Description
Book SynopsisShe draws relevant details from cure records and dedications from healing sanctuaries, labor scenes depicted on tombstones, Aristophanic comedy, andPlatonic philosophy.
Trade ReviewDemand's book brings welcome light to the problems that pregnant women are likely to have faced in Greek antiquity, and to the ways in which a male-dominated society sought to understand and manage women's necessary role in procreation. Classical Review There is much here to provoke thought and not least because the author believes that male control of female reproductivity was woven inextricably into the institutions of the polis. Greece and Rome A wide-ranging and general account, using written and visual evidence to focus, above all, on women as child-bearers, brought up and socialized through rituals to bear children for the family and the state, in patterns of early and frequent childbirth which were, contradictorily, damaging to their and their children's health or survival. -- Nick Fisher Times Literary Supplement
