HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 21 WOMEN

A Waterstones Best History Book of 2023, here is Rome as you have never seen it before - brazenly unconventional, badly behaved, and ever so feminine. Roman history normally kicks off with Romulus murdering his brother, and runs through all the emperors, occasionally nodding to a wife or mother until Constantine invents Christianity and Attila the Hun ruins everything. Tear up that script! Emma Southon tells another story about the Romans, one that lives through the Vestal Virgins and sex workers, business owners and poets, empresses and saints. Back in 750BCE we meet Tarpeia and Hersilia the traitor and the patriot, Tanaquil the Queen, Lucretia and Tullia the virgin and the whore in 510BC. Through the years of the Republic and the Empire we also meet princess Julia Caesar in 27BCE, Cartimandua and Boudicca the client and the rebel in 60CE, Julia Felix the Pompeii businesswoman, Perpetua the Christian martyr and Melania the Elder the Saint from 373CE among them. And Septimia Zenobia who declared herself empress and took over half the Roman Empire and ran it herself. Revisionist history at its best, this hugely entertaining history walks the line between humour and heartbreak and never shies away from the brutality some of the women endured. 404pp.