SCHULLER, W.,
Frauen in der römischen Geschichte.
Piper, München / Zürich, 1992. 176p. Paperback. Name and date on half title. Series: Piper. ‘Like his book on Greek women, the new volume is a factual, well-written survey. In seven chapters, (…) Ach. manages to give a chronological overview of women in the middle Republic, the late Republic, the Principate, and late antiquity. In addition, separate chapters are devoted to the position of women in Roman law, women in Pompeii, Ostia and Egypt; and Christian women. Since J.P.V.D. Balsdon’s ‘Roman Women’ (1962) is once again in print, comparisons between the two books will be instructive. Both books were written to appeal to the general cultivated public,. (…) Both Sch. and Balsdon are primarily interested in the public sphere, not in women’s history, but in women in history. Balsdon, of course, wrote before the development of women’s history as a subfield of the ‘new social history’. Sch., in contrast, cites with approval many publications on Roman women by feminist scholars and in his conclusion he does offer a brief discussion of women’s status, but like Balsdon he writes traditional ‘great-women history’. Sch. sees women’s experiences as qualitatively the same as men’s: the ‘decadence’ of aristocratic women, for example, was similar to the decadence of men of their class, and likewise their political influence was similar to that of men. Using evidence such as electioneering graffiti at Pompeii, he argues that women of the lower-classes also shared men’s interest in politics. This conclusion is not surprising: in Greek and Roman aristocratic societies the sexes were not polarised and men and women did not live separated lives as they did in Athenian democracy.’ (SARAH B. POMEROY on the 1st 1987 edition in Gnomon, 1988, pp.265-266).
€ 7.00
(Antiquarian)