Sourcebooks in translation are extremely useful for students and scholars who are not proficient in a given ancient language and who would have difficulty in locating and accessing the relevant sources. They have a long history, of course. J.H. Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest of 1906–1907 and J.B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, first published in 1950, made available important texts in scripts and languages very few people could read or understand. They have vastly increased access to sources and enabled many more people to learn and think about ancient societies and history. Consider the repercussions of the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, for ‘ordinary people’ to read, and we can gain an impression of the impact sourcebooks in translation have had on the historically inclined.
The field of classical studies has its own canon of sourcebooks that many are familiar with: the six volume series of Translated Documents of Greece and Rome (1983–1988), for example, and N. Lewis and M. Reinhold's Roman Civilization volumes 1 and 2, from 1951 and 1955, have gone through three editions to 1990. Routledge have also published sourcebooks on specific periods as well as on specific topics, such as the Roman army, household, slavery and even animals, with more slated for release. As fewer people are now proficient in classical languages, sourcebooks in translation grow more useful and more numerous, and increasingly more specialised in terms of topic. Since so many English translations of full texts are available in series such as the Loeb Classical Library as well as Oxford and Penguin Classics, and increasingly freely available online at sites such as LacusCurtius and the Perseus Digital Library, topic-based sourcebooks, while not new, are a natural progression, gathering together snippets related by theme.
H.'s book joins a growing list of sourcebooks on women in the ancient world, which includes M. Lefkowitz and M.B. Fant's Women's Life in Greece and Rome: a Source Book in Translation, the first of its kind, originally published in 1982 and now in its fourth edition (2016), J. Rowlandson's Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a Sourcebook (1998) and B. Maclachlan's Women in Ancient Greece: a Sourcebook (2012) and Women in Ancient Rome: a Sourcebook (2013). The geographical focus of H.'s volume is the Latin-speaking provinces, mostly Italy and the west, from the first century bce to third century ce (it will be followed by a companion volume on the Greek east in the Hellenistic and Roman periods). What is notable about H.'s book is that it is compiled entirely from inscriptions and graffiti and does not include extracts from literary sources, which its predecessors do. It enables readers to access ‘real women’ across the west in a very immediate way, even though, inevitably, the texts were not all written or composed by women; it reflects and will contribute to an expanding and important area of study.
The book begins with a helpful general introduction on studying women's lives through inscriptions and epigraphic culture as well as an explanation of the aims and structure of the book. There is an opening anecdote about Ummidia Quadratilla, a wealthy woman known slightly from a letter of Pliny the Younger, and the discovery of two inscriptions from her home town of Casinum. These inscriptions have transformed our limited image of her, informing us that she was a significant benefactress of her town – building the amphitheatre and restoring the dilapidated theatre from her own wealth (6.7). This neatly demonstrates what epigraphic evidence can add to our understanding of ancient Roman women beyond what we might find in elite male literary sources.
H. presents 602 individual epigraphic texts selected from the huge corpus of Latin inscriptions in seven thematic chapters. These are: (1) ‘Family Life’ (95 texts); (2) Legal Status, Citizenship and Ethnicity (82 texts); (3) Occupations (136 texts); (4) ‘Social Relations, Travel and Migration’ (76 texts); (5) ‘Religion’ (94 texts); (6) ‘Public Life’ (54 texts); (7) ‘Imperial Women’ (65 texts). Each chapter is then further divided into subsections (e.g. ‘Wives’, in Chapter 1), which are sometimes divided again into smaller sets of sources, grouped by specific theme (e.g. ‘Harmonious marriages and romantic love’). Within each set, the sources are given in rough chronological order. All sources are numbered continuously within each chapter and given a pithy title, often taken from a text. For each source a reference to a corpus is given, for example to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and its place of origin and date stated.
All chapters, sections and sets begin with useful introductions, which help the reader understand the sources more fully. There are references to further reading, up-to-date and key publications, for each theme and sometimes for individual sources. Each source introduction explains the material and setting of the inscriptions (e.g. a marble plaque in a columbarium) and other relevant details. The book is well illustrated and attractive, with 71 helpful figures. These are mostly fair-sized black-and-white photographs of the original inscriptions, which allow the reader to see a little more of an inscription's context, such as the nature and scale of the inscribed object, the size and the quality of the lettering, and any sculptural detail. Three useful and detailed maps are provided, so readers can see where a text comes from.
