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A Women's History of the Ancient World
by Daisy Dunn
Book Reviewed by:A dazzlingly ambitious history of the ancient world that places women at the center—from Cleopatra to Boudica, Sappho to Fulvia, and countless other artists, writers, leaders, and creators of history
Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines and is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon. Spanning three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian Empire to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire. The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage.
Excerpt
The Missing Thread
Women were invented to make men's lives more difficult. Many men had always known this, but even so, it was comforting to hear it said by someone who had met the Muses, who knew the gods, who knew everything. Hesiod worked as a farmer in Boeotia, central Greece, and the Muses haunted Mount Helicon nearby. They met, in whatever way mortals usually meet divinities, and Hesiod came away a poet words as golden as the grain he sowed and as sharp as the scythe that cut it.
'Let no woman deceive your mind shapely bottom / And wheedling conversation,' he urged, 'it's barn she is seeking.' Women were good for ploughing with the oxen, bearing children, and scoffing the food they were supposed to store away. For everything else they were worse than hopeless. This was not entirely their fault, poor dears, but they paid the price for their descent from what Hesiod described in Greek as kalon kakon – a beautiful evil.
The beautiful evil, Pandora, was the first woman. ...
The fabric of ancient history is stitched heavily with stories of dramatic politics, conquest, and war, all with men firmly at the center of action. But women played just as vital and central a role in antiquity's most consequential events, as classicist Daisy Dunn (The Shadow of Vesuvius) elegantly details in The Missing Thread. Dunn answers the many male-centric histories of antiquity with this shimmering volume that celebrates women as true "creators of history" instead of passive bystanders. The Missing Thread, with its rich erudition and sprightly narrative, is an engrossing addition to antiquity studies that readers will want on their shelves for years to come...continued
Full Review
(781 words)
(Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski).
Anne Sebba, author of Ethel Rosenberg
I loved this radical new take on the familiar stories of the ancient world we all think we know but clearly only know the half. Dunn succeeds magnificently not in erasing men but in bringing out of the shadows some extraordinary women and giving them much more than merely reflected glory. The book sparkles with fresh ideas. Lucy Worsley, author of Agatha Christie
A brilliant concept, executed with enviable elegance. People will go to college to study the ancient world because of this book. Brava, Daisy Dunn! Professor Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge, author of The Spartans
Daisy Dunn is the real deal. No thread is left hanging, let alone missing, in her closely woven tapestry of ancient women's history. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Missing Thread unerringly fingers the (chiefly male) ancients' inability to understand women and view them in the round.
When you hear the word "classics," what jumps to mind? Literature over the centuries? Famous authors? For people entering university to study "classics," it means something quite specific. Classics is typically defined as the interdisciplinary study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, their interactions and exchanges with other ancient cultures, and their resonance to contemporary times. The curriculum for aspiring classicists is academically rigorous, with study in languages (Greek and Latin), literature, history, material culture, archaeology, philosophy, and more. Greek and Roman culture bequeathed an intellectual, political, and artistic heritage to the Western world that historians still glory in studying.
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