Emma Southon is the author of the new book A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire. Her other books include Agrippina. She also is a bookseller at Waterstones Belfast.
Q: What inspired you to write A Rome of One’s Own, and how was the book's title chosen?
A: Partly I was inspired by spite and partly by a different kind of spite.
Initially I was responding to the publishing influx of Greek myth retellings that focused on the stories of Greek Goddesses. There is a playful rivalry between historians of ancient Greece and Rome and I felt that Rome needed some attention too. Especially because Roman women are real!
Then when I started collating lists of women I could include, I realised that there were hundreds and hundreds that I could choose from and that they all had brilliant, exciting, enlightening stories that complicated the traditional narratives of Roman history and undermined the conventional stories of men and masculinity.
That's where the second kind of spite came in and I decided that these stories weren't just important in their own right, they were important in telling new stories about the history of Europe and destabilising the stories that we tell ourselves about how the world was and should be.
The title was suggested by my brilliant friend and journalist Fiona Zublin, who has a way with puns that is unparalleled!
Q: Of the various women you write about in the book, are there a few that especially stand out for you?
A: I have a real soft spot for Julia Maesa, who was swept from provincial Syria to the palace, lost it all, got sent back to Emesa (Homs) and then led not one but two successful military coups to regain and maintain imperial power.
She put both her grandsons on the throne, the first two child emperors, had one of them killed when he didn't work out (Elagabalus) and handled her reputation so well that she was deified when she died. Amazing, astonishing behaviour.
I also really like the glimpses of real, emotional lives that you get from some women's lives; what it was really like to be alive in the Roman empire.
The letters of Claudia Severa and Sulpica Lepidina from the Roman fort in Vindolanda (UK) where they write about their birthday parties and children and how excited they are to see one another, while they are both upper class women living with the army in forts on the grim northern edge of the empire just fill me with joy.
Similarly, the diary of Perpetua, who was martyred as a Christian and made a saint but was primarily interested in worrying about whether her baby was eating while she was in prison awaiting execution (and her sore breasts because she couldn't express milk!) and feeling bad for making her dad sad.
It's such an insight into the horror of what early Christians experienced and also the intense dogmatic belief that fuelled Christian martyrs and overrode their very real feelings about their families.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, in part, “Southon’s crisp characterizations, snappy assessments of existing histories, and breezy narrative style will enchant fans of ancient history and women’s history. It’s a delight.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think it's a delight! That kind of review is what dreams are made of. Crisp, snappy and breezy also makes me sound like a really good apple, which I like.
Q: How did Roman historians view these women?
A: Badly mostly! Roman historians are all men, all from a single specific class, and many of them are from the same century so their ideas of acceptability are very narrow and limited to their understanding of appropriate behaviour.
But that's when they think about them at all, which they don't often. Women are largely invisible in the ancient Roman historical sources because they only understood war and politics to be worth writing about, and women were banned from engaging with those areas.
So the women who made it into the narrative historical sources are almost all terrible villains, because they are women who did politics publically or commanded armies. Inherently bad behaviour!
Women who behaved well just didn't get written about, so it is necessary to look outside of the narrative sources to find women's lives.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have just finished co-authoring a children's book with public historian Greg Jenner about Roman Britain, which was a whole new challenge, and that will be out in the UK in 2024.
I am now thinking about what to write next but it will be focused on slavery and the systems of Roman power.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I have a podcast at www.historyissexy.com and everyone should read more women's history.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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