This study transforms our understanding of Roman love elegy, an important and complex corpus of poetry that flourished in the late first century b.c.e. Sharon L. James reads key poems by Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid for the first time from the perspective of the woman to whom they are addressed--the docta puella, or learned girl, the poet's beloved. By interpreting the poetry not, as has always been done, from the stance of the elite male writers--as plaint and confession--but rather from the viewpoint of the women--thus as persuasion and attempted manipulation--James reveals...

Latin plays were written for audiences whose gender perspectives and expectations were shaped by life in Rome, and the crowds watching the plays included both female citizens and female slaves. Relationships between men and women, ideas of masculinity and femininity, the stock characters of dowered wife and of prostitute-all of these are frequently staged in Roman tragedies and comedies. This is the first book to confront directly the role of women in Roman Republican plays of all genres, as well as to examine the role of gender in the influence of this tradition on later dramatists from...

The study of women in Graeco-Roman antiquity has a long history but many recent developments prominent among which are the rise of feminist theory and theoretical and interpretive work in material culture have transformed approaches to the study of women s lived experiences in antiquity. This four-volume collection brings together the best scholarship that has both established the field and moved it forward.

The articles collected here are interdisciplinary, bringing into conversation the full range of evidence for women in the classical world: historical, literary, legal,...