This book is part of the series ‘Women in Antiquity’, and as such aims to provide ‘compact and accessible introductions to the life and historical times of women from the ancient world’. Marilyn Skinner lives up to these aims, writing lucidly with minimal jargon. In her introduction, she explains that biographers of Republican women face a considerable constraint in the lack of clear evidence for their subject. She defends the decision to write this book nonetheless by pointing out that such a constraint has not deterred numerous fictional accounts of Clodia's life. Her book acts therefore to readjust the balance, in establishing what is known and not known, and what is speculation and fiction.

It is not just modern fictional accounts that S. must contend with: Clodia is only known to us through the writings of contemporary males and S. highlights how most of this was written with a clear agenda of refashioning its subject. This explains why in the sub-title of her own biography (‘The Tribune's Sister’), Clodia is perhaps surprisingly positioned through a male relative. With the restricted amount of evidence available, it is inevitable that any biography of a Roman Republican woman is going to cast its net more widely than a biography of a Roman male of the period. Yet, on the other hand, the necessity for situating the discussion in its historical context broadens the appeal of the analysis to a much wider audience. This book therefore is highly readable for its comments on the social and political history of the time, as well as an insight into the literary works of Catullus and Cicero. As a commentary on a key Republican family, it works as an in-depth case study of Late Republican life.

This means too that while concentrating on one woman, S. provides much information that is relevant for women of the élite class in Rome in general. So, for example, S. explores the implications of marriage sine manu, including the independent financial relations that existed between husband and wife and the continued affiliation of a wife with her birth family. She shows how this could prove problematic for Clodia when the claims of her husband and younger brother were in conflict as, for example, during Metellus' consulship. The translation of sine manu as ‘free’ is perhaps going a little too far, as the wife still remained under male supervision. S. justifies her translation, however, arguing that a father's control over a daughter residing in a separate household would be more limited than when she lived with him. As with all technical or contested terms, S. provides the Latin as well as the English translation.

There are limits, however, as to just how much context can be included, and some areas might need further elucidation. One such area is the definition of the élite in Rome. S. uses a variety of terms to describe the higher echelons of Roman society, including élite and governing class. She also talks in terms of the nobility and aristocracy. Both she describes as hereditary, while the nobility is described variously as patrician or plebeian. The dualism of patrician and plebeian could be misleading in the context of the Late Republic, and the hereditary nature of the aristocracy could be more clearly linked to consular office, that is politically defined rather than socially defined. It might be helpful therefore, for example, to balance her comment that ‘some patrician nobles advocated popularist causes’ (14) with the corollary that plebeian nobles equally advocated the optimate cause.

There are also some areas where further explication or synthesis of the evidence may be useful. The key advantage is that S. has gathered all the evidence which she presents very clearly and often very convincingly. It is therefore possible to enter into dialogue with her constructions. One area is the question of a woman's relationship with her tutor after the death of a husband. On the one hand, S. argues that free marriage meant that a widowed woman was very much sui iuris, and this is the situation that appears from Cicero's negotiations over Clodia's gardens where no tutor is mentioned (117). Yet, on the other hand, she comments that Appius, although governor of Sardinia, would have kept a close eye on Clodia's activities (60) and suggests that Clodia would have had to seek permission to free her slaves (62). While a tutor was a legal requirement, the lack of reference to joint negotiations or comment on the leverage this would have given to an unscrupulous relative is perhaps surprising: the legal evidence needs therefore to be put into the context of social custom rather than being read at face value.

In general, however, S.'s technique is to present the evidence succinctly, explain alternative viewpoints and where the evidence is inadequate to form a judgement between these viewpoints, she leaves the reader to decide. One of many examples is her discussion of the spelling of Clodius/Claudius. While her discussion may not offer a decisive answer, claims inconsistent with the evidence can be dismissed, such as the adoption of the spelling during Clodius' tribunate. This balanced approach serves to remind the reader throughout the book that much remains uncertain and open to debate. While S. has therefore made a clear contribution by gathering and analysing afresh all the relevant evidence about her, she is the first to acknowledge that Clodia ‘is still what those men made of her’ (150).