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Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women
Women in ancient Rome challenge the historian. Widely represented in literature and art, they rarely speak for themselves. Amy Richlin, among the foremost pioneers in ancient studies, gives voice to these women through scholarship that scours sources from high art to gutter invective. In Arguments with Silence, Richlin presents a linked selection of her essays on Roman women’s history, originally published between 1981 and 2001 as the field of “women in antiquity� took shape, and here substantially rewritten and updated. The new introduction to the volume lays out the historical methodologies these essays developed, places this process in its own historical setting, and reviews work on Roman women since 2001, along with persistent silences. Individual chapter introductions locate each piece in the social context of Second Wave feminism in Classics and the academy, explaining why each mattered as an intervention then and still does now. Inhabiting these pages are the women whose lives were shaped by great art, dirty jokes, slavery, and the definition of adultery as a wife’s crime; Julia, Augustus� daughter, who died, as her daughter would, exiled to a desert island; women wearing makeup, safeguarding babies with amulets, practicing their religion at home and in public ceremonies; the satirist Sulpicia, flaunting her sexuality; and the praefica, leading the lament for the dead. Amy Richlin is one of a small handful of modern thinkers in a position to consider these questions, and this guided journey with her brings surprise, delight, and entertainment, as well as a fresh look at important questions.
424 pages, Hardcover
First published November 28, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 8, 2017
This collection of essays is truly monumental and definitely should be read by anyone interesting in Roman history or culture. Richlin has revised 10 of her most important essays about women in ancient Rome. These essays are updated with references to new scholarship and given short, memoir-like prefaces that give a glimpse of the author's own life while the research was completed. I for one could read another 500 pages of memoir material like this. Richlin makes the important names in scholarship (such as Rabinowitz, Hallett, Skinner, and Pomeroy) into real people, which is parallel to her attempts to create a picture of Roman women as real people.
The essays themselves comprise a coherent if somewhat pell mell set of claims about Roman women, and there are frequent points of contact between the chapters. The topics covered here ranges from literary criticism to history to theory and the history of scholarship. Some of these essays are well-known classics (e.g. "Reading Ovid's Rapes") but they all provide a massive amount of information about a still too little studied topic. At times the amount of information can be a bit overwhelming. Discussions of Roman women's make-up and medicine tend toward listy catalogues of these substances, but this too is an important step in writing history.
It took me a long time to finish this book. Each chapter moves quickly and Richlin's prose style is engaging, but the topics are often heavy and it's best to leave time to reflect before jumping into the next chapter. This volume also serves as its own introduction to feminist theory, although much of that theory dates to the late 80s and early 90s. This is a goldmine of learning and clear indication of the author's importance to the field.
The essays themselves comprise a coherent if somewhat pell mell set of claims about Roman women, and there are frequent points of contact between the chapters. The topics covered here ranges from literary criticism to history to theory and the history of scholarship. Some of these essays are well-known classics (e.g. "Reading Ovid's Rapes") but they all provide a massive amount of information about a still too little studied topic. At times the amount of information can be a bit overwhelming. Discussions of Roman women's make-up and medicine tend toward listy catalogues of these substances, but this too is an important step in writing history.
It took me a long time to finish this book. Each chapter moves quickly and Richlin's prose style is engaging, but the topics are often heavy and it's best to leave time to reflect before jumping into the next chapter. This volume also serves as its own introduction to feminist theory, although much of that theory dates to the late 80s and early 90s. This is a goldmine of learning and clear indication of the author's importance to the field.
January 7, 2020
This is outdated, despite it being published just six years ago. It has aspects which are misogynistic, while doing its absolute best to be inclusive of all women... but it fails at that.
As a piece of academic writing, I'd recommend this to anyone interested in learning about academia; every chapter has an introduction saying what the author was doing at the time of writing it initially.
As a book about Classics, and the historiography of Roman women, I would not recommend this.
As a piece of academic writing, I'd recommend this to anyone interested in learning about academia; every chapter has an introduction saying what the author was doing at the time of writing it initially.
As a book about Classics, and the historiography of Roman women, I would not recommend this.
January 21, 2019
What an fantastic book. Richlin's use of archaeological evidence gives a new view of how important women were in the sphere of religion. So much so that she points out important epigraphic evidence that also shows social structures, social control, and maintenance of public morality within the hands of women. This book is now integral to my research for my Thesis.
March 14, 2022
Truly a dialogue more than a book. Richlin pulls you into the "argument," challenging why we don't know more about women in the classics and what that means about not only our own reading of these classics, but our own representation of women in modern society.
April 7, 2015
Amy Richlin's edited and updated a collection of her essays on women and gender studies in Classics and Roman studies. But this book goes beyond that, opening with a short autobiographical section, so as to set the essays in context. She also provides a less talked about perspective on the experience of working as a Classics scholar in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, when there were fewer women in the field and the female perspective on Roman history and literature was more contested. Of course, as much as progress has been made, Richlin is quick to fiercely point out how far we in the field and working in universities still have to go, in terms of incorporating various methodological tools and approaches to ancient studies - especially in reminding students of Roman history and literature that Roman male poets do not present women as they were or as they may have presented themselves; and women were present and engaged in Roman society, even if their voices were silenced.
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