3.5 (rounded up)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to Oneworld Publications and NetGalley for an e-arc of this book.

I love reading the stories of women from the past, and it’s so good we are getting more texts reviewing their lives and importance.

I really enjoyed this book, the author did use a lot of modern phrasing and sometimes modern takes on an ancient world. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It’s difficult to not put a modern lens on, but I do think it’s important we don’t hold people from the past to a modern standard or ideal as it isn’t comparable.

This book touched on lesser-known women as well as big-hitters. This mix of the familiar and new made for interesting and refreshing reading, it wasn’t just rehashing information.

Emma Southon has a particular style that I imagine some people really hate: conversational, chatty, often even flippant. When she doesn’t know something, because no one knows, she says so. When she’s painting a picture from imagination to fill in the gaps, or choosing one interpretation of many, she says so very frankly. I find it very readable, and I appreciate how clear she is about when she’s using sources, how she’s using sources, and when she’s just having to make things up — or choose one option above others because there’s nothing particular to tell them apart. She’s interested in telling a story here, and it shows.

That said, I can understand why those who are just looking for facts would rather she stop it; for all that she’s clear about sources vs imagination, it’s really not formalised. Don’t let that fool you, though: there’s an extensive bibliography at the back.

I really liked Southon’s plan to discuss events through women: I was kind of surprised Livia wasn’t a choice, for example, or Cleopatra, or Agrippina (who Southon has written a whole biography of!) — but instead Southon makes a harder decision, and often picks less well-known women.

I found it really enjoyable, though I still prefer her book on murder in Ancient Rome.

A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women is the third book I've read by Emma Southon this year, and it might be my favourite. The idea in itself is great: Southon recounts the Roman Empire by telling the stories of 21 very different women, showing through their lives how the Empire changed and evolved. It was an enjoyable and informative read from start to finish. I loved how Southon mostly included lesser known women, most of those I had never heard of before. I really enjoyed all stories, but these two were my favourites:

-Turia: a woman who lived during the civil wars, her chapter is aptly titled "the survivor". As Southon writes, 
"With 48 bce coming to an end Turia had thus far lived through a murder mystery, a legal thriller, a home invasion horror movie and a long saga about a man getting home against all the odds while being chased by hired killers."
We know about her life because her husband, Lucretius, built an enormous memorial on the Via Appia for her, and etched his memories of her into stone monoliths. In doing so, he gave us an intriguing testimony of how women's lives could be impacted by the political winds of the Late Republic, but the memorial is also an everlasting proof of sincere love.

- Julia Balbilla: companion to Empress Sabina and poet. We know about her because, while Lucretius was the one who wrote about his wife, Balbilla herself inscribed three epigrams on the statue of Memnon in Thebes, while she was touring Egypt as part of the imperial court of Hadrian. While she wrote in honor of the imperial couple, she also made sure that everyone who visited the statue for the rest of time knew exactly who Julia Balbilla was, and in doing so she created a public image of herself. She must have been a truly fascinating figure.

I love the current trend of establishing women into narratives they have long been excluded from and ensuring that they are given the acknowledgement for their contributions to societies throughout time. This is one such example of book that covers this field expertly. Accessible and yet highly analytic, this was a fantastic read

I have now read and loved all of Southons books. Her way with writing about ancient Rome is so captivating, so interesting and always with her trademarked humour. It was great to learn more about the women who were often hidden. Plenty of drama and intrigue!

Informative, interesting and wittily written, this book reall was such a great delve into fascinating women from the Roman Empire, making it completely clear, that some women are thinking of the Roman Empire too and will be for many years to come.

Covering a vast and wide array of women, from the foundation of Rome, this book really does give historical context, informs us about the lives of the women and does it with a sense of humour that I really enjoyed throughout this book. I think that these women were using the power they had in a society that was incredibly patriarchal and Southon builds on that and highlights how powerful these women were in making their name considering the period.

Fascinating, endearing and brilliantly told, this book is definitely a book I'd recommend if you want to know more about the Roman period, how women were treated or just how Rome was definitely not built in a day, I'd definitely recommend this.

