Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
16
result(s) for
"Women Rome Biography."
Sort by:
Great women of Imperial Rome : mothers and wives of the Caesars
\"This ... book vividly characterizes eleven women, spanning the period from the death of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. to the third century A.D. and with an epilogue surveying empresses of later eras. The author's ... biographies reveal their remarkable contributions toward the legacy of Imperial Rome, often tinged with tragedy, courage, and injustice.\" \"Drawing from a broad range of documentation, Jasper Burns has painted portraits of these exceptional women that are colorful, sympathetic, and above all profoundly human. The women and their worlds are brought visually to life through photographs of over 300 ancient coins and through the author's own illustrations.\"--Page4 of cover.
Book
Clodia Metelli : the tribune's sister
Clodia Metelli: The Tribune's Sister is the first full-length biography of a Roman aristocrat whose colorful life, as portrayed by contemporaries, has inspired numerous modern works of popular fiction, art, and poetry. This study, by examining the way in which she was represented, sheds light on the role played by major female figures in Roman literature.
eBook
The murder of Regilla : a case of domestic violence in antiquity
From an acclaimed author comes a fascinating story of the life, marriage, and death of an all but forgotten Roman woman. Born to an illustrious Roman family in 125 CE, Regilla was married at the age of fifteen to Herodes, a wealthy Greek who championed his country's values at a time when Rome ruled.
Twenty years later--and eight months pregnant with her sixth child--Regilla died under mysterious circumstances, after a blow to the abdomen delivered by Herodes' freedman. Regilla's brother charged Herodes with murder, but a Roman court (at the urging of Marcus Aurelius) acquitted him. Sarah Pomeroy's investigation suggests that despite Herodes' erection of numerous monuments to his deceased wife, he was in fact guilty of the crime.
A pioneer in the study of ancient women, Pomeroy gathers a broad, unique array of evidence, from political and family history to Greco-Roman writings and archaeology, to re-create the life and death of Regilla. Teasing out the tensions of class, gender, and ethnicity that gird this story of marriage and murder, Pomeroy exposes the intimate life and tragedy of an elite Roman couple. Part archaeological investigation, part historical re-creation, and part detective story, The Murder of Regilla will appeal to all those interested in the private lives of the classical world and in a universal and compelling story of women and family in the distant past.
eBook
Turia
A reconstruction of the remarkable life of a woman who became a combatant in the civil wars that ended the Roman Republic, Turia shows how her life can shed light on Roman women's contribution to their society and the ways in which men came to recognize them.
eBook
Rome's Christian empress : Galla Placidia rules at the twilight of the empire
The page-turning account of Galla Placidia, a remarkable ruler at the twilight of the Roman Empire.
In Rome's Christian Empress, Joyce E. Salisbury brings the captivating story of Rome's Christian empress to life. The daughter of Roman emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia lived at the center of imperial Roman power during the first half of the fifth century. Taken hostage after the fall of Rome to the Goths, she was married to the king and, upon his death, to a Roman general. The rare woman who traveled throughout Italy, Gaul, and Spain, she eventually returned to Rome, where her young son was crowned as the emperor of the western Roman provinces. Placidia served as his regent, ruling the Roman Empire and the provinces for twenty years.
Salisbury restores this influential, too-often forgotten woman to the center stage of this crucial period. Describing Galla Placidia's life from childhood to death while detailing the political and military developments that influenced her—and that she influenced in turn—the book relies on religious and political sources to weave together a narrative that combines social, cultural, political, and theological history.
