Books: Notable Women

Servilia and Her Family by Susan Treggiari

Servilia is often cited as one of the most influential women of the late Roman Republic. Though she was a high-born patrician, her grandfather died disgraced and her controversial father was killed before he could stand for the consulship; she herself married twice, but both husbands were mediocre. Nevertheless, her position in the ruling class still afforded her significant social and political power, and it is likely that she masterminded the distinguished marriages of her one son, Brutus, and her three daughters. During her second marriage she began an affair with Iulius Caesar, which probably lasted for the rest of his life and is further indicative of the force of her charm and her exceptional intelligence.

The patchiness of the sources means that a full biography is impossible, though in suggesting connections between the available evidence and the speculative possibilities open to women of Servilia's status this volume aims to offer an insightful reconstruction of her life and position both as a member of the senatorial nobility and within her extended and nuclear family. The best attested period of Servilia's life, for which the chief source is Cicero's letters, follows the murder of Caesar by her son and her son-in-law, Cassius, who were leaders among the crowd of conspirators in the Senate House on the Ides of March in 44 BC. We find her energetically working to protect the assassins' interests, also defending her grandchildren by the Caesarian Lepidus when he was declared a public enemy and his property threatened with confiscation. Exploring the role she played during these turbulent years of the late Republic reveals much about the ways in which Romans of both sexes exerted influence and sought to control outcomes, as well as about the place of women in high society, allowing us to conclude that Servilia wielded her social and political power effectively, though with discretion and within conventional limits.

Spartan Women by Susan Pomeroy

Sparta, which existed from 800 B.C. until A.D. 200, was renowned in the ancient world as a stoic and martial city-state, and most of what we know about Sparta concerns its military history and male-dominated social structure. Yet Spartan women were in many ways among the most liberated of the ancient world, receiving formal instruction in poetry, music, dance, and physical education. And the most famous of mythic Greek women, Helen of Troy, was originally a Spartan. Written by one of the leading authorities on women in antiquity, Spartan Women seeks to reconstruct the lives and the world of Sparta's women, including how their legal status changed over time and how they held on to their surprising autonomy.

In this book, Sarah Pomeroy covers over a thousand years in the lives of Sparta's women from both the elite and lower classes. This is the first book-length examination of Spartan women, and Pomeroy comprehensively analyses ancient texts and archaeological evidence to construct the history of these elusive though much noticed women. Spartan Women is an authoritative and fresh account that will appeal to all readers interested in ancient history and women's studies.

Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547 by Retha Warnick

This study of early modern queenship compares the reign of Henry VII’s queen, Elizabeth of York, and those of her daughters-in-law, the six queens of Henry VIII. It defines the traditional expectations for effective Tudor queens—particularly the queen’s critical function of producing an heir—and evaluates them within that framework, before moving to consider their other contributions to the well-being of the court. This fresh comparative approach emphasizes spheres of influence rather than chronology, finding surprising juxtapositions between the various queens’ experiences as mothers, diplomats, participants in secular and religious rituals, domestic managers, and more. More than a series of biographies of individual queens, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law is a careful, illuminating examination of the nature of Tudor queenship. 

Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England by Lisa Benz St John

This book is an innovative study offering the first examination of how three fourteenth-century English queens, Margaret of France, Isabella of France, and Philippa of Hainault, exercised power and authority. It frames its analysis around four major themes: gender; status; the concept of the crown; and power and authority.

Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages by Miriam Shadis

The women in the family which ruled thirteenth-century Castile used maternity, familial and political strategy, and religious and cultural patronage to secure their personal power as well as to promote their lineage. Leonor of England, and her daughters Blanche of Castile (queen of France), Urraca (queen of Portugal), Costanza (a Cistercian nun of Las Huelgas) and Leonor, (queen of Aragon) provide the context for a study focusing on Berenguela of Castile, queen of Leon through marriage and of Castile by right of inheritance, whose most significant accomplishment was to enable the successful rule of her son Fernando.

Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece by Debra Hamel

Neaira grew up in a Corinthian brothel in the fourth century B.C., became a high-priced courtesan and a sex slave, then settled into a thirty-year relationship with Stephanos of Athens. But next she found herself in court, charged with transgressing Athens’s marriage laws. This book reconstructs the amazing facts of Neaira’s life and trial, illuminating the social, legal, and cultural worlds of ancient Greece.

Women of Byzantium by Carolyn L. Connor

Women played key roles in Byzantine society: some ruled or co-ruled the empire, and others commissioned art and buildings, went on pilgrimages, and wrote. This engrossing book draws on evidence ranging from pictorial mosaics and inscriptions on the walls of churches to women’s poetry and histories, examining for the first time the lives, occupations, beliefs, and social roles of Byzantine women.

In each chapter Carolyn L. Connor introduces us to a single woman—from the elite to the ordinary—and uses her as a springboard to discuss Byzantine society. Frequently quoting from contemporary accounts, Connor reveals what these women thought of themselves and their lives and how they remembered the lives of women who had lived earlier.

Informative, sympathetic, and engagingly written, this book is a window into Byzantine culture and women’s history that has never before been opened.

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons

Eleanor's patrilineal descent, from a lineage already prestigious enough to have produced an empress in the eleventh century, gave her the lordship of Aquitaine. But marriage re-emphasized her sex which, in the medieval scheme of gender-power relations relegated her to the position of Lady in relation to her Lordly husbands. In this collection, essays provide a context for Eleanor's life and further an evolving understanding of Eleanor's multifaceted career. A valuable collection on the greatest heiress of the medieval period.

Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship by Lois L. Huneycutt

A study of Matilda of Scotland (wife to Henry I) and the political acumen and personal skills she brought to the role of queen.Matilda of Scotland was the daughter of Malcolm II of Scotland and his Anglo-Saxon queen Margaret. Her marriage to Henry I of England in 1100 thus brought to Henry, descendant of the conquering Normans, a direct and politically desirable link to Matilda's ancestor Alfred the Great.

Her life makes clear that Matilda had outstanding talents. She was educated in the exclusive convents of Romsey and Wilton, a grounding which enabled her to further the literate court culture of the twelfth century, and under her control was a substantial demesne that allowed her to exercise both lay and ecclesiastical patronage. In the matter of ruling, she was an active partner in administering Henry's cross-channel realm, served as a member of his curia regis, and on occasion acted with what amounted to vice-regal authority in England while Henry was in Normandy.

Chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries often refer to her as Mathilda bona regina, or Matildis beatae memoriae, and for a time she was popularly regarded as a saint. Huneycutt's study shows how Matilda achieved such acclaim, both because the political structures of her day allowed her the opportunity to do so and because she herself was skilled at manipulating those structures.

This study will be valuable to those interested in not only English political history, but also to historians of women, the medieval church, and medieval culture.

Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (1295-1360): Household and Other Records edited by Jennifer Ward

Noble widows were powerful figures in the later Middle Ages, running their own estates and exercising considerable influence. Elizabeth de Burgh (1295-1360), daughter of one of the most powerful earls in England and cousin of Edward II, lost her third husband at the age of twenty-six, and spent the rest of her life as a widow. In 1317, having inherited one-third of the lands of her brother, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who had been killed at Bannockburn three years earlier, she established herself at Clare, which became her main administrative centre for her estates in East Anglia, Dorset and South Wales. She enjoyed a noble lifestyle, was lavish in her hospitality to family and friends, entertaining Edward III in 1340, and she displayed her piety through her patronage of religious houses and her foundation of Clare College in Cambridge.

Her life and activities are portrayed in vivid detail in her household accounts and her will, selected extracts from which are provided in this volume. Altogether, 102 accounts of various types survive from the years of her widowhood, and the records here have been chosen to illustrate the great range of information provided, throwing light on Clare castle itself and its furnishings, daily life and religious practice, visitors, food and drink, livery and retainers, travel, and business. They paint of a vivid picture of the life and work of a noble family in the fourteenth century.