Unlike many studies of the family in the ancient world, this volume presents readings of mothers in classical literature, including philosophical and epigraphic writing as well as poetic texts. Rather than relying on a male viewpoint, the essays offer a female perspective on the lifecycle of motherhood. Although almost all ancient authors are men, this book nevertheless aims to carefully unpack the role of the mother - not as projected by the son or other male relations, but from a woman's own experiences - in order to better understand how they perceived themselves and their families. Because the primary interest is in the mothers themselves, rather than the authors of the texts in which they appear, the work is organized according to the lifecycle of motherhood instead of the traditional structure of the chronology of male authors. The chronology of the male authors ranges from classical Greece to late antiquity, while the motherly lifecycle ranges from pre-conception to the commemoration of offspring who have died before their mothers.

This book explores motherhood in Greek and Roman literature, focusing on images of mothers and their relationships with their children across a variety of genres.

Unlike many studies of the family in the ancient world, this volume presents readings of mothers in classical literature, including philosophical and epigraphic writing as well as poetic texts. Rather than relying on a male viewpoint, the essays offer a female perspective on the lifecycle of motherhood. Although almost all ancient authors are men, this book nevertheless aims to carefully unpack the role of the mother – not as projected by the son or other male relations, but from a woman’s own experiences – in order to better understand how they perceived themselves and their families. Because the primary interest is in the mothers themselves, rather than the authors of the texts in which they appear, the work is organized according to the lifecycle of motherhood instead of the traditional structure of the chronology of male authors. The chronology of the male authors ranges from classical Greece to late antiquity, while the motherly lifecycle ranges from pre-conception to the commemoration of offspring who have died before their mothers.

This book assesses a narrow but vital – and so far understudied – part of Roman women's lives: puberty, preparation for pregnancy, pregnancy and childbirth. Bringing together for the first time the material and textual sources for this key life stage, it describes the scientific, educational, medical and emotional aspects of the journey towards motherhood. The first half of the book considers the situation a Roman girl would find herself in when it came to preparing for children. Sources document the elementary sexual education offered at the time, and society's knowledge of reproductive health. We see how Roman women had recourse to medical advice, but also turned to religion and magic in their preparations for childbirth. The second half of the book follows the different stages of pregnancy and labour. As well as the often-documented examples of joyous expectation and realisation of progeny, there are also family tragedies - young girls dying prematurely, stillbirth, death in childbirth, and death during confinement. Finally, the book considers the social change that childbirth wrought on the mother, not just the new baby – in many ways it was also a mother who was in the process of being conceived and brought into the world.

Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" explores Ovid's reconceptualization of the heroines' maternal experience. Rather than aligning them with the stereotypical roles of Roman women, motherhood enables the Ovidian heroines to challenge traditional norms with irreverent perspectives on gender categories and familial relationships. To confront these perspectives and overcome the dialectic between the (male) voice of the poet and the (female) voice of the heroines, Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" argues for a form of polyphonic "cooperation" between the two voices, thus providing new angles on ironical discourse and gender fluidity within the Heroides. By reading the Heroides both through feminist theory and against Ovid's poetic production, Simona Martorana provides a novel approach to describe how motherhood enhances the heroines' agency, drawing on works of Kristeva, Irigaray, Butler, Mulvey, Cavarero, Braidotti, and Ettinger. The application of theory is flexible throughout Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" and tailored to the nuances of specific passages rather than being uniformly imposed on the ancient text. Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" reveals how the irony, ambiguity, and polyphony intrinsic to Ovid's poetry are amplified by the heroines' poetic voices. Martorana breaks new ground by incorporating contemporary feminist theories within the analysis of the Heroides and provides an original comprehensive analysis of motherhood that encompasses other Ovidian works, Latin poetry, and classical literature more broadly.

