Feminist Scholarship in the Classics: Amy Richlin's Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women (2014), (Workshop)

This presentation tackles head-on Richlin’s reading of rape scenes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses – her argument that the poet’s coupling of violence and sexuality could be explained by the savage aggression to which Romans were exposed in the arena and by the opportunities for sexual abuse available to Roman men in a slave-culture. The panelist argues that on the contrary Ovid’s descriptions need not be read as normalizing rape but are, rather, part of the poem’s complex but deeply radical dissection and critique of Augustan Rome’s association of violence with sexuality.

This presentation focuses on two aspects of Richlin’s work as it has shaped the historiography of Roman women. First, focusing on three chapters in Arguments with Silence – the first (adultery in Rome), the second (satirical invective against Roman women), and the eighth (Pliny the Elder and folk remedies) – she examines how Richlin’s reading of the literary sources has affected historians who must use these sources to write the history of ancient women, separating discourse from social realities.

This presenter is a young specialist in Roman social history deeply influenced by Richlin’s work, especially by her audacia in bringing topics such as obscenity in Roman invective or rape narratives to the center of academic discussions. In her work on Roman women and religion, Richlin searches for information from largely ignored sources such as Festus’ dictionary and Italian inscriptions outside Rome, fruitfully combining them with comparative material from other disciplines.

This paper focuses on the ways in which Richlin’s work has been influential far beyond Roman studies – for instance on the panelist’s own work on Greek tragedy. A fearless deployment of contemporary approaches marks Richlin’s work, making it relevant to others working on subjects far from her own. In her introduction to Arguments with Silence she summarizes the debate about incorporating theoretical approaches to work in Classics, and demonstrates the positive effects of using modern theory.