Introductions, figures and maps dovetail well in texts such as 2.68, for example. In this short funerary inscription we meet a Flavia Usaiu, daughter of Tattu, an Eraviscan woman from Pannonia Inferior, who died aged 80. By her name, she must have received Roman citizenship under the Flavian emperors, but her father, Tattu, was not a citizen. Her son, impressively named Quintus Flavius Titucus, certainly was. He set up the stele in Roman tradition for his mother, noting her ‘dutifulness’ (pietas). The grave stele is pictured, allowing us to see an image of Flavia Usaia bedecked in torcs and bracelets, a sign of her Celtic identity, but with the typically Roman images of a spindle and distaff too. This brief text, in context, opens up worlds to explore further.
With its wealth of contextualisation and support, the book enables readers of any level of experience to gain a deeper understanding of the source being read and of the theme they are interested in, and of women and Roman society. The level of organisation makes the book easy to use if looking for sources on a specific theme, and the index is helpful, referring to sources by chapter and text number.
A major aim of H.'s is to attract non-specialists, non-Classicists and general readers – which includes readers without either Latin or experience of working with inscriptions. As she rightly suggests in her introduction, it can be intimidating for the novice to begin engaging with epigraphy, given the sheer volume of texts available in corpora such as the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL; some 200,000 inscriptions in 70 volumes). Students and scholars (and other writers) from different disciplines will have neither the time nor the inclination for such engagement, but the collection will enable them to encounter real sources on, say, women's occupations or their role as benefactresses in the western empire. The book will probably be of most use to classical studies students, researchers and teachers at all levels. It is accompanied by a PDF of the Latin texts, available via web link, for those who want to study the texts in the original, and URLs for major epigraphic and graffiti databases are provided.
What is particularly helpful for non-specialists and the many readers without Latin is how the book deals with specific Latin terms. A glossary of common terms is given at the beginning, but for many of the translations, important words are given in Latin in brackets in the translations and described in the text introductions. Thus in 1.5, a second-century funerary inscription for Postumia Matronilla, ‘an incomparable wife’ and ‘good mother’ from Thelepte, Africa Proconsularis, we find that this matrona was described as a most devoted (piisima) grandmother, pure (pudica), pious (religiosa), hard-working (laboriosa), frugal (frugi), full of industry (industria) and trustworthiness (fides); and she was both univira and unicuba – married only once and a faithful wife. Even the Latinless reader becomes familiar with the terms and their appearance, and the repetition in the epigraphic record and literature becomes more meaningful.
H. is careful to point out that her selection of texts is not a representative sample, as most inscriptions would be very short, often not much more than a name. Rather, the inscriptions have been carefully selected by what they can reveal about women's lives. H.'s choices work well, shedding light on whole worlds of lived experience and including personal and sometimes touching memorials, for example those of two dancers, Julia Nemesis in Rome, who died age nine (3.91), and Thyas of Carthage, who died at 14 and was commemorated by her fiancé Thalamus (3.92). They remind us of the life of children in the empire and force us to consider the empire and its society from the perspective of some of the most vulnerable of its inhabitants. Julia may have been freed, possibly on her death. Thalamus was able to find love. The collection can give us a good bird's-eye view of women in the west over several centuries, though it is not designed to be used for chronological or regional studies.
Sourcebooks have their critics. For example, a selection is always just that, and is based on decisions made by the editor according to their own rationale. There can be issues with reconstructing texts, with deciding whether to fill or leave lacuna and how to deal with unclear readings and how to indicate these to the reader. Some may criticise the translations, either for being too literal or for failing to replicate stylistic aspects. The format of presentation can also divide reviewers. However, in this volume H. has successfully put together a wide range of interesting and useful sources in an intelligible and organised way; there is much to delve into here. The translations are readable, and the book is easy to work with in terms of how the text is presented on the page – it is clear and attractive. The book achieves its aim in introducing readers to the use of inscriptions and graffiti for the study of Roman women and society. It is fascinating just to dip into, and it is difficult not to learn something from perusing it. H.'s wish to encourage readers to engage more with inscriptions as historical evidence will surely be fulfilled.
The hardback book is nicely produced and feels durable enough, but priced at £99.99 the book will be too expensive for students or a casual purchase by interested readers. A cheaper paperback, like Rowlandson's earlier Cambridge volume Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt, would surely attract a much wider audience for this important contribution.
