The famous polymath Plutarch often discussed the relationship between spouses in his works, including Marriage Advice, Dialogue on Love, and many of the Parallel Lives. In this collection, leading scholars explore the marital views expressed in Plutarch's works and the art, philosophy, and literature produced by his contemporaries and predecessors. Through aesthetically informed and sensitive modes of analysis, these contributors examine a wealth of representations—including violence in weddings and spousal devotion after death. The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World demonstrates the varying conceptions of an institution that was central to ancient social and political life—and remains prominent in the modern world. This volume will contribute to scholars' understanding of the era and fascinate anyone interested in historic depictions of marriage and the role and status of women in the late Hellenistic and early Imperial periods.

Sarah Pomeroy's groundbreaking Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves introduced scholars, students, and general readers to an exciting new area of inquiry: women in classical antiquity. Almost fifty years later, New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World builds upon and moves beyond Pomeroy's seminal work to represent the next step in this interdisciplinary field. The "new directions" for the study of women in antiquity included in this volume of newly commissioned essays feature new methodological questions to be asked, new time periods to be explored, new objects of study, as well as new information to be uncovered. In addressing these new directions, the editors have gathered a distinguished group of contributors that includes historians, philologists, archaeologists, art historians, and specialists in subfields like ancient medicine, ancient law, papyrology, and epigraphy. While some chapters focus primarily on Greece or Rome, others straddle or go beyond these artificial boundaries in interesting ways. While the focus of the volume is antiquity, the issues it raises will be of interest also to those studying women and theorizing the study of women in other periods as well. The volume will help readers to see women in antiquity with fresh eyes and to view anew important issues related to women today.

Beyond the institution of marriage, its norms, and rules, what was life like for married couples in Greco-Roman antiquity? This volume explores a wide range of sources over seven centuries to uncover possible answers to this question. On tombstones, curse or oracular tablets, in contracts, petitions, letters, treatises, biographies, novels, and poems, throughout Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 107 couples express themselves or are given life by their contemporaries and share their experiences of, and views on, marital relationships and their practical and emotional consequences. Renowned scholars and the next generation of experts explore seven centuries of source material to uncover the dynamics of the married life of metropolitan and provincial, famous and unknown, young and old couples. Men’s and women’s hopes, fears, traumas, joys, endeavours, and needs are analysed and reveal an array of interactions and behaviours that enlighten us on gender roles, social expectations, and intimate dealings in antiquity. Known texts are revisited, new evidence is put forward, and novel interpretations and concepts are offered which highlight local and chronological specificities as well as transhistorical commonalities. The analysis of married life in Greco-Roman antiquity, from ongoing vetting process to place where to find security, reveals the fundamental yearning to be included and loved and how the tensions created by the sometimes contradictory demands of traditional ideals and individual realities can be resolved, furthering our knowledge of social and cultural mechanisms. Married Life in Greco-Roman Antiquity will provide valuable resources of interest to scholars and students of Classical studies as well as social history, gender studies, family history, the history of emotions, and microhistory.

Examines how location confers cultural meaning on acts of violence, and renders them socially acceptable--or not

This book explores the areas in which novels such as Chariton’s Callirhoe and Heliodorus’s Aithiopika are ideal beyond the ideal love relationship and considers how concepts of the ideal connect to archetypal and literary patterns as well as reflecting contemporary ideological and cultural elements. Readers will gain a better understanding of how necessary is an understanding of these ideal elements to a full understanding of the novels’ possible readings and their reader’s attitudes. This book sets forth critical methods, subsequently followed, which allows for this exploration of ideal themes. Ideal Themes in the Greek and Roman Novel will be an invaluable resource for scholars of these novels, as well as ancient narratives and classical literature more generally. Scholars of cultural and utopian studies will also find the book useful, as well as some undergraduate students in all these areas.

Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.

Women and Slaves in Classical Culture examines how ancient societies were organized around slave-holding and the subordination of women to reveal how women and slaves interacted with one another in both the cultural representations and the social realities of the Greco-Roman world. The contributors explore a broad range of evidence including: * the mythical constructions of epic and drama * the love poems of Ovid * the Greek medical writers * Augustine's autobiography * a haunting account of an unnamed Roman slave * the archaeological remains of a slave mining camp near Athens. They argue that the distinctions between male and female and servile and free were inextricably connected. This erudite and well-documented book provokes questions about how we can hope to recapture the experience and subjectivity of ancient women and slaves and addresses the ways in which femaleness and servility interacted with other forms of difference, such as class, gender and status. Women and Slaves in Classical Culture offers a stimulating and frequently controversial insight into the complexities of gender and status in the Greco-Roman world.