A Rome of One's Own

 

A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Romane Empire- Emma Southon 

Abrams Press

Release Date: November 7, 2023

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “The Doing of Important Things,” and as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through “the political stab-fest of the late Republic,” and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

 
Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

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Emma Southon is my absolute favorite historian when it comes to exploring ancient Rome. First off, she literally wrote a book on murder in Rome (A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and I feel like that is a book everyone needs in their life.  I know I did. Secondly, she examines Roman history a)within its historical context b)looking at the historical sources in their context and c)with a dry wit and humor that makes me feel like I'm having a conversation with a friend about something that I would actually regularly talk to a friend about (because that's the kind of person I am). It's also the sort of humor that would make people not necessarily interested in ancient history really get into it. And have I mentioned that she doesn't look at what Traditional Historians usually look at: Important Battles In History? 

Instead, Emma Southon has been on the cutting edge of examining ancient Roman history from the point of view of women since her fabulous book on Agrippina came out in 2019 and she hasn't looked back since. In A Rome of One's Own she builds on Agrippina's success by exploring the lives of 21 Roman women who historians both past and present have relegated to footnotes (if they get mentioned at all) and reframe the story to remind us that really, it's the women who are incredibly important in the story of Rome. Even the Romans knew that, little though some of them liked to admit it. 

A Rome of One's Own spans the entire length and timeline of the Roman Empire, from the early women of Rome (Tarpeia and Hersilia- you probably never heard of them) to one of the most famous (Lucretia- Roman men loved to turn her into a literary trope and make it all about them). From Boudicca (you might have heard of her, here's as close to the real story as Southon can get) to Julia Felix (a Pompeii businesswoman you've never heard of, but she'll make you question what you think you know about Romane women) and into the strange world of Christian martyrdom (Perpetua, in her own words) and the end of the Roman Empire, when Christians ruled and everyone was still fighting (Galla Placidia). Some of these women ruled behind the scenes, or not so behind the scenes, some just wanted to run a business and stay away from the murder-happy aristocrats. But Southon gives us compelling arguments that their stories, and the thousands like them that are not told here, are more the "real" Roman Empire than all of the Important Things and Battles we read so much about. Here are the true people of Rome, the lives both small and large, overlooked and misunderstood, and completely fascinating to read.

Full of fascinating facts and delightful humor, A Rome of One's Own is one of those books everyone should read!

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review