Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome
Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome

Author: Lauren Hackworth Petersen

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780292729902

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Motherhood played a central role in ancient Greece and Rome, despite the virtual absence of female participation in the public spheres of life. Mothers could wield enormous influence as the reproductive bodies of society and, in many cases, of culture. Yet motherhood and acts of mothering have received relatively little focused and sustained attention by modern scholars, who have concentrated almost exclusively on analyzing depictions of ancient women more generally. In this volume, experts from across the humanities present a wealth of evidence from legal, literary, and medical texts, as well as art, architecture, ritual, and material culture, to reveal the multilayered dimensions of motherhood in both Greece and Rome and to confront the fact that not all mothers and acts of mothering can be easily categorized. The authors consider a variety of mothers—from the mythical to the real, from empress to prostitute, and from citizen to foreigner—to expose both the mundane and the ideologically charged lives of mothers in the Classical world. Some essays focus on motherhood as a largely private (emotional, intimate) experience, while others explore the ramifications of public, oftentimes politicized, displays of motherhood. This state-of-the art look at mothers and mothering in the ancient world also takes on a contemporary relevance as the authors join current debates on motherhood and suggest links between the lives of ancient mothers and the diverse, often conflicting roles of women in modern Western society.

Motherhood in Antiquity
Motherhood in Antiquity

Author: Dana Cooper

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 331948902X

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This edited collection examines concepts and realities of motherhood in the ancient world. The collection uses essays on the Roman Empire, Mesoamerica, the Philippines, Egypt, and India to emphasize the concept of motherhood as a worldwide phenomenon and experience. While covering a wide geographical range, the editors arranged the collection thematically to explore themes including the relationship between the mother, particularly ruling mothers, and children and the mother in real life and legend. Some essays explore related issues, such as adaptation and child custody after divorce in ancient Egypt and the mother in religious culture of late antiquity and the ancient Buddhist Indian world. The contributors utilize a variety of methodologies and approaches including textual analysis and archaeological analysis in addition to traditional historical methodology.

Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece
Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece

Author: Nancy Demand

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 1994-07

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780801847622

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Why did Greek society foster social conditions, especially early marriage with its attendant early childbearing, that were known to be dangerous for both mother and child? What were the actual causes of death among women described as dying of childbirth in the Hippocratic Epidemics? Why did families choose to portray labor scenes on tombstones when the Greek commemorative tradition otherwise avoided reference to suffering and illness? In Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece, Nancy Demand offers the first comprehensive exploration of the social and cultural construction of childbirth in ancient Greece. Reading the ancient evidence in light of feminist theory, the Foucauldian notion of discursively constituted objects, medical anthropology, and anthropological studies of the modern Greek village, Demand discusses topics that include midwifery, abortion, attitudes of doctors toward women patients, and the treatment of women generally. For evidence, she relies primarily on the case histories in the Epidemics concerning women with complications in pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth. She also draws relevant details from cure records and dedications from healing sanctuaries, labor scenes depicted on tombstones, Aristophanic comedy, andPlatonic philosophy.

Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome
Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome

Author: Lauren Hackworth Petersen

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780292754348

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Motherhood played a central role in ancient Greece and Rome, despite the virtual absence of female participation in the public spheres of life. Mothers could wield enormous influence as the reproductive bodies of society and, in many cases, of culture. Yet motherhood and acts of mothering have received relatively little focused and sustained attention by modern scholars, who have concentrated almost exclusively on analyzing depictions of ancient women more generally. In this volume, experts from across the humanities present a wealth of evidence from legal, literary, and medical texts, as well as art, architecture, ritual, and material culture, to reveal the multilayered dimensions of motherhood in both Greece and Rome and to confront the fact that not all mothers and acts of mothering can be easily categorized. The authors consider a variety of mothers—from the mythical to the real, from empress to prostitute, and from citizen to foreigner—to expose both the mundane and the ideologically charged lives of mothers in the Classical world. Some essays focus on motherhood as a largely private (emotional, intimate) experience, while others explore the ramifications of public, oftentimes politicized, displays of motherhood. This state-of-the art look at mothers and mothering in the ancient world also takes on a contemporary relevance as the authors join current debates on motherhood and suggest links between the lives of ancient mothers and the diverse, often conflicting roles of women in modern Western society.

