Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2024) h/b 480pp £25 (ISBN 9781474615617)
This book amply fulfils its stated aim of fore-fronting women in its chronological survey of 3000 years of the ancient world from Minoan Crete to the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome. The lengthy notes (pp. 381-419) and extensive bibliography (pp. 421-435) show how painstakingly it has been researched and illustrated with 16 pages of attractively reproduced colour pictures.
The text is highly readable, providing many lively dramatic episodes such as the accounts of the assassination of Philip II of Macedon (p. 183) and of Julius Caesar (p. 291), and is fully accessible to non-specialist readers interested in ancient history, since all technical terms are explained in brackets.
D. makes plentiful use of recently discovered archaeological inscriptions and items of material culture to inform her judgements, such as the inscription concerning Livia’s intervention in favour of Plancina after the death of Germanicus (pp. 341-2), and also draws in the wider ancient world with references to women of other contemporary cultures such as the Hittite queen, Puduhepa, who corresponded with the rulers of Egypt (p. 39), or Enheduanna, the earliest named author in the world (p. 13), a Sumerian priestess and poet of the third millennium BC (pp. 55-6)
But the real problem with this ‘new’ survey of ancient history is ruefully acknowledged by D. herself: ‘As historians we are always at the mercy of the material that has come down to us’ (p. 379). The women of Greek myth, being fictional, are always open to reinterpretation for contemporary audiences, but in most cases the contribution of these ‘overlooked historic women’ (p. 439) cannot be effectively re-evaluated because of lack of connected personal writing from their own points of view. There is only so much that can be deduced from the evidence of archaeological artefacts or uncontextualized fragments of Sappho and other female authors who appear at chapter headings, and recasting the Persian Wars as ‘Atossa’s War’ or the rise of Macedonia as ‘Olympias’ Games’ risks over-emphasising the importance of these women in events over which they ultimately had little control.
Thus the historical narrative of this book remains mostly reliant on the accounts of male historians and their choice of outstanding female figures, and D. is largely confined to retelling the traditional tales of wealthy, elite women who exerted their power within the male spheres of war and politics, and who can only make a mark in public affairs by figure-heading troops like Artemisia of Halicarnassus and Fulvia, or by unofficial persuasion (or ‘interfering’) like Livia and Agrippina the Younger, and whose influence on the course of history is limited to what can be effected through marriage alliances or, if queens, mainly through their husbands or as regents for their sons.
Lack of context even for the fragments of the famous Sappho reduces most discussion of her life and emotions to pure speculation and gives rise to the oft repeated refrain of this book: ‘what actually happened in Argos at this moment will never be recovered’ (p. 115); ‘the emotional toil of these repeated upheavals can only be imagined’ (p. 116); ‘disappointingly little is known about her’ (the courtesan Thargelia) (p. 123); Servilia ‘perhaps accepted’ that she was too old to give Julius Caesar an heir (p. 265); ‘if only the younger Agrippina’s writings had survived’ (p. 344).
Sometimes the evidence is so sparse that D. is even reduced to basing her observations on sources not usually known for their historical accuracy, such as the rhetorical epic poetry of Silius Italicus’ Punica concerning the attitudes of Hannibal’s nameless wife (p. 214).
D. makes a well-intentioned bid to emphasise women’s contribution to the events of ancient history, but her version of this history hardly feels ‘new.’ Its course is still mainly shaped by well-worn stories about men whose deeds were recorded by men, not women, and it is they who remain largely ‘the authors of our history’ (p. 379) for the simple reason that up until the twentieth century it is they who, like the Roman emperors, ‘established parameters’ for the behaviour and treatment of women and preserved the evidence they considered worthy of the historical record.
Claire Gruzelier