I was interested in reading "Domina" because I thought it would give me more of an insight into the women of the Roman empire and the author promises this as well.

Unfortunately, the writing didn't draw me in and actually bored me in several places, and the author still largely focuses on the men who made imperial Rome. The author repeats himself a lot and focuses a lot on the coins that were minted and who was depicted on them.

This might be interesting, but I think the book would have focused more on the women's lives and their achievements. The rather subjective tone of the book also didn't help matters.

A rather drily written historical account of Domina. Not really for anyone who already has a knowledge of Domina or Roman History as it seems to offer no new information. It's probably good for anyone interested in Roman History as a stepping stone.

I was excited to read this ARC because it focuses on the lives of Roman empresses. However, this account was very dry that made it hard to get through. Also, there was no new material and most of the information seems like rehash of what other authors have already written. Still, I recommend this for those who are new to Roman history.

The period of the end of the Roman Republic and the beginnings of the empire has always held great fascination for those of us in later generations, especially with its larger-than-life characters, originally portrayed with great gusto (and more than a little bias) by Suetonius and others and in the twentieth century by Robert Graves in his classic I, Claudius and Claudius the God.

In his book Domina, Guy de la Bédoyère gives us a look at the real people behind the myths and gossip. He also shows how, as the male line failed, descent through the female line became crucial to keeping the dynasty alive, as well as the methods by which these women, with varying degrees of success, circumvented the legal bar on their holding power to exercise influence through their husbands and sons. In fact, sometimes this could be an advantage, since a system that doesn't allow for female power also has very few ways to control it.

The book begins with a brief overview of the Roman view of women and their place, including what was seen as a "good" woman (Lucretia, who killed herself after being raped, or Cornelia, the exemplary mother), as well as the “bad,” generally, as so often in later years, one who “usurped” the power of men or blatantly exercised power over them, notable examples being Marc Antony’s wife Fulvia and, of course, Cleopatra. De la Bédoyère then embarks on a comprehensive history of the women in the Julio-Claudian family (mainly descendants of Augustus, his sister Octavia and his wife Livia by her first husband, as well as Octavia and Livia themselves). Livia - almost certainly nothing like the Machiavellian schemer portrayed by Graves - was perhaps the most successful but was still cut loose by her son Tiberius at the end of her life. Agrippina the Elder (wife and later widow of Germanicus) and Claudius’ wife Messalina, completely different in their personalities and approaches, both failed - and paid for it with their lives - for widely varying reasons. Agrippina the Younger (mother of Nero), saw her son become emperor but in the end, lost her influence and was murdered by him. Many other women populate these pages, from Augustus’ tragic daughter Julia to others who are familiar to those of us who have read Graves’ work and still others who are more obscure but still played their part.

Finally, in an epilogue, de la Bédoyère spends time examining the second great flourishing of female power in the Severan dynasty, which includes Septimus Severus’ wife Julia Domna, her sister Julia Maesa and Julia Maesa's daughters, with a brief sketch of later empresses and their influence or (mostly) lack thereof.

I enjoyed this book very much; it was engrossing as well as careful history and, despite my prior knowledge, I don’t believe it would be excessively confusing even to those who are less familiar with the history, although some confusion is perhaps inevitable, with multiple Julias, Claudias, Octavias and Agrippinas to keep track of. I believe it would be a rewarding read for anyone looking to learn more about this period in particular in general or specifically about the part women played.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Behind every great man is a great woman ....... or is there.

Guy de la Bedoyere, whom many might remember from his stint on Time Team as the resident Roman expert, has put together a well crafted narrative of the women behind the Imperial throne of the Roman Empire. It is, however, a narrow view, centred primarily on the women of the Julio- Claudine family (c.27BC - 68AD) - you know, the period that gave Rome its notoriety.

During this period, descent was largely through the female line however, through a series of carefully orchestrated "adoptions", the impression given outwardly was that succession came through the male lines. The use - quite literally - of female relatives to create and cement political and familial alliances was prolific. The majority were mere political pawns for the advancement of their families.

These women, so overtly (and oft times covertly) actively in politics, strayed outside the normal sphere of the good Roman wife, and thus became notorious in their own right. There is a good selection of women featured against a backdrop of scandal, political intrigue, family affairs, backstabbing, betrayal, madness and murder.

I particularly liked the wrap up of the latter Empresses till the fall of the Western Roman Empire; the invaluable timelime, and short who's who. For those with a penchant for all things Roman, this is a must have.

"Domina: the women who made imperial Rome" is an interesting account of the few women who were able, for better or worse, to gain some notion of power during the age of imperial Rome. De la Bedoyere manages, despite not only the lack of evidence, but also the extreme bias held against women (and especially these women) from Roman writers, to construct humanizing portraits. I found myself caught up in their stories, and there was the occasional bit of humour ("Julia Maesa was, if her coin portraits are anything to go by, a humourless woman with all the charm of an aging iceberg.").

