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A review by lydiaemilyy
Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity by Sarah B. Pomeroy
2.0
I finally finished it!
I hit a wall because the second half of the book is about Roman women and my knowledge of Rome is minimal and I'm also not as interested. So I just didn't have any enthusiasm to pick it up once I got halfway through.
I remember enjoying the first half but also being put off by some of the sources Pomeroy uses as fact. Plutarch is notorious for not writing factual biographies, particularly when we're talking about the most-likely-fictional founder of Sparta. So weird to just see the odd comment that suggested Spartans did something because Plutarch says so. Or the paragraph in which she mentions Petronius' Satyricon and how it is fictional and the statistics often meant to be ludicrous, and then at the end of that same paragraph uses the Satyricon as evidence for girls being married at the age of 7. Just makes for an odd reading experience. And means that I was skeptical about a lot of the facts, especially when it came to the areas I knew less about, because i didn't know what was accurate and what might require further critique.
Anyway, it's been 6 months since I read the first half of the book, but I do remember enjoying that bit! Me not enjoying the Roman section is just a problem of myself and not of the book. I'm glad I have finally finished it though.
I hit a wall because the second half of the book is about Roman women and my knowledge of Rome is minimal and I'm also not as interested. So I just didn't have any enthusiasm to pick it up once I got halfway through.
I remember enjoying the first half but also being put off by some of the sources Pomeroy uses as fact. Plutarch is notorious for not writing factual biographies, particularly when we're talking about the most-likely-fictional founder of Sparta. So weird to just see the odd comment that suggested Spartans did something because Plutarch says so. Or the paragraph in which she mentions Petronius' Satyricon and how it is fictional and the statistics often meant to be ludicrous, and then at the end of that same paragraph uses the Satyricon as evidence for girls being married at the age of 7. Just makes for an odd reading experience. And means that I was skeptical about a lot of the facts, especially when it came to the areas I knew less about, because i didn't know what was accurate and what might require further critique.
Anyway, it's been 6 months since I read the first half of the book, but I do remember enjoying that bit! Me not enjoying the Roman section is just a problem of myself and not of the book. I'm glad I have finally finished it though.