Basilissa, not mahārāni: The Indo-Greek queen Agathokleia
By Gunnar Dumke
The Indo-Greek queen Agathokleia (her reign can approximately be dated to the last quarter of the second century BCE) appears on coins both in jugate busts together with king Strato and all on her own. Yet in the coin legends she only gets mentioned on the Greek side, the Indian legend always has Strato only. Besides her coins nothing is known about queen Agathokleia and no other sources exist that can shed light on her life and regency. A die-study of all the available conducted by the author enables us for the first time to analyze the material comprehensively, i.e.
Chiomara and the Roman Centurion
By Jessica Clark
Ancient and modern historians have had no difficulty finding things to do with Roman rapes. We have places for Rhea Silvia and the Sabine women, for Lucretia, for Boudicca and the anonymous women objectified on trophies, coins, and monuments. An intriguing exception is the case of Chiomara, a Galatian of high social status taken prisoner by a centurion in the aftermath of a Roman military victory in 189 BCE.
Always Advanced By Her Recommendations: The Vestal Virgins and Women’s Mentoring
By Morgan E. Palmer
The Vestal Virgins served as power brokers with the ability to advance individual careers, and inscriptions from the atrium Vestae attest to how they assisted others. Amelius Pardalas credits the Vestal Campia Severina with using her influence to secure his prestigious military position (CIL 6.2131), and the imperial financial administrator Quintus Veturius Callistratus reports that he got his job “by her vote” (suffragio eius, CIL 6.2132).
Cornelia’s Connections: Political Influence in Cross-Class Female Networks
By Krishni Schaefgen Burns
This paper explores the potential existence of female social networks that stretched across class barriers to give women of all stations the ability to influence politics during the Roman Republic. It will build on the work of scholars such as Richard Bauman (1990), Judith Hallett (1984), and Emily Hemelrijk (1987), who have established that women in high socioeconomic positions acted as political intercessors between their powerful male relatives and other Roman women.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Ptolemaic Faience and the Limits of Female Power
By Alana Newman
The obstacles facing women today such as under-representation in administrative positions, sexual discrimination, and social inequality have sparked a global debate about what kind of power women can possess and the boundaries of their power and agency. Encouraged by this conversation to reflect on the often-elusive relationship between women and positions of authority, this paper will investigate the roles royal women were allowed to play in Hellenistic Egypt by examining the representation of Ptolemaic queens on faience oinochoai.
If I say that the Polyxena Sarcophagus was designed for a woman, does that make me a TERF? Identity politics and power now and then.
By Catherine M. Draycott
When it was discovered in 1994, the surprisingly elaborate Polyxena Sarcophagus, decorated on all four of its sides with relief sculptures mostly comprising female figures, was immediately assumed to be the burial monument of a female living in the Granikos Plain on the south shore of the Propontis in about 500 BC. Subsequently, sexing of the bones found within the sarcophagus concluded that the occupant was a male – an ‘inconvenient truth,’ as Richard Neer has said.