{"title":"Social Laws and Social Facts","authors":"K. Milnor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Cassius Dio asserts that the emperor Augustus’ social legislation arose from an imbalance in numbers between men and women among the Roman elite. This chapter considers how this statement has been understood in historical readings of the laws. It also argues that Dio’s assertion should be seen instead as one more instance of the ways that the legislation not only gives us access to knowledge about women’s lives but also attempts to generate more “knowledge” and questions about them. The chapter utilizes feminist epistemology in its discussion of legal and social matters. It is interested in facts as well as the absence of facts in locating women in ancient narratives.","PeriodicalId":312635,"journal":{"name":"New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121816114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Periphrôn Pênelopeia","authors":"H. Shapiro","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"A fine marble torso of a seated woman was found in the ruins of the palace at Persepolis that was burned down by Alexander the Great’s army in 331 BCE. The statue, now in Teheran, has aroused considerable interest as a unique example of a work of High Classical Greek art that ended up at the Persian court. From comparison with fifth-century terracotta reliefs and vases, as well as Roman copies that must go back to a second, nearly identical, and now lost statue, the woman holding her head in a melancholy pose can be identified as Homer’s Penelope. A recent study by Hölscher has proposed an intriguing scenario, in which one of the two statues would have accompanied Kallias, as a diplomatic gift, when he went to negotiate a peace treaty with the Great King in 449, while the other stood on the Athenian Akropolis as Perikles’s monument to that peace. In both instances, the figure of Penelope would have symbolized the longing for peace of women, whether Greek or Persian, who waited fearfully for their husbands and sons to come home. This interpretation raises the question of the reception of Penelope in fifth-century Athens: What was she most remembered for? Was it mainly as the wife longing for her husband away at war? Did Athenian society, as Hölscher claims, increasingly see the burden of war as falling on women as the fifth century wore on? The chapter explores these questions through a combination of literary and iconographical evidence.","PeriodicalId":312635,"journal":{"name":"New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121919165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Century of Women’s History from the Papyri","authors":"R. Bagnall","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190937638.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter surveys the study of women based on papyrological evidence, a subject to which Sarah Pomeroy has made major contributions. Beginning with the first articles on women in the papyri a century ago, the historiography is presented first chronologically, down to the growth of feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s, and then by subject for the past third of a century. Ancient legal studies, social history, the study of the economy, the development of Late Antiquity as a field, and the emergence of gender studies have all played important roles. The finds of papyri outside Egypt have broadened the subject beyond its Egyptian focus. Although quantitative investigations, based especially on the census returns from Roman Egypt, have played a central role, it is likely that microhistorical studies will be a more fertile direction in the future.","PeriodicalId":312635,"journal":{"name":"New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116687297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}