Volume 22, Number 17 · October 30, 1975
The Lives of Ancient Women
By Ernst Badian
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
by Sarah B. Pomeroy
Schocken, 265 pp., $8.95
Females of the Species: Semonides on Women
by Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Noyes Data Corp., 187 pp., $19.50
Sex and Power in History
by Amaury de Riencourt
McKay, 469 pp., $12.95
It is characteristic of the historical 'invisibility' of women that no serious and comprehensive account of ancient women has hitherto existed. Naturally, historians of antiquity have concentrated on the kind of history made possible by the very limited evidence available to them. But they have long been using this to good effect, for social no less than for political or military history. The proliferation of detailed research in the last generation has inevitably included a proportionate increase in detailed social history. But the coming of the 'new history'—loudly acclaimed by some, and hailed by Sarah Pomeroy as a 'new trend…directed at finding out about the lower classes'—has made little difference in the ancient field.
Review, 4781 words
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