This biography forms part of the welcome Women in Antiquity series published by Oxford University Press. Fulvia takes her place beside her younger contemporary (and rival) Cleopatra, but more particularly perhaps the woman known as Turia. J. Osgood used the biographical profile of ‘Turia’ (2014) to highlight how the period of dreadful civil strife in the 40s bce impacted on women (and one woman in particular). If we follow the predominantly hostile tradition, S.'s profile of Fulvia allows us to explore the same melancholy subject from the opposite perspective: that of the perpetrators. The parallel exercises, however, confront the two writers with opposite demands. Osgood had to navigate an essentially panegyrical primary document; S. must negotiate unrelenting negativity prompted by polemic, both primary and secondary. S. is well aware of the challenges of writing the biography of a woman who suffers from an overwhelmingly hostile coverage in the surviving testimonia – despite the concerns that might be generated by the book's cover utilising Pavel Svedomsky's painting of an eroticised Fulvia ‘toying’ with Cicero's severed head and the rather disturbing apposition of that image with the book's subtitle: Playing for Power at the End of the Roman Republic.

The biography fulfils the series’ aim of providing ‘compact and accessible introductions to the life and historical times of women from the ancient world’. Chapter 1 sets the scene in the violent political landscape of the Late Republic. Fulvia's putative early experiences come alive in S.'s evocative reconstructions of a girl's life in a Roman aristocratic household, bringing to the fore potential formative influences: wet nurses, pets, playmates and slave tutors. There is admirable caution here too (e.g. with regard to the putative identification of a portrait of Fulvia on coin issues of the late 40s [pp. 14–16]).

Chapter 2 covers Fulvia's engagement and marriage to Publius Clodius Pulcher, focusing on his tumultuous career and the violent political scene of the 50s. The statement that Fulvia married Clodius ‘at the tail-end of the 60s’ (p. 19) could have been serviced by a long footnote, but that is not the type of book that S. is writing. The marriage with Clodius ‘seems to have been a happy one’ (p. 36, citing Cicero's claims that they were rarely apart). But caution should be exercised here. The unusual absence of Fulvia on 18 January 52 was key to Cicero's case that Clodius had premeditated an ambush on Milo who travelled ‘innocently’ with his wife, her baggage and retinue. Nonetheless, Asconius’ report (Cic. Mil., p. 40 C.) that Fulvia's displays of grief excited opinion against Milo at the trial suggests that her grief was felt to be sincere – at least by some. S. compensates for the lack of evidence for this phase of Fulvia's life by offering imaginative yet generally plausible reconstructions. On the night of the infamous Bona Dea scandal, when Clodius, Fulvia's husband-to-be, allegedly committed sacrilege by entering an all-female religious ritual, Fulvia ‘was probably at home … as a proper young lady ought to be. She will have heard what happened at Pompeia's house as soon as [her mother] Sempronia dashed in the door’ (p. 34).

Chapter 3 deals with Fulvia's marriages to C. Scribonius Curio and M. Antonius, both forged in the context of tumult and civil war. S. wonders whether ‘Fulvia had a preferred type’ of husband (p. 54). Clodius and Curio are ‘decadent, dangerous, and skilled politicians out to destroy the system that promoted them’ (p. 53). Given the role of political invective in the characterisations of all three men, one hesitates to endorse such speculation. Passing over divergent scholarly views, S. dates the marriage with Antony to 47, citing as evidence Cicero's tendentious imputation at Phil. 2.99 that Antony had already arranged the marriage when he divorced his wife Antonia (p. 67).

Chapter 4 covers the formation of the triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus in 43, the proscriptions, Fulvia's rebuff of the matrons petitioning against a triumviral tax, the Perusine War and her death. It opens with the assassination of Caesar and its dramatic consequences. Again, Fulvia's putative experiences are vividly brought to light in S.'s hands. Her infant son, Antyllus, was given as a hostage after Caesar's murder as a surety during the tense negotiations between Antony and Cassius: ‘As the lady of the house, Fulvia would have taken on the arrangements for dinner with the man who determined whether her child would safely return to her’ (p. 76). S. also discusses Fulvia being beset by lawsuits in early 43 requiring the assistance of Atticus (p. 83). What is interesting here is the vulnerable image of Fulvia that Nepos presents – so at odds with the virago image that prevails elsewhere.

S. is clearly aware of the influence of political invective on the source tradition and the pitfalls awaiting. All the same, she is probably right to give some credence to Cicero's claim that Fulvia was ‘auctioning provincial assignments and kingdoms to the highest bidder’ (p. 86), given that he had already made the allegation with regards to Deiotarus in a private letter to Atticus. I believe she is rightly sceptical about Fulvia's reported violation of Cicero's disembodied head, pointing to more creditable narratives that omit her altogether (p. 89). To these observations it might be appended that only late sources implicate her (Jerome and the Suda could be added to Cassius Dio) and that she is conspicuously absent in the reasonably full earlier tradition. S. is alert to the suspected exaggerations of Dio's account in this instance (cf. also p. 93) – though here (as elsewhere) she understandably cannot resist the colourful items that attach to her subject. Whether or not Fulvia witnessed the execution of Antonius’ men at Brundisium is another moot point, yet it is Cicero's lurid invective that is glossed: ‘Fulvia's face was splashed with blood’ (p. 80). Appian (B Civ. 3.44), who omits Fulvia's presence, is relegated to a footnote.

Chapter 5 usefully focuses on the aftermath of Fulvia's death and the survival of her negative reputation beyond antiquity. S. deals with her omission from the HBO/BBC miniseries Rome as an example of her ‘erasure from history’ (p. 114). True, Fulvia is not a character in the screenplay, but she is embedded in Polly Walker's stunning characterisation of ‘Atia’ – and, given that the portrayal of Atia is virtually the antithesis of the Atia depicted in the surviving literary sources, the legend of Fulvia may be said to have prevailed.

The persistent image of Fulvia is of the virago, of whom Velleius (2.74.2) observed nihil muliebre praeter corpus gerens. The fullest treatment of one phase of Fulvia's active life is provided by Appian and Dio, who were much in the debt of a historical tradition forged by Fulvia's nemesis, Augustus – though S. suggests that Antony also benefited from the inflation of Fulvia's role in the Perusine War (p. 74). Even if Livy had survived, it is doubtful she would have fared better. The Periochae give little away, though Florus (2.16.5) describes Fulvia as an agitator, goading Antony to greater than usual waywardness: gladio cincta virilis militiae. For Orosius (6.18.17), Fulvia exercised dominatus as a woman: ‘with consular eminence becoming regal, it is uncertain whether she should be registered as signalling the last of that declining power or the beginning of the new’. What seems to be a persistent motif in so much of the polemic is the extraordinary centrality that Fulvia achieved at certain points of her life and – for all that Orosius chooses to disparage her lack of moral discipline as a characteristic of her sex (ut mulier) – the manner in which she challenged gender-based expectations on multiple occasions. In Fulvia, Orosius recognised a woman on the threshold. S., I think, would concur: ‘Imperious Fulvia was in many ways the prototype of the imperial woman’ (p. 118).