How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender When Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one—aoidos, or “singer-man.” The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words, had no words with which to talk about who she was and what she did. In How Women Became Poets, Emily Hauser rewrites the story of Greek literature as one of gender, arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone. Bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers a new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own in order to write. So, too, have women writers through history needed a name to describe what it is they do. Hauser traces the invention of that name in ancient Greece, exploring the archaeology of the gendering of the poet. She follows ancient Greek poets, philosophers, and historians as they developed and debated the vocabulary for authorship on the battleground of gender—building up and reinforcing the word for male poet, then in response creating a language with which to describe women who write. Crucially, Hauser reinserts women into the traditionally all-male canon of Greek literature, arguing for the centrality of their role in shaping ideas around authorship and literary production.

Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and literary techniques used to construct a gendered ‘I’ in ancient literature. They also address the form and function of first-person discourse in classical literature in general, touching on fields of research that have increasingly come into focus in recent years, such as authorship studies, studies concerning the ancient notion(s) of the literary persona, as well as a historical narratology that discusses concepts such as the narrator or the literary character in ancient literary theory and practice.

It is often claimed that the kind of love that is variously deemed 'romantic' or 'true' did not exist in antiquity. Yet, ancient literature abounds with stories that seem to adhere precisely to this kind of love. This volume focuses on such literature and the concepts of love it espouses. The volume differs from and challenges much existing classical scholarship which has traditionally privileged the theme of sex over love and prose-genres over those of poetry. By conversely focusing on love and poetry, the present volume freshly explores central poets in ancient literature, such Homer, Sappho, Terence, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, alongside less canonized, such as the anonymous poet of The Lament for Bion, Philodemus and Sulpicia. The chapters, which are written by world-leading as well as younger scholars, reveal that Greek and Latin concepts of love seem interconnected, that such love is as relevant for hetero- as homoerotic couples, and that such ideas of love follow the mainstream of poetry throughout antiquity. In addition to the general reader interested in the history of love, this volume is relevant for students and scholars of the ancient world and the poetic tradition.

Both our view of Seneca’s philosophical thought and our approach to the ancient consolatory genre have radically changed since the latest commentary on the Consolatio ad Marciam was written in 1981. The aim of this work is to offer a new book-length commentary on the earliest of Seneca’s extant writings, along with a revision of the Latin text and a reassessment of Seneca’s intellectual program, strategies, and context. A crucial document to penetrate Seneca’s discourse on the self in its embryonic stages, the Ad Marciam is here taken seriously as an engaging attempt to direct the persuasive power of literary models and rhetorical devices toward the fundamentally moral project of healing Marcia’s grief and correcting her cognitive distortions. Through close reading of the Latin text, this commentary shows that Seneca invariably adapts different traditions and voices – from Greek consolations to Plato’s dialogues, from the Roman discourse of gender and exemplarity to epic poetry – to a Stoic framework, so as to give his reader a lucid understanding of the limits of the self and the ineluctability of natural laws.

Exploring the use of praise and blame in Greek tragedy in relation to heroic identity, Kate Cook demonstrates that the distribution of praise and blame, a significant social function of archaic and classical poetry, also plays a key role in Greek tragedy. Both concepts are a central part of the discourse surrounding the identity of male heroic figures in tragedy, and thus are essential for understanding a range of tragedies in their literary and social contexts. In the tragic genre, the destructive or dangerous aspects of the process of kleos (glory) are explored, and the distribution of praise and blame becomes a way of destabilising identity and conflict between individuals in democratic Athens. The first half of this book shows the kinds of conflicts generated by 'heroes' who seek after one kind of praise in tragedy, but face other characters or choruses who refuse to grant the praise discourses they desire. The second half examines what happens when female speakers engage in the production of these discourses, particularly the wives and mothers of heroic figures, who often refuse to contribute to the production of praise and positive kleos for these men. Praise and Blame in Greek Tragedy therefore demonstrates how a focus on this poetically significant topic can generate new readings of well-known tragedies, and develops a new approach to both male heroic identity and women's speech in tragedy.