Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Hidden Lives, Public Personae: Women and Civic Life in the Roman West by Emily A. Hemelrijk

2017; Classical Association of Canada; Volume: 71; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/phx.2017.0034

1929-4883

Elizabeth F. Mazurek,

Classical Studies and Legal History

196 PHOENIX Despite these problems, the book makes contributions toward key questions about the early empire. If, as this book documents, the cults were not dictated by Rome, why were they established? McIntyre brings forward two answers consistently—to create ties with specific members of the imperial family, and to engage in local competition and selfpromotion . The specifics of how these aims are accomplished, particularly given that the priesthoods are often established in honor of dead family members, are not often explored in detail, and more prosopographic work would be helpful. But the exciting potential of this evidence is seen, for example, in the exploration of honors for the recently deceased Gaius (30–31). One Titus Statulenus Iuncus, a flamen Augustalis in Pisa and a pontifex minor in Rome, was delegated to bring the decision of the decuriones and coloni of Pisa to the emperor himself. The inscription summarizing these honors and events goes on to call Statulenus princeps coloniae nostrae, an elegant illustration of how an individual might serve as the link between center and periphery in the creation of new cults and may have gained prestige in both locations through the process. Macalester College Beth Severy-Hoven Hidden Lives, Public Personae: Women and Civic Life in the Roman West. By Emily A. Hemelrijk. New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xviii, 610, 25 figures, 20 b/w plates. Following upon Riet van Bremen's study of women’s civic roles in the Greek East,1 this book offers the most thorough examination to date of women’s participation in civic life throughout Italy and the western provinces of the Roman empire during the first three centuries a.d. Hemelrijk focuses specifically on the epigraphical evidence beyond the city of Rome in order to broaden our view of gender in Roman society and the fabric of civic life in the Roman empire. Overall, the book succeeds admirably in demonstrating the integral role of socially elite and wealthy women in the flourishing of Roman urban life outside Rome. Far from being marginalized, these women participated in and contributed to the rituals of public generosity and honor between local elites and their towns in the same ways as their male counterparts, albeit less frequently. Hemelrijk expertly handles the complexities of the epigraphical evidence and guides the reader clearly through the major arguments of her narrative. In sum, this book represents a new benchmark for the study of urban society in Roman antiquity going forward. Hemelrijk’s study is based upon a corpus of 1,400 inscriptions, primarily honorific and dedicatory inscriptions and epitaphs, that record a variety of civic roles and activities of non-imperial women throughout the cities of Italy and the western provinces— particularly Spain, North Africa, and Gaul—from the late first century b.c. to the early fourth century a.d. The corpus constitutes a separate appendix, organized in a series of tables relevant to the topics of the book’s main chapters: civic priesthoods (Chapter Two, Tables 2.1–2.12), civic benefactresses (Chapter Three, Tables 3.1–3.8), social networks Roman Empire (London and New York 2003); J. Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford 2005); K. Milnor, Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life (Oxford 2005). 1 R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Amsterdam 1996). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 197 and civic associations (Chapter Four, Tables 4.1–4.2), civic patronage and “motherhood” of cities and associations (Chapter Five, Tables 5.1–5.4), and public honor and representation (Chapter Six, Tables 6.1–6.2). Although the inscriptions within each table are arranged alphabetically by the women’s names, rather than by region and time period, the geographical and chronological distribution of the evidence is thoroughly discussed and illustrated with graphs within each chapter. Representing a third of the book, the appendix alone stands as a significant scholarly achievement that is sure to become a standard resource for the study of gender and society in ancient Rome. Chapter One, “A World Full of Cities,” contextualizes the epigraphical...