Mother of the Gods
Mother of the Gods

Author: Philippe Borgeaud

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2004-11-12

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 080187985X

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Worshiped throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, the "Mother of the Gods" was known by a variety of names. Among peoples of Asia Minor, where her cult first began, she often shared the names of local mountains. The Greeks commonly called her Cybele, the name given to her by the Phrygians of Asia Minor, and identified her with their own mother goddesses Rhea, Gaia, and Demeter. The Romans adopted her worship at the end of the Second Punic War and called her Mater Magna, Great Mother. Her cult became one of the three most important mystery cults in the Roman Empire, along with those of Mithras and Isis. And as Christianity took hold in the Roman world, ritual elements of her cult were incorporated into the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary. In Mother of the Gods, Philippe Borgeaud traces the journey of this divine figure through Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome between the sixth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. He examines how the Mother of the Gods was integrated into specific cultures, what she represented to those who worshiped her, and how she was used as a symbol in art, myth, and even politics. The Mother of the Gods was often seen as a dualistic figure: ancestral and foreign, aristocratic and disreputable, nurturing and dangerous. Borgeaud's challenging and nuanced portrait opens new windows on the ancient world's sophisticated religious beliefs and shifting cultural identities.

Mothers
Mothers

Author: Jacqueline Rose

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0374715831

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A simple argument guides this book: motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. By making mothers the objects of both licensed idealization and cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world’s iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart. Mothers are the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes their task (unrealizable, of course) to repair. Moving commandingly between pop cultural references such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda to insights on motherhood in the ancient world and the contemporary stigmatization of single mothers, Jacqueline Rose delivers a groundbreaking report into something so prevalent we hardly notice. Mothers is an incisive, rousing call to action from one of our most important contemporary thinkers.

Women in Antiquity
Women in Antiquity

Author: Stephanie Lynn Budin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-08-12

Total Pages: 1583

ISBN-13: 1317219902

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This volume gathers brand new essays from some of the most respected scholars of ancient history, archaeology, and physical anthropology to create an engaging overview of the lives of women in antiquity. The book is divided into ten sections, nine focusing on a particular area, and also includes almost 200 images, maps, and charts. The sections cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, the Aegean, Italy, and Western Europe, and include many lesser-known cultures such as the Celts, Iberia, Carthage, the Black Sea region, and Scandinavia. Women's experiences are explored, from ordinary daily life to religious ritual and practice, to motherhood, childbirth, sex, and building a career. Forensic evidence is also treated for the actual bodies of ancient women. Women in Antiquity is edited by two experts in the field, and is an invaluable resource to students of the ancient world, gender studies, and women's roles throughout history.

Women in Classical Antiquity
Women in Classical Antiquity

Author: Laura K. McClure

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1118413652

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An introduction to women and gender in the classical world that draws on the most recent research in the field Women in Classical Antiquity focuses on the important objects, events and concepts that combine to form a clear understanding of ancient Greek and Roman women and gender. Drawing on the most recent findings and research on the topic, the book offers an overview of the historical events, values, and institutions that are critical for appreciating and comparing the life situations of women across both cultures. The author examines the lifecycle of women in ancient Greek and Rome beginning with how young females acquired the gendered characteristics necessary for adulthood. The text explores female adolescence, including concerns about virginity, medical views of the female body, religious roles, and education. Views of marriage, motherhood, sexual activity, adultery, and prostitution are also examined. In addition, the author explores how women exercised authority and the possibilities for their civic engagement. This important resource: Explores the formation of classical women’s social identity through the life stages of birth, adolescence, marriage, childbirth, old age, and death Contains information on the most recent research in this rapidly evolving field Offers a review of the life course as a way to understand the social processes by which Greek and Roman females acquired gender traits Includes questions for review, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of key terms Written for academics and students of classical antiquity, Women in Classical Antiquity offers a general introduction to women and gender in the classical world.

Women and Weasels
Women and Weasels

Author: Maurizio Bettini

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-08-26

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 022603996X

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If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.

Missing Mothers
Missing Mothers

Author: Sr Huebner

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 9789042943131

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The last forty years of research have cast new light on the lives of ancient Mediterranean women in the penumbra of our patriarchal sources, including the pervasive risks they faced in becoming mothers. Current demographic models suggest that perhaps as many as one in five children would have lost their mothers by age ten. The inescapable conclusion is that the absence of ancient mothers is not merely an artifact of bias in our sources, but also a fundamental condition of antiquity, with profound implications for ancient family life and the experience of childhood. Missing Mothers: Maternal Absence in Antiquity is the first volume dedicated to studying mother absence as an integrated phenomenon in the ancient Mediterranean, from its obvious manifestation as total absence in the wake of maternal death, to the partial absences of maternal separation brought about by economic necessity, divorce, slavery, social conventions, and occasionally choice. The fifteen essays collected here explore the gaps left by absent mothers and how individuals, families, and societies in the ancient Mediterranean conceptualized, represented, and responded to those gaps, practically, psychologically, artistically, and politically between the 5th century BCE and late antiquity.