Livy's Women: Crisis, Resolution, and the Female in Rome's Foundation History

Description

Livy’s Women explores the profound questions arising from the presence of women of influence and power in the socio-political canvas of one of the most important histories of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Foundation of the City). This theoretically informed study of Livy’s monumental narrative charts the fascinating links between episodes containing references to women in prominent roles and the historian’s treatment of Rome’s evolutionary foundation story. Explicitly gendered in relation to the socio-cultural contexts informing the narrative, the author’s background, the literary landscape of Livy's Rome, and the subsequent historiographical commentary, this volume offers a comprehensive, coherent and contextualised overview of all episodes in Ab Urbe Condita relating to women as agents of historical change. As well as proving invaluable insights into socio-cultural history for Classicists, Livy’s Women will also be of interest to instructors, researchers, and students of female representation in history in general. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page CONTENTS List of Tables Foreword Acknowledgements 1. AUC history: Women and the art of exemplary storytelling Res novae and mores maiorum: exempli documenta, haec tempora, and the resonances of change The rape of Lucretia: gender, crisis, and the res publica Egeria, Carmenta, and the Vestal priestesses: exempla and the male imagination Damarata, Harmonia, and Heraclia: Livy’s assignation of moral weight Conclusion 2. Gendered collectives in livy: The agmen mulierum and independent female demonstrations in AUC history Hortensia, the demonstration of 43 BCE, and the extent of matronal authority in Roman public life and patriarchal culture The Sabine women: defenders of the patriarchal order? Veturia and Volumnia: reconstructing a tradition Cato and the frequentia mulierum: a crux of social legislation Conclusion 3. The rhetoric of the unfamiliar other: Non-Roman women in AUC history Stereotypes and personae: representing non-Roman female identity The Bacchanalia: a fictive history or historical romance of gender relations? From Hersilia to Theoxena: mirrors of male reality? Conclusion 4. Topoi, tropes, and the female: The rhetorical memory of the annalist tradition The commonplace topics of gendered AUC history Fakes, forgeries, and historical fiction in the Ab Urbe Condita: the authenticity of gendered historiography Conclusion Afterword: Final observations Bibliography Index