Eh, I’ve been trying and failing to write an essay about how often women (fictional and otherwise) end up being shamed, dismissed or hurt in the name of feminism, but it’s tangling me up in knots, so I’m going to stop now and do something productive instead.

Hoyden talk about the myth of the bra-burning feminists, an idea which has been used to try to make women look stupid for decades, and how the false story was spread.

The Moffat’s Women series continues on Tor, with a comparison between the main female character in this Christmas special and last year’s. I find it very interesting how quickly people have leaped to criticise Moffat for writing a story in which the mother is the hero, so this article made me happy.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s response to the post we linked to in Galactic Suburbia about the wealth of positive girl heroes in YA right now.

One that I meant us to discuss on GS but forgot at the last minute (sorry, Sean!) – Sean the Blogonaut surveys his reading after a year of trying to change his reading habits, genderwise.

Linda Nagata talks about her rationale for self publishing rather than going back to big publishers.

The ever awesome Mary Beard comments on the latest salacious media drama about Ancient Romans and brothels. Yes, really. As ever, her pragmatism wins the day.

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3.16 – When in Rome

Pompey the Magnus. Oh my yes.

I was excited to see this was a Rome episode and even more excited to realise it features Crassus, a historical character who has always interested me. But then Caesar turned up, stealing all the oxygen in the room, except that which is pinched by his rival and “ally,” Pompey THE Magnus. And I really stopped caring about Crassus.

Jeremy Callaghan, who will always be Brian from Police Rescue for me (last seen in an earlier Xena episode as a thug who might possibly have a heart of gold under his grubby armour), does a good job of balancing out Karl Urban’s shall we say High Acting, and has good sinister chemistry with Xena, too. He takes it a bit too far at times with the grape sucking and furniture chewing, but that sort of thing is what Xena is all about.

“So why do they call you the Warrior Princess?”
“Because ‘Caesar’ was taken.”

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Kathleen Jennings’ excellent Dalek game continues apace, and she recently produced a new favourite for me – daleks rocking the romanpunk with an I, Claudius parody.

An eye-opening post about the kind of hardcore harassment experienced by women in tech industries, and those who blog about geek feminism.

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray calls bullshit about the troubling behaviour of Amazon as they launch their new publishing imprints, and how the spin that publishers are “running scared” of Amazon’s attempt at a publishing monopoly serve to underplay some of the important author rights that are being eroded, and deliberately left out of the equation.

Sarah Rees Brennan goes Gothic, and talks about how she stopped worrying and learned to love the spooky houses, plucky protagonists and turns her inimitable parody summary style on Gothic classic novel The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe.

YOUR BOYFRIEND: is tall, dark, sinister, looming, maybe trying to kill you, definitely has secrets
YOUR BOYFRIEND: is a house, which is just another of many problems in your relationship

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I've been in this room! Check out the Flavian Lady in the background. Best room in the Musei Capitolini.

50. Helena

After the death of Alexander, Rome fell into a time of chaos brought about by very short imperial reigns, assassination, political plotting and civil strife. No emperor since the Severans had managed to found a stable dynasty, which meant that the role of women had been quite limited in the public political sphere.

Helena was the daughter of a tavern-keeper, which in social terms put her somewhere between freedwomen and prostitutes. As a teenager, she fell in love far above her station, with an ambitious young soldier called Constantius Chlorus, and she lived with him as a common law wife, though legal marriage was impossible because of the gulf in status between them both.

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So those who have read the lead story in Love and Romanpunk know that the book has a fixation on the name ‘Julia.’ It’s not just because that name was attached to so many women of the first, Julio-Claudian era, or because, thanks to the various Caesars, it had a great many sacred and significant connotations in its own right.

There was another dynasty which cemented the importance of the name Julia, and it marked a huge change in the image that Roman imperial families showed to the world.

41. Julia Domna

When ambitious African-born Roman general Septimius Severus heard of a horoscope for a young woman named Julia that predicted she would marry a king, he hurried across country to court her. Julia Domna was the Syrian daughter (of Arab descent) of the high priest of a sun god. She not only married Septimius but also bore him two sons, Caracalla and Geta. She was a highly intelligent, educated woman who served as a valued advisor to her husband.

Some time later, Septimius brought the horoscope to fruition by using his military and political skills to make himself emperor of Rome. Which is… one way to do it. Ah, Romans. We say they were supersitious, but really they just used the supernatural as a ‘how to’ guide.

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This one’s short. This is all we have about these three, apart from a coin or two that just confirms the below information.

38. Manlia Scantilla

Wife of Didius Julianus, who came the throne suddenly and left equally suddenly, in a pool of blood. He ruled for 30 days or so, and took the time to give his wife and daughter the title Augusta.

39. Didia Clara

Daughter of Didius Julianus. When he died in the aforementioned pool of blood, the supporters of his successor Pertinax went after Manlia Scantilla and Didia Clara… and removed the title of Augusta from Didia Clara. Yep, that’s all they did.

