"The first general treatment of women in the ancient world to reflect the critical insights of modern feminism. Though much debated, its position as the basic textbook on women's history in Greece and Rome has hardly been challenged."--Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement. Illustrations.

Information about women is scattered throughout the fragmented mosaic of ancient history: the vivid poetry of Sappho survived antiquity on remnants of damaged papyrus; the inscription on a beautiful fourth century B.C.E. grave praises the virtues of Mnesarete, an Athenian woman who died young; a great number of Roman wives were found guilty of poisoning their husbands, but was it accidental food poisoning, or disease, or something more sinister. Apart from the legends of Cleopatra, Dido and Lucretia, and images of graceful maidens dancing on urns, the evidence about the lives of women of the classical world--visual, archaeological, and written--has remained uncollected and uninterpreted. Now, the lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched Women in the Classical World lifts the curtain on the women of ancient Greece and Rome, exploring the lives of slaves and prostitutes, Athenian housewives, and Rome's imperial family. The first book on classical women to give equal weight to written texts and artistic representations, it brings together a great wealth of materials--poetry, vase painting, legislation, medical treatises, architecture, religious and funerary art, women's ornaments, historical epics, political speeches, even ancient coins--to present women in the historical and cultural context of their time. Written by leading experts in the fields of ancient history and art history, women's studies, and Greek and Roman literature, the book's chronological arrangement allows the changing roles of women to unfold over a thousand-year period, beginning in the eighth century B.C.E. Both the art and the literature highlight women's creativity, sexuality and coming of age, marriage and childrearing, religious and public roles, and other themes. Fascinating chapters report on the wild behavior of Spartan and Etruscan women and the mythical Amazons; the changing views of the female body presented in male-authored gynecological treatises; the "new woman" represented by the love poetry of the late Republic and Augustan Age; and the traces of upper- and lower-class life in Pompeii, miraculously preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Provocative and surprising, Women in the Classical World is a masterly foray into the past, and a definitive statement on the lives of women in ancient Greece and Rome.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Abbreviations -- Chronology -- Introduction -- 1 Who Were the Pythagorean Women? -- 2 Wives, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters -- 3 Who Were the Neopythagorean Women Authors? -- 4 Introduction to the Prose Writings of Neopythagorean Women -- 5 The Letters and Treatises of Neopythagorean Women in the East -- 6 The Letters and Treatises of Neopythagorean Women in the West -- 7 The Neopythagorean Women as Philosophers -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- X -- Z.

This highly acclaimed collection provides a unique look into the public and private lives and legal status of Greek and Roman women of all social classes-from wet nurses, prostitutes, and gladiatrixes to poets, musicians, intellectuals, priestesses, and housewives. The third edition adds new texts to sections throughout the book, vividly describing women's sentiments and circumstances through readings on love, bereavement, and friendship, as well as property rights, breast cancer, female circumcision, and women's roles in ancient religions, including Christianity and pagan cults.

Largely excluded from any public role, the women of ancient Greece nonetheless appear in various guises in the art and writing of the period, and in legal documents. These representations, in Sue Blundell's analysis, reveal a great deal about women's day-to-day experience as well as their legal and economic position - and how they were regarded by men.

This is the first book-length examination of Spartan women, covering over a thousand years in the history of women from both the elite and lower classes. Classicist Sarah B. Pomeroy comprehensively analyzes ancient texts and archaeological evidence to construct the world of these elusive though much noticed females. Sparta has always posed a challenge to ancient historians because information about the society is relatively scarce. Most existing scholarship on Sparta concerns the military history of the city and its heavily male-dominated social structure--almost as if there were no women in Sparta. Yet perhaps the most famous of mythic Greek women, Menelaus' wife Helen, the cause of the Trojan War, was herself a Spartan. Written by one of the leading authorities on women in antiquity, Spartan Women reconstructs the lives and the world of Sparta's women, including how their status changed over time and how they held on to their surprising autonomy. Proceeding through the archaic, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, Spartan Women includes discussions of education, family life, reproduction, religion, and athletics.

Using evidence from a wide array of sources, Sarah Pomeroy discusses women ranging from queens such as Arsinoë II and Cleopatra VII to Jewish slaves working on a Greek estate.