Roman Women
Briefly, impressions from two Christmas presents I received (from cahn and kathyh, respectively.
Emma Southon: A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. Immensely entertaining and informative, as is her wont. Starts with Hersilia, the wife of Romulus, and ends with the Empress Galla Placidia, but not all the women hail from Rome's social elite (though of course you have a source problem here with the 99% surviving ancient writers male and from an aristocratic background), and I was delighted to hear about some new-to-me women like Hispala Faccenia (prostitiute 186 BCE), Sulpicia Lepidinia and her friend Claudia Severa (some of whose letters to each other survive, the only examples of a (non-fictional) woman writing to another woman to make it to us, or Turia, whom we know of because her husband erected a memorial with an epitaph detailing her life and deeds. Some other women I had heard of before but only in fiction, to getting factional background (as much of it as is known) was great - Julia Balbilla the poet. (Who shows up in the audio series Caesar! in the Hadrian episode as a counterpart and foil to Suetonius, that's how I had encountered her before.) One of the most interesting chapters because of how Southon chose to tell the story was the one titled "Cartimandua and Boudicca", because Southon compares and contrasts Boudicca with Cartimandua, who was a long term client queen to the Romans, without using this as a put down of one of them but to show two different possibilities for a woman to exert power with the Roman beheemoth breathing down your neck. The book also includes early Christians like Perpetua and does provide a sense of changing times and changing ideas of self. Including the question of what it means to be Roman, as the later examples all come from different parts of the Empire, not from Rome (the city) or even Italy itself.
Elodie Harper: The W'olf Den. I hear it's the first of a trilogy, but it works as a self-contained novel for me as well. The title is of course the literal translation of the Latin word for brothel, the Lupanar, and our heroine, Amara (not her original name), is one of several women working in a Pompej brothel whom we follow through the story. I was impressed by how Elodie Harper on the one hand didn't sugarcoat what this means for the women (and doesn't let Amara be the one prostitute who for magic plot reasons never has to have to have sex with multiple clients a day, either) yet on the other hand doesn't make the novel feel grimdark and exploitative, either. The main narrative emphasis is on the relationships the women have with each other - and while there's rivalry as well as friendship, in the end the comradery is stronger than anything else - and they all have different personalities instead of being types and respond to the various events accordingly. Even one of the unquestioned villains of the story, the brothel owner Felix, comes across as three dimensional, as Harper accomplishes the tricky balance between giving him his own traumatic backstory (abused child slave) without letting this lesson his responsibility for the control issues and cruelty he shows as an adult man. Another key ingredient of what makes the novel avoid feeling grimdark is that Amara keeps having hopes and plans for a future, no matter how harsh things get, and in the end, the narrative rewards her for this.
I recognized some of the names among the Pompeians, but since we only know these names from graffiti and other archaelogical evidence, they might as well have been OCs. The one historical celebrity who shows up is Pliny the Elder, with a characterisation that reminds me of Jo Graham's theory of Sir William Hamilton (the one of triangle with Nelson and Emma fame) being his 18th century reincarnation. Which means that you can fret and hope for all of the main characters without knowing what the author has in store. (Though given the locatoin, I expect the volcano will erupt in some future novel.)
Emma Southon: A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. Immensely entertaining and informative, as is her wont. Starts with Hersilia, the wife of Romulus, and ends with the Empress Galla Placidia, but not all the women hail from Rome's social elite (though of course you have a source problem here with the 99% surviving ancient writers male and from an aristocratic background), and I was delighted to hear about some new-to-me women like Hispala Faccenia (prostitiute 186 BCE), Sulpicia Lepidinia and her friend Claudia Severa (some of whose letters to each other survive, the only examples of a (non-fictional) woman writing to another woman to make it to us, or Turia, whom we know of because her husband erected a memorial with an epitaph detailing her life and deeds. Some other women I had heard of before but only in fiction, to getting factional background (as much of it as is known) was great - Julia Balbilla the poet. (Who shows up in the audio series Caesar! in the Hadrian episode as a counterpart and foil to Suetonius, that's how I had encountered her before.) One of the most interesting chapters because of how Southon chose to tell the story was the one titled "Cartimandua and Boudicca", because Southon compares and contrasts Boudicca with Cartimandua, who was a long term client queen to the Romans, without using this as a put down of one of them but to show two different possibilities for a woman to exert power with the Roman beheemoth breathing down your neck. The book also includes early Christians like Perpetua and does provide a sense of changing times and changing ideas of self. Including the question of what it means to be Roman, as the later examples all come from different parts of the Empire, not from Rome (the city) or even Italy itself.
Elodie Harper: The W'olf Den. I hear it's the first of a trilogy, but it works as a self-contained novel for me as well. The title is of course the literal translation of the Latin word for brothel, the Lupanar, and our heroine, Amara (not her original name), is one of several women working in a Pompej brothel whom we follow through the story. I was impressed by how Elodie Harper on the one hand didn't sugarcoat what this means for the women (and doesn't let Amara be the one prostitute who for magic plot reasons never has to have to have sex with multiple clients a day, either) yet on the other hand doesn't make the novel feel grimdark and exploitative, either. The main narrative emphasis is on the relationships the women have with each other - and while there's rivalry as well as friendship, in the end the comradery is stronger than anything else - and they all have different personalities instead of being types and respond to the various events accordingly. Even one of the unquestioned villains of the story, the brothel owner Felix, comes across as three dimensional, as Harper accomplishes the tricky balance between giving him his own traumatic backstory (abused child slave) without letting this lesson his responsibility for the control issues and cruelty he shows as an adult man. Another key ingredient of what makes the novel avoid feeling grimdark is that Amara keeps having hopes and plans for a future, no matter how harsh things get, and in the end, the narrative rewards her for this.
I recognized some of the names among the Pompeians, but since we only know these names from graffiti and other archaelogical evidence, they might as well have been OCs. The one historical celebrity who shows up is Pliny the Elder, with a characterisation that reminds me of Jo Graham's theory of Sir William Hamilton (the one of triangle with Nelson and Emma fame) being his 18th century reincarnation. Which means that you can fret and hope for all of the main characters without knowing what the author has in store. (Though given the locatoin, I expect the volcano will erupt in some future novel.)