This volume presents nineteen articles which are revised versions of papers and posters presented at the conference ‘Gender and the Roman City: Women and Civic Life in Italy and the Western Provinces’ held at the University of Amsterdam in 2011. The Editors' specific goal is ‘to investigate one dimension of the civic societies of late Republican Italy and the early imperial provinces: the roles played in them by women’ (p. 1). More broadly they hope ‘to contribute to an integrated approach of the study of Roman urban society and that of Roman women, by both looking at the local Roman cities from the perspective of women and gender, and studying women within their social and civic context’ (pp. 4–5). The Editors selected the west as their focus believing that the cities of this region shared common legal and political institutions modelled on those of Rome. They make clear, however, that the volume is not arguing for a ‘uniquely western Roman style of womanhood’ rather they chose the civic environment and the west merely as convenient, interesting, foci. This acknowledgment, however, while clearly correct, betrays the weakness of the collection. Since there are no grounds for stating that something was clearly different for women in the Roman city in the Latin West, there then seems little to tie these articles together other than ‘Roman women’. And yet, there is success, in that we find in this volume several strong articles on communities, individual women and topics that have before now not received the attention they deserve.
The Editors arrange the articles into five parts: ‘Civic Roles’, ‘Participation in Cult’, ‘Public Presentation’, ‘Economics’ and ‘Mobility’. The five articles in Part 1 focus for the most part on women as public benefactresses. Cenerini looks as the use of the titles mater and parens by civic communities to describe their relationship with a prominent woman. Cooley explores more broadly this emergence of women in municipal public life, presenting various factors that she believes explain this shift. Both Cooley and Cenerini incorporate imperial women into their discussions. Eck and H. both examine the inscriptional evidence of women in the Latin west. Eck first briefly discusses the nature of epigraphic evidence and its limitations before comparing the appearance of females and males in inscriptions within a public setting. H. argues that it is important to view the inscriptions of women in their own light and studies a sample of 363 inscriptions of female benefactors in the Latin west in an attempt to view these women's contributions to civic life, taking into account ‘both the differences and the similarities with respect to contemporary male practice’ (p. 67). Witschel's contribution presents the evidence for women within both inscriptions and portrait statues erected in the public spaces of two North-African communities – Thamugadi (Timgad) and Cuicul (Djemila).
Part 2 concerning participation of women in cult consists of three articles, of which two focus on gender within specific cults – North considers the cults of Mithras, Isis and Attis, while Spickermann considers that of Magna Mater. North is specifically interested in the differing gender ‘rules of admission’ for these cults. Spickermann focuses upon the ‘particularly rich’ epigraphic evidence found in Gallia, Germania and Raetia, for the ritual of the taurobolium. Rives in his contribution also looks at ritual, focusing on how frequently, and in what contexts ‘women preside[d] over public animal sacrifice in the western Empire’ (p. 130).
Public presentation is the theme of Part 3. Both Davies and Dillon examine portrait statuary. Davies attempts to determine if statue body types (Pudicitia, Large and Small Herculaneum Women, etc.) were interchangeable in the two main contexts in which statues of women are found (honorific and funerary) and represent the same virtues and ideals for the commissioners. Dillon presents the evolving evidence of portrait statues of women on the island of Delos from 167 b.c. to the late Republic. Harlow and Rothe offer contributions on women's dress. Harlow proposes that any discussion of dress must also include how such clothing both helped and hindered in women's physical movements as they negotiated the outdoor city environment – one particular question she asks is ‘how did [women] move in all that drapery?’ (p. 231). Rothe uses two case studies of Orolaunum in Gallia Belgica and Flavia Solva in Noricum to reveal how different ‘dress behaviour between men and women’ can be in two ‘small urban centres of Rome's northern provinces’ (p. 265).
Economics is the theme of Part 4. In the first article, Flemming explores whether gender played a role in the provisioning of medical services ‘by and for women in the cities of the Roman west’ (p. 274). Groen-Vallinga turns our attention to other ways women contributed to the Roman economy, by focusing on the urban labour market in the cities of Roman Italy under the early Empire. Also considering the evidence from the cities within Roman Italy, Holleran examines the participation of women in retail trade, including family businesses, market trading, street vending and as customers. In the last article van Galen presents the evidence for the grain distributions in Rome and proposes that some women, in fact, were eligible for subsidised grain.
The final part is dedicated to the theme of mobility. W. addresses the theme directly with an examination of how mobility between cities was ‘gendered in the early imperial west’ (p. 352). Greene uses the Vindolanda tablets to argue that ‘there existed a strong sense of social cohesion that included women and children’ (p. 371) within the military camp which, she argues, contradicts current assumptions ‘about the dominance of masculinity in Roman military communities’ (p. 372). Foubert fills the final spot in the volume with an in-depth study of two female travellers in Britannia in order to determine how their travel influenced their public identity and the extent to which they were active participants in creating that identity.
The success of the individual articles varies. The contributions of H., Spickermann, Rothe, Eck and W. particularly shine, each for their own reasons, including the nature of the evidence examined (Spickermann, Rothe), the sheer amount of evidence examined (H.), or their engagement with broader social, historical, questions (Eck, W.). Some authors, however, so limit the evidence they choose to focus upon that one questions whether their conclusions can be applied more broadly (Cenerini, Foubert). Also, various authors seem to struggle to fit their contribution within the criteria of the volume. Rives' contribution only comes to the involvement of women in public animal sacrifice within the final three pages while Dillon's article has only one page on the Roman/Italian evidence. Greene, to a lesser extent, also hints at similarities between a civic community and a military one, an unnecessary link, perhaps drawn for no reason except to explain the inclusion of the article in the volume. All three articles are fine, worthy, studies on their own, but all seem at pains to make their work fit the volume's theme. Several contributors ask some very interesting, promising questions (especially Cooley, Harlow and Foubert).
The editing is very solid and worthy of commendation. Cross-referencing is attempted, but as is always the case with such volumes, true collaboration is difficult with the real academic pressures under which everyone labours. One inconsistency is found in the presentation of primary texts. The majority of the articles produce the original Latin text with an English translation (Eck's contribution being the obvious exception). However, Cenerini and Witschel provide only the Latin text while Holleran provides only the English text. Both methods impede the full impact of their contributions, by baffling undergraduates yet to gain competency in the ancient languages or frustrating scholars by making them seek out the original text themselves. It is a small point, but a strong volume deserves to reach as wide an audience as possible.
