Overview

The Julio-Claudian period (c. 27 BC to 68 AD) was a time of great tension, witnessing profound challenges to Roman political and social life. One manifestation of this was the increasingly important role played by women in the power struggles that gripped the Empire during the reign of Augustus and his four successors. This study discusses the portrayal of women from imperial families, who developed high public profiles to help to guarantee their family's continuity and create a public image of the princeps and his reign. In particular it focuses upon the tension generated by their actions, which often went beyond accepted Roman notions of acceptable female behaviour and challenged the established division between the public and private spheres. Since a prominent position in the imperial domus often went hand in hand with a position of power, the ambiguous nature of the domus, the unclear position of women in it, and the blurring line between public and private were perceived as extra threatening for the social order. Unlike most monographs on Julio-Claudian women, this work does not limit itself to the study of iconography or biographical accounts of individual empresses. Instead it considers a wide variety of different sources - including literary descriptions, archaeological remains, imperial and provincial coinage, and inscriptions - to offer a much fuller picture than has hitherto been available. As such the book both expands our understanding both of Roman politics and gender relations at this critical juncture of European history.

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9781409437437

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