(I received an ARC from Netgalley for honest review).

Women were quite important in the Roman Empire but the stories are always told by male POV.
This is a story of Roman told via women.
Well researched, informative and entertaining.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

It's always good, and unfortunately still unusual, to see books centred around the lives of women in history. This one covers the Roman Empire through the lives of a wide variety of women and I really enjoyed it. Her style is chatty, very easy to read and often funny - not what you'd normally expect in a history book but makes a change and certainly doesn't hide how knowledgeable the author is. Very entertaining and informative.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy in return for an honest review.

#AHistoryoftheRomanEmpirein21Women #NetGalley

I would like to thank netgalley and Oneworld Publications for a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this! I loved that we got to see the Romans from another point of view and to see the bits of the Roman Empire we don't normally get to see.

This is a collection of stories beginning with role of women in the foundation of Rome and moving through the Roman era. A subject I immensely enjoy as women are hugely overlooked by history, unless they have done something memorable enough to warrant being written about, for instance, Joan of Arc or Boudicca. I found the relaxed and informal style of writing enjoyable and easy to read, each section was short enough to fit into a coffee break, and not too long and bloated. I especially enjoyed the authors humorous and often sarcastic commentaries about the events she is discussing. The style is not too dissimilar to that of Natalie Haynes’ podcast ‘Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics’, so if you enjoyed that series, then chances are you will enjoy this too.

Thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the advance copy of #AHistoryoftheRomanEmpirein21Women in return for an honest review.

A very enjoyable collection of stories the author has written from information she collated from different sources about certain women in the Roman era. I found some of the stories rather wordy and filled with information that wasn’t relevant, and which distracted from the story at hand, but overall was a good read

Fascinating and surprisingly amusing look at what Roman women contributed to history ( but not recorded in history books). Read through this as quickly as a novel as I was so gripped by the previously unheard lives and tales.

Emma Southon’s latest book tackles the expansive world of the Romans - from the city’s very beginnings in 753BC through kingdom, republic, and sprawling empire - through twenty one well chosen women. And not just the usual list of aristocratic women, either - there’s a fantastic array of characters drawn from all paths of ancient life.

Southon’s approach to highlight the sidelined, the briefly mentioned, or the otherwise wholly ignored creates a new and engaging way of seeing the Roman world. Her ability to make even the driest Roman history accessible and humorous is unparalleled: she is clear and upfront about the ancient source material, talks through prickly social issues, and gives all the necessary historical context for understanding each woman without ever coming close to being dull. A wonderful read, which breathes some much-needed life back into Roman history!

This was utterly brilliant. I’m no Ancient civilisations historian but I’ve had an interest since I was a child (sparked by watching I Claudius with my dad – please don’t judge me) and I’m familiar with a reasonable amount of Roman history. What an utter delight it was to come at things from this perspective and see so many Roman women I was not familiar with take centre stage, not merely existing within the empire but shaping it. From the insanely wild Bacchinalian Conspiracies to life at a Northern England Auxillary fort (which despite what films show us, was full of women and families!) this was illuminating, witty, clever and irreverent. It was also packed with information. I had never read any of Southon’s works before but you can bet I’ll be tracking them down now. She does give her opinion quite decidedly on some aspects but always shows her working and I found I tended to agree with her assessment of the facts. (If someone like me can presume to agree with someone who has a PhD in this stuff – that said certain aspects were about storytelling and I definitely understand that!) Overall an excellent book – one of my favourite reads this year.

I love a book like this, especially when it comes to women who are lesser known parts of history. Captivating, enchanting and intriguing - a wonderful read!

A History of the Roman Empire in 21 by Emma Southon looks at Roman History from its inception, to the height of the empire, through to its fall, all through the experiences of women. When I first heard about it, I thought it would be about well known women, Lucretia, Cornelia Africana, Fulvia and Livia, however, this book endeavours to educate its audience on the lesser known women who were part of Rome’s history.

