The politics of power and the power of the political are strikingly enduring concerns. The clear tilt of western democracies towards demagoguery and familial rule in recent years makes a study of power couples through history a compelling topic. The collection is positioned by Bielman Sánchez as a propaedeutic examination of the application of the phrase ‘power couple’ to ancient marriages and offers the intriguing thesis that power couples are an enduring thread that transverses time and connects us with past milieux.
This edited collection is the result of a 2017 workshop ‘Regards croisés sur les couples exceptionnels dans l'Antiquité gréco-romaine’ held at the University of Lausanne. The workshop is part of a broader research project emerging from the same university entitled ‘Regards croisés sur les couples dans l'Antiquité gréco-romaine, IVe siècle av. J.-C. – IIe siècle ap. J.-C.’. The papers are organised chronologically, allowing the reader to consider the way in which couples have navigated their representation from the fourth century bc to the first century ad. The scope of the papers reveals the importance of familial power throughout the ancient Mediterranean. The collection includes papers on various Seleucids, Ptolemies and Julio-Claudians, each a clear politico-familial entity whose recognition through their name alone is an impressive reminder of just how much influence they wielded.
The explicit desire to draw connections between the contemporary and the ancient worlds places this work in some relationship with reception studies, except that it reverses the dynamic. Rather than approaching reception over time, this study retrojects a modern concept to an ancient context. Bielman Sánchez examines contemporary definitions of the power couple in the introduction, and this provides the framework for the papers that follow. The idea at the heart of the collection is an interesting one: can we learn more about power and the couples that wielded it in the Graeco-Roman world by first thinking about how couples wield power today? Some of the modern examples drawn out in the course of the study include: Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Brangelina, the Obamas, the Clintons and the Windsors. Even from this short list, the semantic terrain of ‘power couple’ is hazy, extending from constitutional monarchy through democratic politics to outright celebrity. It is this conceptual texture that allows the contemporary phrase so much porosity and makes it an attractive analogy for ancient frameworks of power, which blended dynastic legitimacy with easy access to the apparatus of propaganda.
In Chapter 1 E. Carney examines the politics at play in the reigns of the Argead couples Philip II and Olympias as well as Philip III and Adea Eurydice. Carney explores the various ways that the women in these relationships make claims to power through patrilineal, conjugal or filial connections. In both cases Carney emphasises the exceptional qualities of these unions on account of the fact that monarchy was viewed as ‘series of reigning males’ rather than royal couples.
M. Widmer situates the discussion of Seleucid power as a test against the concept of ‘the couple’ in Chapter 2. This test is complicated by the polygamous practices of the court. Widmer notes that the titles of basileus and basilissa cannot be taken as synonymous with the modern phrase the ‘power couple’. What is most important for the Seleucids is the deliberate representation of family connections as characterised by harmony and affectionate attachment.
The Ptolemaic Cleopatra Thea and her Seleucid marriages are the subject of M. D'Agostini's study in Chapter 3. The prominent position of Thea on coinage with Alexander Balas is revealing, but D'Agostini notes some reservations in reading too much into this evidence in terms of what it might suggest about power. More interesting is the shift D'Agostini reads in Thea's increasing prominence through successive marriages, but the designation of power couple is steadfastly resisted.
In Chapter 4 Bielman Sánchez and V. Joliton examine Ptolemaic couples in crisis. A consideration of papyri, inscriptions and temple reliefs relating to Arsinoe III's marriage with Ptolemy IV Philopator is thorough if inconclusive in evaluating her in terms of power held beyond the royal couple. A shorter discussion of a second couple – Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II – sets up the conclusion that the second century bc was an important period for the development of Ptolemaic institutions in relation to women.
M.-C. Ferriès examines Antony and Cleopatra in Chapter 5. Here we move onto firmer territory in terms of a potential power couple as each held a domain of power in their own right distinct from the other prior to their relationship. An examination of the power-plays that Cleopatra adopted in Cilicia and those that Antony deployed in Alexandria provides the grounds for understanding them as ‘a couple consisting of two people who are each influential or successful in their own right’ (definition of ‘power couples’ in Oxford Living Dictionaries).
Chapter 6 is A.-C. Harders's examination of Mark Antony's Roman marriages. The discussion is framed around a consideration of how the Romans understood power in the late republic and draws a contemporary parallel to Macron's failed plan to establish a formal role for his wife Brigitte when he gained the French presidency in 2017. Harders makes clear that due to the cultural and legal constraints on women in Rome we are not dealing with power couples when approaching the study of Antony's Roman wives. Fulvia stands out as exceptional for accruing influence over time through the legacy of her husbands and engaging in military affairs.
F. Cenerini examines Augustus and Livia in Chapter 7, but the aims of this study are not fully articulated. Without a clear intent, Cenerini treads well-worn ground by noting that the Roman system prevented Augustus from granting Livia any institutional power. The conclusion that we would know nothing of Livia if not for Augustus is a tacit admission that this union was not that of a power couple in the modern sense despite the fact that their union was exceptional in many respects.
In Chapter 8 J.P. Hallett takes a different tack by examining the representation of Cornelia in Propertius 4.11. Hallett opens with a consideration of the American political couple Bob and Liddy Dole, but is quick to note that – unlike Liddy – Cornelia could not hold any legitimate political position. Through Propertius’ fictitious exploration of Cornelia, Hallett argues, we learn how domestic power lies at the centre of Roman politics and how the ‘Augustan power couple’ emerges from the poetry.
T. Späth opens Chapter 9 without reference to power couples, instead positioning the study as an examination of ‘exceptionality’ in the practices of married life. The focus is on the wives of the emperor Claudius. The paper aims for an anthropological approach, but is constrained from achieving this due to the challenges of studying imperial unions through the limitations of the extant written record. The observation that people might approach the wife of the princeps in order to gain favour with her husband reveals the soft power that operated openly once imperial rule had been established.
Chapter 10 offers a conclusion to the volume with Bielman Sánchez noting that there is no linguistic equivalent for the phrase ‘power couple’ in either Greek or Latin. The challenges of the source material are highlighted, and a synthesis of the contributions is provided, where the concept of the ancient power couple is taken as a given.
This is an important collection as it reveals what happens when a contemporary concept is loosely transposed upon the ancient past and the hypothesis ultimately disproven. Without a strong interrogation of power through any theoretical lens, the contributors are forced to compare ancient power structures directly with a concept that emerged in the 1980s to discuss celebrities. The result is that some contributions gloss over connections to power couples entirely, while others brush off the comparison as unfit for their project and the evidence at hand. As an analogy that might crop up in the undergraduate classroom, the ‘power couple’ works quite well providing students with a way into thinking about how familial power was central; but, once you start to formalise the comparison, because of the gulf between how we think of power in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and how power operated in the Graeco-Roman world, it is difficult to sustain the conceit.
Bielman Sánchez is in the unenviable position of trying to bring the ancient power couple into existence through force of repetition. Much of Chapter 10 relies on the assumption that the concept has been demonstrably revealed in the preceding chapters. The scholarship overall is engaging and oftentimes enlightening as there are valuable insights that can be drawn from a re-consideration of the evidence with an eye to thinking about couples, but the limitations of ‘power couples’ as a framework are clear. The volume suffers throughout from minor spelling, grammatical and typographical errors. The collection may have been on stronger footing if it had stayed true to the concept at the heart of the workshop that inspired the publication. ‘Exceptional couples’ has none of the twentieth-century semantic baggage and supports the breadth of complexity of the role of women adjacent to the political centre of the courts of the Graeco-Roman world.
