The question central to B.'s book, at its simplest, is: did imperial women have power? And the simple answer is: yes, they did. Not in the same way as their male relatives did in the patriarchal society that was ancient Rome, but they possessed visibility in the public sphere, both within and outside the city of Rome, influence over official decisions made by their male relatives and control of their own finances, including the use of their personal funds for the public good (publica munificentia). Their elite status afforded these women prominence and privileges inaccessible to women of lower social standing. Yes, their power and status were due primarily to their relationship to their ruling male family members (fathers, brothers, spouses and sons) and the public promotion of those men, but, nonetheless, possess power they did. One has only to think of a recent US presidential administration in which the daughter of the President (and her spouse) held significant positions of influence and power although neither she nor her spouse held elected political office. Sometimes official and legal definitions – often B.'s focus – do not encompass actual practice.

Problematising the answer to this simple question provides B. an opportunity for the creation of a book-length study, which treats related issues thematically rather than diachronically. Given the span of time that the book encompasses, from the Late Republic to the Severan dynasty (roughly 30s bce to 235 ce), the answer to this question is complex, as habits and trends constantly change over time, even over a period of several years, and often from one ruling dynasty to another. So, for example, the wife of Augustus, Livia, after her posthumous adoption by her late spouse, was referred to as ‘Julia Augusta’ after 14 ce. Other extraordinary privileges were granted to her at that time, namely a priesthood in the new cult of divus Augustus and accompaniment by a lictor. That the title of ‘Augusta’ did not carry these privileges for other, later imperial women (with the exception of two near-relatives, the Julio-Claudians Antonia the Younger and Agrippina the Younger) is a case study that highlights what was a localised trend for one particular dynasty rather than one that had any significant or meaningful continuity over time (see Table 1.1, p. 33).

B., after adducing copious amounts of evidence that likely took years to assemble, repeatedly denies that the imperial women had power. For example, Chapter 5, one of the book's strongest chapters, maps onto the city of Rome (1) imperial women's public activities and visibility, and (2) monuments that mention their names or otherwise evoke the memory of these individuals in the public sphere. There are 41 pages of evidence. And yet the chapter's conclusion begins with the following sentence: ‘The assembled evidence indicates that imperial women were not much in public in Rome, either in person or associated with buildings and statuary’ (p. 207). Such rapid shifts between the attitudes of ‘optimist’ and ‘pessimist’ (terms coined by A. Richlin, ‘The Ethnographer's Dilemma and the Dream of a Lost Golden Age’, in Arguments with Silence [2014], pp. 293–4, and discussed below) in the study of ancient women – not just here, but throughout the book – and the tendency to leap across centuries, often within a single paragraph, to compare women from various dynasties on a particular issue, give readers a bit of whiplash and often make the narrative hard to follow.

There is no discussion of theory or methodology in B.'s exceptionally detailed discussion of Roman imperial women, apart from a sentence and a half in the first chapter. She notes Tacitus’

Despite the term ‘gender’ in the book's title, there is no explicit discussion of feminist or gender theory and how it applies to B.'s current study.

One can, however, apply Richlin's lens of feminist critique to analyse whether in this work B. is an ‘optimist’ or ‘pessimist’ in terms of epistemology and an ‘optimist’ or ‘pessimist’ in terms of attitude (A. Richlin, op. cit., p. 295). Epistemologically speaking, B. is an optimist. Although she concludes in her final chapter that she has revealed no new evidence, nor can she trace any simple development, she yet urges the approach of ‘grand theory’ in her statement that her ‘comprehensive treatment clearly does provide novel perspectives on imperial women and the principate’ (B., p. 281). In her attitudes towards the influence of imperial women B. fluctuates between ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’, but she is ultimately a pessimist (A. Richlin, op. cit., p. 305). However, she does not explicitly discuss the relevance of the study of ancient women to the modern world.

The modern scholar of Roman history may be surprised to find that anecdotes about first-century ce members of the Julio-Claudians from Cassius Dio and Suetonius are related uncritically as evidence for the lives of imperial women. However, Dio wrote in the late second and early third centuries ce, during the Severan dynasty, and he had every reason to write cum ira et studio, prejudices Tacitus ascribes to the ancient historian (Tac. Ann. 1.1). While Dio treated the reign of Commodus, his contemporary, cautiously, the historian had ample motivation to praise the first princeps, Augustus – an exemplary model for the Severan ruler – and to condemn the excesses of the later, ousted Julio-Claudians. Anxious about women's power, he was especially critical of the privileges accorded to imperial women such as Agrippina the Younger, mother of the disgraceful Nero. Such honorific practices for imperial women would not be repeated until the accession of Julia Domna. And as for Suetonius, he was a biographer, not a historian, whose desire to tell a good story, replete with gossipy and salacious details, often led to his ignoring details and facts that did not fit his narrative.

For a work of this scope, B.'s bibliography is full and admirable. And one must acknowledge that, in order to adequately trace and to treat practices over nearly three centuries, an author must be selective. Yet, there are some notable absences, lacunae that mark evidence and arguments that do not fit B.'s narrative and with which she does not engage. There are scant bibliographic references to feminist scholars or gender theory. Missing, too, although cited in the bibliography, are E. Hemelrijk's important contributions on the patronage of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and the inscription known as the Laudatio Turiae (Matrona docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite from Cornelia to Julia Domna [1999]).

If surviving texts, written by biased ancient male authors, are the only evidence for women's lives, then the scope of research is indeed limited to elite women who are mentioned problematically in those texts. However, recent scholarship, including B.'s, has encompassed other types of evidence for the voices and agency of both elite and non-elite women. The latter have been ignored as invisible and unknowable in much of past scholarship, but the volume of essays edited by B. Longfellow and M. Swetnam-Burland, Women's Lives, Women's Voices: Roman Material Culture in the Bay of Naples (2021) holds promise as an important contribution to the conversation about women's lives in antiquity with its focus on the non-elite.

Richlin's questions remain for those studying the ancient world: why do we study the past? What trophies do we hope to find there? Can we salvage from fragmentary corpora examples that demonstrate that women had agency and influence once and they can again? Have we misread ancient texts? Do we hope to reclaim the past as a charter for future social change?