First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is part of a 3-volume anthology of women's writing in Latin from antiquity to the early modern era. Each volume provides texts, contexts, and translations of a wide variety of works produced by women, including dramatic, poetic, and devotional writing. Volume One covers the age of Roman Antiquity and early Christianity.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This selection of Latin readings, drawn from texts in a variety of genres across four centuries, aims to provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the images and realities of women in Roman antiquity. Depicted in the readings are both historical and fictional women, of varying ages and at different stages of life, from a range of social classes, and from different locales. We see them dramatized—sometimes in their own words—in the roles the women actually played, as wives and mothers, friends and lovers. This Reader differs from others in showing women in explicitly erotic roles, in drawing some of its passages from "archaic" Latin, and in encouraging a variety of critical approaches, all suitable for its intended college-level audience.

Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and literary techniques used to construct a gendered ‘I’ in ancient literature. They also address the form and function of first-person discourse in classical literature in general, touching on fields of research that have increasingly come into focus in recent years, such as authorship studies, studies concerning the ancient notion(s) of the literary persona, as well as a historical narratology that discusses concepts such as the narrator or the literary character in ancient literary theory and practice.