A long way from murdering Caligula’s baby in her bed, to end his biological line…

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When Antoninus Pius was adopted as Hadrian’s heir, he already had a wife and daughter, both called Faustina.

A condition of Antoninus’ adoption was that he in turn adopt two men chosen by Hadrian: Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. But Marcus Aurelius and Faustina also managed to break the adoptive tradition of the emperors by having a son of their own. And what a son! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

the apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and Faustina

Antoninus’s wife Faustina didn’t make much of an impact on the imperial family, as she died within a couple of years of her husband’s reign. She is notable, however, for getting the title of Augusta almost immediately, making her the first imperial wife since Domitia who didn’t have to wait several years for this honour.

Faustina’s posthumous life is more memorable – she was deified by her husband, and became something of a patron goddess for the whole Antonine family, with an unprecedented number of coin types released in her honour.

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(or: “disgustingly good women of the Adoptive Era.”)

(or: “of all the PR in all the world, these women had the best that money could buy”)

After the Flavians dynasty died with Domitian, elderly Nerva took the Empire. He didn’t have a wife or children, so he chose the ridiculously sensible route of just picking an adult male who he thought would do a good job, and making him the heir. That was Trajan, a childless forty-something general with a good head on his shoulders.

Sadly, without a focus on dynastic inheritance, there was no place for the public image of women in Nerva’s reign. Let’s move on to Trajan.

It was during the reign of Trajan that many of the historical sources about the Julio-Claudians were actually written. There’s a popular theory that the Julio-Claudian women were dealt with so atrociously in the sources as sluts, harridans and poisoners in order to show how modest, virtuous and generally wonderful the women of Trajan’s family were.

So if you’re looking for the juicy stuff, you might want to go back to some of the earlier entries…

29. Plotina

Plotina was middle aged when her husband Trajan became emperor. Luckily for her, he had no interest in siring a biological heir, so her marriage was not in danger from any wide-hipped young temptresses (for some reason I keep expecting this to happen, ala Henry VIII, but the adoption laws of Rome actually protected wives from being discarded in the name of fertility).

Plotina was a good woman. No, really. Modest, chaste. All those things. We have scads of information (well, compared to other Roman women) about how good she was, and what a non-slutty, non-poisonous, non-greedy wife she was when Trajan was alive.

However, as soon as Trajan died, Plotina’s literary portrayal changed quickly. In Dio in particular (one of our main historical sources) it’s like a switch has been thrown, and she goes overnight from a paragon of wifely virtue to a scheming, ambitious mother figure in the manner of Agrippina.

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Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudians. After he died, Rome had the Year of Four Emperors, in which various blokes (Otho, Galba, Vitellius) tried to grab the throne.

Finally, Vespasian, a pragmatic military man, marched in and got himself settled in power. He, with his two adult sons Titus and Domitian, comprised the Flavian dynasty.

The one thing Flavian women are famous for, above all else, is the distinctive hairstyle of the era.

My favourite example of the Flavian “curled bogan fringe” is on this bust of an anonymous Flavian Lady. She’s a peach, isn’t she?

If you’re in Rome, you’ll find her in a window at the Musei Capitolini, the only well-lit piece of art in the whole place. Go and admire her!

Also, it’s amazing that they managed to get those curled fringes so high, two thousand years before hair product was invented. Go Flavians!

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Some short ones this time!

19. Claudia Octavia

We know little about Octavia, daughter of the Emperor Claudius and his doomed wife Messalina, her except that she was used and abused quite outrageously in service to the imperial family.

As a teenager, she was married to her stepbrother/adopted brother Nero, in order to further promote his role as her father’s heir, ahead of her own brother Brittannicus. Mostly, Nero ignored her, which was the best outcome for everyone.

When her father died (cough, poison mushrooms, cough), Octavia found herself no better off than she had been before – except that now, the husband who was ignoring her was the emperor. It was Nero’s mother Agrippina, not his wife, who stood at his side as consort. Various exotic mistresses filled Nero’s bed, and his mother filled his heart. There was no room for anyone else. Then her brother Brittannicus was poisoned, and Octavia was left alone.

Nero wanted to divorce Octavia, but hadn’t realised just how popular she was with the ordinary people of Rome. There was an outcry, and Nero dropped the idea quickly. Instead, he framed her for adultery, and had her exiled, then executed.

Seneca, one of Nero’s chief advisors, wrote a tragedy, “Octavia,” which is particularly notable for the vicious caricature it makes of Agrippina’s character. In fact, Agrippina had fought for Nero to treat his wife more kindly, and to stay married to her. Though to be fair this was probably because she feared what might happen if Nero started choosing his own brides.

20. Claudia Antonia

Antonia was Octavia’s eldest sister, daughter of Claudius to one of his pre-Messalina wives. There is only one story told about Antonia. Towards the end of his life, having been divorced, widowed, etc. several times over, Nero had a bright idea to reclaim the popularity of his first marriage to Octavia by marrying her sister.

Antonia said no.

Nero killed her.

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