My only problem was with the first chapter. I found it very disjointed and the weakest part of the book (especially for those of us who need to bone up on our Roman history!).

My version (an arc ebook copy) unfortunately did not include the plates or family trees. That being said, the author did include a "dramatis personae" of all the women he talked about, with brief genealogical (such as is known) details, as well as a detailed timeline, glossary, notes, bibliography, and 3 (!) indices (one for the women discussed, a second for the emporers mentioned, and finally a general index).

"Agrippina the Elder's 'impatience for equality' was never fulfilled. She waits still."

Like many other readers, my first introduction to the women of the Roman Imperial family was through Robert Graves "I Claudius" and this has coloured my understanding of that period ever since. It was interesting to read about both the myths and the truths behind Livia, Octavia and Julia. This has been tackled before by Tom Holland and Mary Beard but this was the first time I felt the sources had been clearly identified and examined. It's not a weighty historical tome but a fascinating read for any casual student of the period.

I love ancient Roman history. This book will be a great addition to my personal and library collection.

I love books about the Ancient Rome history and books that talks about women in a historical timeframe.
This book is perfect as it's a well researched and well written piece of scholar work but it's an easy and enjoyable read.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Yale University Press and Netgalley for this ARC

I am not much into reading about this period of history but was nice to see a book about the women at this time. A lot we see it about the men and a few events.

My classics professor was an old boy who gleefully bought Dio and Seutonius' views of Julia and Agrippina (elder and younger). Years of reading and triangulating gave me a more realistic view, but it is only in the last generation of scholarship that a full range of sources (texts, coins, inscriptions, dedications of temples and statues, etc.) have really been reassessed for an analysis of the Julio-Claudian and Severan women, whose physical bodies linked their dynasty to power and whose wits held it together. Although this is a popular piece of scholarship, it is well-calibrated (especially in explaining the tangled family tree just often enough for an interested reader to keep track), and sourced with more academic studies.

Despite being published by Yale University Press, this is not a scholarly book but a popular one: it adds nothing to, is even apparently unaware of, the established, recent and current literature on the role of imperial women and elite women more generally in the late Republican/early Principate period. From the foreword, it appears that the author teaches Julio-Claudian history at A level to, primarily, young women and that focus certainly inflects his book which is self-consciously feminist in stance with some metaphorical hand-wringing on how Roman women had to fight for any kind of ‘equality’. None of this is necessarily a problem for the right audience i.e. school students and/or general readers but many of the assumptions here including the reading of historicised sources are likely to be challenged on any decent undergraduate Classics degree.

I find it extraordinary that the opening chapter which outlines the scope of the book claims that imperial Roman women have been overlooked, even written out of conventional histories of the Julio-Claudian dynasty – surely Livia, the two Julias, the two Agrippinas, Messalina (admittedly not so much Poppaea) are the very stuff of a popular understanding of this period, from 'I, Claudius' forwards?

This certainly gives a lively account of the dynasty though there are rather too many diversions than I’d have liked. While the author is aware that sources can’t necessarily always be read at face value, he misses the point that it’s not merely that imperial women were ‘depicted as stock characters’ but that they were coded, too. Tacitus, for example, a prime source, writes his Republican politics on the bodies of women so that his ideological distrust of monarchy is expressed via the disruptive, flagrant immorality and excessive behaviour of Julio-Claudian women who are used to epitomise the political disorder, even chaos, of a monarchical principate. This use of sexual narratives as an idiom for politics is common even before the imperial period (cf. Sallust’s Sempronia) but this book misses that point and takes the sources as realistic ‘history’, named here ‘biased’ and implicitly misogynistic. In this sense, the Julias’ interest in ‘every form of vice’ is recuperated as a kind of feminist agency to be valorised – an ahistorical and biased reading in itself.

The writing style is chatty (‘Augustus had other fish to fry’, ‘in short, Augustus had stitched himself up’) and there are instances of hedging such as ‘during this early part of Livia’s life *she must have been aware*.'(my emphasis) or ‘it is quite reasonable to speculate...’. Occasional words and phrases are given in Latin but most only in translation. Inevitably, Latin concepts are simplified: ‘virtus’ can mean ‘courage’ as given here but has wider connotations of ‘manliness’; ‘pudicitia’ can mean ‘chastity’ but, again, has broader connotations of ‘sexual seemliness’ and is not only applied to women. ‘Homosexuality’ is a misnomer for homoeroticism since the concept of sexual identities did not exist in the period.

Despite some scholarly misgivings, then, about the intellectual framework and historical assumptions that underpin this book, I’d recommend it as a solid retelling, for a general or school audience, of the history of the Julio-Claudians with a keen eye for the stories of the notorious women at the heart of the dynasty.

Excellent! Fascinating,through and informative. A must read for history buffs!
Review scheduled for publication date.