Description
Book SynopsisWomen 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.
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Differential Equations Sandra R. Joshel, New England Conservatory of Music, USA and Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennyslvania, USA 2. Female Slaves in the Odyssey William G. Thalmann, University of Southern California, USA 3. 'I, whom she detested so bitterly': Slavery and the Violent Division of Women in Aeschylus' Oresteia Denise McCoskey, Miami University, USA 4. Slaves With Slaves: Women and Class in Euripidean Tragedy Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Hamilton College, New York, USA 5. Women and Slaves as Hippocratic Patients Nancy Demand 6. Symbols of Gender and Status Hierarchies in the Roman Household Richard Saller, University of Chicago, USA 7. Villains, Wives, and Slaves in the Comedies of Plautus Annalisa Rei 8. Women, Slaves and the Hierarcies of Domestic Violence: The Family of St. Augustine Patricia Clark, University of Victoria, Canada 9. Mastering Corruption: Constructions of Identity in Roman Oratory Joy Connolly, University of Washington, USA 10. Loyal Slaves and Loyal Wives: The Crisis of the Outsider-Within and Roman Exemplum Literature Holt Parker, University of Cincinnati, USA 11. Servitium amoris: amor servitii Kathleeen McCarthy, University of California, USA 12. Remaining Invisible: The Archaeology of the Excluded in Classical Athens Ian Morris, Stanford University, USA 13. Cracking the Code of Silence: Athenian Legal Oratory and the Histories of Slaves and Women Steven Johnstone 14. Notes on a Membrum Disiectum Shane Butler
