Chair of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University, USA.
Sharon L. James is Professor of Classics at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.
