Reviews
The essays in this volume open up important but neglected topics for further inquiry, and will be valuable for literary and military historians alike. In addition, the international perspectives represented will challenge scholars to venture beyond traditional interpretations and methodologies, especially regarding the study of gender in antiquity.
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Alison Keith’s volume, Women & War in Antiquity, provides meaningful contributions to the advancement of this question. Whereas the premise of this book is bold, the scope is equally impressive; articles range in chronology from Homer and the mythohistoric Trojan origins of the classical world to the fall of Christian Rome
Women and War in Antiquity is a remarkable collection of historical and literary research, one that has much to interest the generalist, yet is sure to be an essential text for scholars of both ancient warfare and gender in antiquity... This excellent volume lights the way.
Fabre-Serris and Keith have assembled an impressive collection of papers that offer insightful interpretations of the relationship between women and war in a variety of Greco-Roman literary and historical contexts...To scholars interested in gender more generally or in the specific topics of individual chapters, this volume’s penetrating exploration of a variety of evidence will prompt productive questions for further thought.
... ope paths and offer fresh ideas for future research...
Fabre-Serris and Keith have assembled an impressive collection of papers that offer insightful interpretations of the relationship between women and war in a variety of Greco-Roman literature and historical contexts... To scholars interested in gender more generally or in the specific topics of individual chapters, this volume's penetrating exploration of a variety of evidence will prompt productive questions for further thought.
To sum up, this collection fills a perceived need and ideally should stimulate deeper consideration of women’s paradoxical but inescapable link to war.
A fascinating, intellectually stimulating, and useful volume, Women and War in Antiquity sheds important new light on a complex issue while offering penetrating interpretations at the intersection of history and literature. This excellent book should interest scholars far beyond those specializing in Greco-Roman culture.
Book Details
Introduction
1. War, Speech, and the Bow Are Not Women's Business
2. Women and War in the Iliad: Rhetorical and Ethical Implications
3. Teichoskopia: Female Figures Looking on Battles
4. Women Arming Men
Introduction
1. War, Speech, and the Bow Are Not Women's Business
2. Women and War in the Iliad: Rhetorical and Ethical Implications
3. Teichoskopia: Female Figures Looking on Battles
4. Women Arming Men: Armor and Jewelry
5. Woman and War: From the Theban Cycle to Greek Tragedy
6. Women after War in Seneca's Troades: A Reflection on Emotions
7. Love and War: Feminine Models, Epic Roles, and Gender Identity inStatius's Thebaid
8. Elegiac Women and Roman Warfare
9. Warrior Women in Roman Epic
10. War in the Feminine in Ancient Greece
11. To Act, Not Submit: Women's Attitudes in Situations of War in Ancient Greece
12. Women's Wars, Censored Wars? A Few Greek Hypotheses (Eighth to FourthCenturies BCE)
13. The Warrior Queens of Caria (Fifth to Fourth Centuries BCE): Archeology,History, and Historiography
14. Fulvia: The Representation of an Elite Roman Woman Warrior
15. Women and Imperium in Rome: Imperial Perspectives
16. The Feminine Side of War in Claudian's Epics