Sub-titled 'A New History of Rome's Imperial Women', a superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women, dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. In the first century BC, two great families, the Julians and the Claudians joined together and provided Rome's first five emperors, from Augustus to Nero. Augustus had only one child with his first wife and 'unfortunately his daughter was a nymphomaniac' the author was once told by a researcher who claimed that Julia, despite being one of the most instantly recognisable women in Rome, went down to the forum at night and had sex with every passing barman and gladiator. Do we really think that women behave like that? Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith reinterprets the bloody, violent story of 23 women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes. These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their 'mad' relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here. Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority. Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. Colour plates and numerous other illustrations and a helpful dramatis personae. 292 pages.
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