Search

The question of ‘identity'arises for any individual or ethnic group when they come into contact with a stranger or another people. Such contact results in the self-conscious identification of ways of life, customs, traditions, and other forms of society as one's own specific cultural features and the construction of others as characteristic of peoples from more or less distant lands, described as very ‘different'. Since all societies are structured by the division between the sexes in every field of public and private activity, the modern concept of ‘gender'is a key comparator to be considered when investigating how the concepts of identity and ethnicity are articulated in the evaluation of the norms and values of other cultures. The object of this book is to analyze, at the beginning Western culture, various examples of the ways the Greeks and Romans deployed these three parameters in the definition of their identity, both cultural and gendered, by reference to their neighbours and foreign nations at different times in their history. This study also aims to enrich contemporary debates by showing that we have yet to learn from the ancients'discussions of social and cultural issues that are still relevant today.

Women in ancient Greece and Rome played a much more active role in battle than previously assumed.The martial virtues—courage, loyalty, cunning, and strength—were central to male identity in the ancient world, and antique literature is replete with depictions of men cultivating and exercising these virtues on the battlefield. In Women and War in Antiquity, sixteen scholars reexamine classical sources to uncover the complex but hitherto unexplored relationship between women and war in ancient Greece and Rome. They reveal that women played a much more active role in battle than previously assumed, embodying martial virtues in both real and mythological combat.The essays in the collection, taken from the first meeting of the European Research Network on Gender Studies in Antiquity, approach the topic from philological, historical, and material culture perspectives. The contributors examine discussions of women and war in works that span the ancient canon, from Homer's epics and the major tragedies in Greece to Seneca's stoic writings in first-century Rome. They consider a vast panorama of scenes in which women are portrayed as spectators, critics, victims, causes, and beneficiaries of war.This deft volume, which ultimately challenges the conventional scholarly opposition of standards of masculinity and femininity, will appeal to scholars and students of the classical world, European warfare, and gender studies.