The Roman world changed dramatically during Placidia's rule: the Empire became Christian, barbarian tribes settled throughout the West, and Rome began its unmistakable decline. But during her long reign, Placidia wielded formidable power. She fended off violent invaders and usurpers who challenged her Theodosian dynasty; presided over the dawn of the Catholic Church as theological controversies split the faithful and church practices and holidays were established; and spent fortunes building churches and mosaics that incorporated prominent images of herself and her family. Compulsively readable, Rome's Christian Empress is the first full-length work to give this fascinating and complex ruler her due.
eBook
Cleopatra
Cleopatra—a brave, astute, and charming woman who spoke many languages, entertained lavishly, hunted, went into battle, eliminated siblings to consolidate her power, and held off the threat of Imperial Rome to protect her country as long as she could—continues to fascinate centuries after she ruled Egypt. These wide-ranging essays explore such topics as Cleopatra's controversial trip to Rome, her suicide by snake bite, and the afterlife of her love potions. They view Cleopatra from the Egyptian perspective, and examine the reception in Rome of Egyptian culture, especially of its religion and architecture. They discuss films about her, and consider what inspired Egyptomania in early modern art. Together, these essays illuminate Cleopatra's legacy and illustrate how it has been used and reused through the centuries.
eBook
Representing Agrippina
Agrippina the Younger, wife of the emperor Claudius and mother of his successor Nero, wielded power and authority at the center of the Roman empire in ways unmatched by almost any other woman in Roman history. Such, at least, is the portrait of Agrippina delivered by our sources andperpetuated in modern scholarship. In this posthumous work, Judith Ginsburg provides a fresh look at both the literary and material representations of Agrippina. Unlike previous treatments, she seeks neither to condemn nor to rehabilitate Agrippina. Nor does she endeavor to exhume the realAgrippina from the embellished or fabricated portraits found among the ancients. Ginsburg trains her focus on the representations themselves. Her painstaking dissection of the portrayals by historians exposes the rhetorical tropes, the recurrent motifs, and the craft that shaped the literary imageof Agrippina. The designs, as Ginsburg shows, were more than literary flourishes. They aimed to blur the boundaries between the domestic and the imperial realms, deploying the image of Agrippina as domineering wife and mother to suggest the flaws and instability of the regime, a dysfunctional familyentailing a dysfunctional system of governance. Gender inversions at home played themselves out on the public scene as imperial rule compromised by female ascendancy. Distorted stereotypes of the wicked stepmother, the domineering woman, and the sexual transgessor were applied to underscore theviolations of status and disruption of gender relations that characterized the imperial administration. Ginsburg has as keen an eye for visual (mis)representations as for literary ones. The depictions of Agrippina on coinage and statuary provide a stark contrast with the written evidence. Sheappears as matron and priestess, emblematic of domestic rectitude and public piety, and a central figure in the
continuity of the dynasty. Ginsburg incisively demonstrates the means whereby Agrippina's imagery was molded both to serve the interests of the Julio-Claudian regime and to advance theends of its critics.
eBook
The Murder of Regilla
Born to an illustrious Roman family in 125 BCE, Regilla was married at the age of fifteen to Herodes, a wealthy Greek. Twenty years later--and eight months pregnant with her sixth child--Regilla died under mysterious circumstances, after a blow to the abdomen delivered by Herodes's freedman. Though Herodes was charged, he was acquitted. Pomeroy's investigation suggests that despite Herodes's erection of numerous monuments to his deceased wife, he was in fact guilty of the crime.
eBook
Empress Zenobia : Palmyra's rebel queen
The ancient sources for the life and times of Zenobia are sparse. The surviving literary works that do exist are biased towards the Roman point of view, as are the sources for two other famous women who challenged Rome, Cleopatra and Boudica. Zenobia was acknowledged in her lifetime as beautiful and clever, gathering writers and poets, artists and philosophers around her at the Palmyrene court. It was said that Zenobia claimed descent from Cleopatra, which cannot be true but is indicative of how she saw herself and how she intended to be seen by others at home and abroad. This lively narrative explores the legendary queen and charts the progression of her unequivocal declaration, not only of independence of Rome, but of supremacy. Initially Zenobia acknowledged the suzerainty of the Roman Emperors but finally began to call herself Augusta and her son Vaballathus Augustus. There could be no clearer challenge to the authority of Rome in the east, drawing the Emperor Aurelian to the final battles and the submission of Palmyra in AD272.
eBook