Geschichten aus der Geschichte · Richard Hemmer und Daniel Meßner

Extra: A chat with Dr. Emma Southon on 21 women who shaped Roman History

·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

In the 1970s, a head of classics department told undergraduates who wanted a course on Roman women that he may as well teach a course on Roman dogs.

1. Geschichten aus der Geschichte hosts a special English-language extra episode interviewing Dr. Emma Southon about her third book on 21 little-known women of Roman history. 2. Dr. Emma Southon is a Roman historian and author of 'Agrippina the Younger,' 'A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,' and 'A Rome of One's Own' (US title); she has appeared on the podcast twice before. 3. The episode's central thesis is that the dominant way of narrating women's history — focusing on empresses and warrior queens — implicitly accepts a masculine definition of historical importance centred on politics and war. 4. Southon explains she deliberately avoided well-known figures like Livia because repeating them suggests those are the only women we know about, when in fact enough material survives to write a history of Rome in 1,000 women. 5. Galla Placidia is the only woman in the book widely known in Europe — famous in Spanish-speaking countries and with a square named after her in Barcelona — but almost unknown in the English-speaking world unless one has visited her mausoleum in Ravenna. 6. Amy Richlin, a classicist still working and a founding figure in women's studies in antiquity, was told as an Ivy League undergraduate in the 1970s that studying Roman women was as useful as studying Roman dogs; she and Mary Beard went on to create the entire scholarly subfield. 7. Richlin's 'Forbidden Planet method' for recovering women's history involves approaching the subject from as many angles as possible, like shooting lasers at an invisible monster until you can see the shape in the negative space. 8. Southon's own methodology is to name gaps explicitly, ask why Roman culture preserved or omitted particular information, and acknowledge clearly when a claim is a guess or inference rather than documented fact. 9. Southon argues that history cannot be objective because multiple layers of human interpretation stand between any event and the reader; writing a narrative involves interpretation and subjective judgment calls, and other readings are always available. 10. Julia Felix, a Pompeian businesswoman, is known only because she painted a to-let advertisement on the outside of her building, which was first excavated in 1755; the ad specified a five-year rental for upscale baths, shops with living quarters, and apartments — signed 'daughter of Spurius,' possibly indicating illegitimate birth. 11. Julia Felix's complex included commercial baths, gardens with fishponds, a shrine to Isis, a dining room with a water feature, a hot food stand, and bars with black-and-white mosaic work; she had expanded the property by moving a road to combine two lots. 12. Southon distinguishes her commercial baths from public baths like the Stabian Baths: whereas anyone could pay a penny for public baths, Julia Felix's offered semi-exclusive privacy at a higher price point — 'the nice gym instead of the council gym.' 13. The complex offered reclined dining — normally exclusive to wealthy households requiring enslaved servers — allowing ordinary Pompeians to experience luxury for birthdays or special occasions, comparable to booking a restaurant with a tasting menu. 14. A freeze uncovered in Julia Felix's bath in 1755 and taken to the King of Naples (who trimmed it to fit his wall and discarded the offcuts) is described as one of the most realistic surviving depictions of Roman daily life: a Pompeii forum on market day, with shoe saleswomen, a beggar with a dog, children at school, and people reading public notices. 15. Southon argues that Roman law codes — including Justinian's Digest — barring women from public life without a male guardian describe how lawmakers wished the world was, not how it functioned in practice, comparing this to laws against underage drinking that are widely ignored. 16. Women like Julia Felix (commercial complex owner) and Eumachia (who built a prominent Forum building with her own statue) show that non-elite women were actively engaged in Pompeian economic and public life — the restrictions cited from law applied chiefly to the senatorial and equestrian elite. 17. On the contrast between elite written sources and archaeological finds: written sources give personality, quotes, and scandalous stories (as with Livia chasing Tiberius around the house reading Augustus's critical letters aloud), while finds like the Vindolanda letters give intimate but fragmentary glimpses of actual women's lives. 18. The episode is conducted entirely in English, in a relaxed but intellectually substantive interview style, with the host openly acknowledging his own prior misreadings and gaps in knowledge. 19. Scholars, students, and general readers interested in ancient Rome's social history, women's history, and the methodology of history writing will find this episode substantive and engaging. 20. Listeners wanting coverage of Livia, Cleopatra, or the most politically powerful Roman women will not find them here — that exclusion is the book's deliberate argument.

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