Much like Southon’s other work (I loved reading her book on Agrippina) it is written in an incredibly accessible manner, it can be read and appreciated by most audiences, without needing a great deal of background knowledge on Ancient Rome or History in general. The style of writing is conversational and comical, there were many passages that had me laughing audibly, it is rare to find a history book (particularly one that can deal with some quite serious issues) that has you laughing. I understand that for some audiences this may be off putting, but I really enjoyed it! In fact, many of the criticisms some people would have were major draw cards for me; the conversational and occasional humorous delivery, the nature of the content being female centred, written through a feminist lens and the focus on obscure figures was refreshing. My only criticism is a personal one, while attending Catholic school for 12 years, I had to read so many saints and martyr’s life stories, so the focus on the few Christian based women wasn’t my favourite part, it made me feel like a student agin. But that is a personal reaction that I doubt most readers would have.

From a historical standpoint, the text utilises the somewhat lacking and incomplete ancient sources and at times is (rightfully so) critical of them. There is appropriate hypothesis based on available evidence, historical thinking and common sense. Ancient authors and their literary works are examined throughout the text and their context and purpose for writing is appropriately analysed and its impact on the history they are telling is noted. I found this really helpful and interesting as I read; for those who are new to this period in history, it is helpful in understanding the values of the Romans and how that impacted their histories, for more seasoned history readers and historians, it provides us with an interesting modern interpretation.

I really did learn a lot reading this book, it was as informative as it was entertaining and had me googling new questions I’d never thought of and finding full versions of original texts to read. This book is perfect for fans of Natalie Haynes and feminine based histories, it was like having a chat with an old friend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Oneworld Publications for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review, these thoughts are all my own.

I generally can't resist this kind of book, telling the stories of women from history who deserve to be remembered, and, as someone with an interest in the Classical world, I was particularly excited to see one focused on the Roman Empire. The history of the Roman Empire (as Emma Southon puts it) is usually told as one of men doing Important Things. But history is about so much more than this, and so was the Roman Empire. A HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 21 WOMEN is a revisionist history of Rome, from its foundation in 753 BCE to the fall of the last western Roman emperor in 476 CE, through the lives of women you have probably never heard of. What is so brilliant about this book is that it doesn't just tell the stories of 21 Roman women, but it also uses these women's stories to tell the story of the Roman Empire itself.

A HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 21 WOMEN moves chronologically through the formation and fall of the Roman Empire, providing all the necessary context along the way, and suddenly this huge period of time and space becomes much easier to comprehend because its story is told through key individuals. What's more, Southon uses these women's stories to question what it means to be a Roman, a term too often applied to only a tiny minority of the people who lived during and across the Empire. I would have been happy with a book that just told me some interesting stories about some interesting women, many of whom I would otherwise never even have heard of, but this book does so much more than that.

This is the first book I have read by Emma Southon, and I was immediately struck by how informal and personal her writing style is. Southon does a brilliant job of making sure that any reader, however much or little they know about the Roman Empire, is likely to find her book an entertaining and informative read. But more than that, Southon is constantly making jokes, sarcastic asides, and giving her unfiltered opinions on the people and events which fill her pages, without ever sacrificing the content and flow of her book. I definitely did not expect A HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 21 WOMEN to have me laughing out loud.

I almost gave this one five stars, and I'm still wavering a little. I really enjoyed A HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 21 WOMEN, and it far exceeded my expectations. I suppose I sometimes found the jokey writing style a little much, and I think Southon is perhaps sometimes a little too sure of her opinions (or at least it comes across that way at times), so it's four stars from me. But I can definitely recommend this book, which is out on 7 September.

Thanks to Netgalley and Oneworld for an advance copy.

A History of the Roman Empire is a book focusing on women throughout Roman history, too frequently ignored or forgotten about in favour of the men in their lives, when these women were also great (if not greater) in their own ways. I loved that each chapter focused on a different woman, so we really got to dive into her story and learn who she was and what Roman society was like for her. The book explored many periods of Roman history, including the introduction of Christianity into Rome and how this impacted women’s lives, which was interesting to read about. I have enjoyed the author’s other books and was very excited to read this one, and definitely very grateful to have been given the chance to read it! I loved the writing style, and the humour used in certain places really added to the fun and interesting feel the book had. I would love to read more books like this from the author, as I found that the topics were explained very well and the book kept my attention the whole time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Roman history or in learning more about fascinating women in history.

