The book is thus a study not just of the historical Perpetua but of the literary one too; of the original woman and of the men who have successively rewritten her.
Barbara K. Gold is Edward North Professor and Chair of Classics at Hamilton College. She is the editor of Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, author of Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome, and co-editor of Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition and Roman Dining.