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Archaeology Annelise Freisenbruch, Caesars' Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire, New York/London/Toronto/ Sydney: Free Press, 2010. 337 pages, 16 illustrations, $28. ISBN 978- 1-4165-8303-5 (cloth).
The subject of women in Indo-European Studies is frequently neglected or set aside in a small section of a larger work. While Caesars' Wives is not a book that one would immediately put on the IE shelf, it is pertinent to the subject in that it concentrates on the roles played by the women closest to the men who ruled the great empire. One might say this is a history of Rome beginning with Augustus, but the female characters who are usually leftout are dropped in - genealogies of the Roman dynasties are set out at the beginning of the book which includes the women.
The subjects of the book go beyond just wives - mothers and sisters are also included. The book is divided into nine chapters, the first four devoted to the Julio- Claudian empresses, and the first three of these dominated by Livia who was certainly a bigger than life character and one of the most powerful women in the Roman world if not the entire ancient Indo-European world. Although she has been accused of numerous crimes against her family, she was set up as a paragon of virtue and a model for Augustus' idealized wife and mother cast in the same mold as Cornelia was during the Republic. Augustus' sister, Octavia, and his daughter, Julia, were also cast in this mold, but unfortunately Julia failed to play her part.
Freisenbruch shows, however, that there was more to Livia than wanting to be a goddess and a woman who painted figs with poison. She like many wives of powerful men was a close advisor to her husband, Augustus. Freisenbruch compares her to Hillary Clinton as both confident and political advisor. While wifely influence was certainly not new, Livia was one of the...