Abstract

This book was born from insomnia. Specifically, I was up as usual one morning at around 3 a.m. and started thinking about the latest book on “women” in “Antiquity” that had recently come out, and why I was dissatisfied with it. For one thing, “Antiquity” consisted primarily of Greece and Rome, giving exceptionally short shrift to the rest of the ancient world—places like Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Etruria, and the Celts. For another thing, most of the “women” covered in the book were not actually women: they were literary characters, fictional constructs invented by men mostly for other men.