Ah, Emma Southon. So irreverant, so terminally online in her language habits and allusions, so generous in leaving the reader in no doubt as to her likes and dislikes about ancient Rome. Anti-popes, disembodied penises rising from fireplaces, bureaucracy of Bacchinalea, Julia Augusti Filia's sexual exploits---these are most excellent. By contrast, Tacitus, Lucius Tarquinius, and Roman attempts at humour all sucked, each in their own special way. Yet underneath this gleeful explosion of evaluative, entertaining judgments, there is also a deep sympathy for the parts of Roman history that demand it. Southon's discussion of the Laudatio Turiae, a heartbreaking eulogy given by a grieving widower describing in unusual detail the life and gests of his beloved wife, was one of the most eye-opening parts of the book. This kind of first-hand account of lives lived, unfiltered by political or poetic agenda, is incredibly rare, it seems, and Southon's description of it was very moving. It's clear that she is as taken by Turia as her husband was, and her respect and affection for this couple is apparent in the way she holds her sharp-edged wit in check as she tells their story.

Yet the book is most fun when Southon lets her rapiers loose. She never lets the reader forget that the reliability of the sources is profoundly poor and most of the traditional tales come to us from incredibly biased sources, who themselves were telling tales from centuries before their own time. But this does not mean Southon can't do history. Indeed, when the sources are lacking is when Southon has the most fun, because she engages with her sources like for like. When it's clear that the Roman historians are making things up for reasons ranging from the political, artistic, misogynistic, or simply frivolous, Southon also lets her fancy fly free. For example, when Augustus's daughter Julia was forced to marry Tiberius, contemporary sources make it clear that, although Tiberius disliked Julia, nobody knows what Julia thought about it, and because Southon has very little respect for Suetonius or Tacitus as reliable recorders of history (or, indeed, as people---she really, really dislikes them as misogynistic pricks), she simply reports what they said, and then reports what she thinks they're leaving out. Thus: 'Acccording to Suetonius, Tiberius thought that Julia fancied him too much and made it too obvious while she had been married to Agrippa, and that made him uncomfortable. It is a real challenge for me to imagine any woman fancying Tiberius, who comes across in both literary sources and statuary as being as sexy as frozen chicken, but who am I to kink-shame. Maybe Julia did fancy him. Maybe she was delighted to get her little princess hands on him. Maybe he had a great butt. I don't know. That's the story.' You can just feel the disdain and irritation at their unreliability oozing from every sentence.

This approach to history is what we need more of. It's so common to see Suetonius and Tacitus revered as these magestic sages who are our only links to this mighty history, but Southon isn't letting us have any of that. She knows what people are like; she can see what Suetonius and Tacitus were like (kind of assholes), and she makes it clear how much she trusts them, while also holding her nose and picking up what they put down because that's all that she has, while never losing sight of the context in which they were putting it down in the first place. The story of Boudicca is brilliantly contrasted with the story of Cartimandua, for example, as Southon lays out how each was used by Tacitus to serve as a metaphor in his morality lesson about the decline of traditional Roman values (as he saw it)---which, naturally, makes what he says about historical events he purports to relate extremely suspect.

So, in sum, this book was entertaining, naughty, informative, funny, and at times very moving. Of all approaches to history, I find Southon's the most effective.

I really enjoyed reading Emma Southon's "A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women." First of all, I thought the concept of diving into the history of the Roman Empire through the eyes of women is incredibly unique and it was quite well executed. For example, the author takes great care to centre the stories of non-aristocratic women which I've rarely seen done. Those of you read chapter "Julie Felix 79 CE: The Pompeii Businesswoman" are in for a treat because although it touches on the patriarchal nature of Roman society it also shows women who weren't part of the aristocratic elite were able to circumnavigate rules that oppressed women, especially when it came to owning property. My only criticism is that I feel the author tries to hard to make this book read as funny and accessible when it's clearly obvious she has a great writing style already.