https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1439 Numéros fr jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:17:29 +0100 mar., 30 janv. 2024 11:18:29 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1439 0 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1440 In 20 CE, Aemilia Lepida was tried before the senatorial court. When the court recessed for a holiday, she rallied support by referring to her Pompeian ancestry, choosing as her venue the theatre built by her great-grandfather Pompey himself. Accompanied by a group of fellow elite women (clarae feminae), Lepida entered the theatre and invoked the imagines of her great ancestor with tearful lamentations. Based on a close reading of Tacitus’ Annales 3.22, this article focuses on his descriptions of the strategies Lepida adopted and discusses how she used her connection to Pompey to support her case and argue that the physical setting of Lepida’s appeal to the people contributed to its meaning and that she in essences was asking for a trial by the public opinion. It will demonstrate how women could use their agency in negotiating public space, with a sensitivity to social conventions of the Roman imperial elite. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:18:42 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1440 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1449 In writing her 1836 novel Philothea, the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child drew on careful reading of Plutarch’s Life of Pericles, Euripides’ Ion, and Plato’s Republic. The novel’s plot, organized around Pericles’ law that both parents must be Athenian citizens for their child to have citizenship, shares features with arguments for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights that Child made in other writings throughout her lifetime. Child combined a sentimental romance narrative about an enslaved woman that encourages readers to become abolitionists with allusions to Plato’s Republic that affirm the abolitionist conviction that slavery is absolutely unjust. Previous scholarship has treated Child’s use of Greek material in a rather general way. This article demonstrates just how precisely she incorporated elements of Plutarch, Euripides and Plato into the abolitionist story she chose to tell. By expanding understanding of Child’s engagement with the classical past that her gender kept her from learning about in a university setting, this study also contributes to the growing body of knowledge about how women did get access to — and put to use — classical learning. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:19:04 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1449 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1469 This paper offers an analysis of Sheri Tepper’s novel, The Gate to Women’s Country, through the lenses of Classical Reception and feminist reinterpretation, aligning with Hardwick’s theoretical framework and drawing upon the specific conceptual propositions of Ostriker, Keen and Durand. Tepper’s narrative comprises both utopian and dystopian elements. In her utopian projection, a Greek tragedy is reimagined as Iphigenia in Ilium, wherein she introduces a dialogue with the deceased to underscore the inherent violence of men and its consequences for women and children. In the dystopian projection, she indirectly utilises the myth of Persephone and Demeter, with a notable emphasis on the catabatis motif, implicitly employed to depict the harrowing and violent experiences faced by the central character, Stavia. This portrayal of Hades, transposed to Tepper’s envisioned society, serves as a cautionary tale highlighting the perils that women encounter when they lack control, influence or a voice. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:19:46 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1469 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1479 In the funerary culture of Roman Italy between the late first century BCE and the late second century CE tombs set up by and for freed people, both men and women, predominated. This article looks at these monuments from the perspective of freedwomen. It surveys three patterns of commemoration of freedwomen: their emulation of freeborn (elite) values, the expression of professional pride and their posthumous representation in the guise of deities. Incorporating elements that at first sight may seem contradictory – such as work and the ideal of domesticity –, the funerary representation of freedwomen shows a greater variety and wider range than that of freeborn women. By discussing the complexity of their (self-)representation the article aims to shed new light on the lives and ambitions of freedwomen in Roman society. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:20:20 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1479 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1485 The Nux depicts the complaints of a walnut tree, pelted with stones and beaten with rods when she bears fruit. Discussion of the Nux, however, has largely centred on its authorship. Recognising its deep engagement with Ovid’s work, this article sets aside the question of authorship and takes a critical ecofeminist approach to explore the poem’s concerns with fertility, nature, the female, and violence. It argues that the walnut tree is feminised and humanised so that her complaints that fertility brings pain and her criticism of trees who sabotage their fertility to be beautiful have meaning for Roman women, and in particular for those women living under the Principate. It aims to demonstrate that the Nux figures the domination of nature and the oppression of women as outcomes of the same harmful ideology. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:20:41 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1485 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1491 The lex Scantinia was one of the earliest (and arguably one of the most infamous) laws criminalizing sexual misconduct in Roman society. Modern scholars know little about the specifics of the law itself, largely because all evidence for the law, the behaviors it prohibited, and any mechanisms for enforcement/punishment must be gleaned from a few scattered references appearing in a variety of literary sources. This paper examines the literary legacy of the lex Scantinia against the legislative context in which the law may have been created. It suggests that the consensus about what constituted sexual morality and the drive to assert state authority were not necessarily synonymous with a deep commitment to and prioritization of this standard in everyday life. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:22:51 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1491 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1497 This article focuses on Simone Weil’s translation and reception of Homer’s Iliad. Some criitics have called it a misreading, but I contend that translation and reception comes in many forms and that it is a mistake to label non-literal translations as “misreadings.” My analysis of Weil’s Homer also focuses on how Weil’s writing about war is marked by her identity as a woman and a woman who is drawn to epic poetry. The article focuses on two episodes in the Iliad: Priam and Achilles in Book 24 and Lycaon and Achilles in Book 21. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:23:09 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1497 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1506 Female portrait statuary forms a large and important category of evidence for understanding the historical phenomenon of the visual representation and commemoration of women in the public spaces of the Greek city. With its rich body of both epigraphical and sculptural remains, the city of Athens is a particularly fruitful site to undertake such a study. While portraits of women begin to be set up in Athens in the early fourth century B.C., the chronological focus here is the Roman Imperial period, when inscribed bases for statues of women and marble sculpture representing female portrait subjects are the most abundant. I consider epigraphical evidence in the form of inscribed statue bases. The main sculptural evidence comes from the American excavations in the Athenian Agora. While a great deal of important research has focused on the epigraphic evidence, particularly from the Acropolis, this article analyzes and puts into conversation both strands of this extensive corpus of material. jeu., 04 janv. 2024 11:38:45 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1506