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Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac

A New History of Rome's Imperial Women

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Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac

By: Joan Smith
Narrated by: Joan Walker
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About this listen

'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland

'In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book' Daily Telegraph

A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years.

Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.

These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.

Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.

Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

©2024 Joan Smith (P)2024 Harper Collins Publishers
Gender Studies Italy Rome Women Witty

Critic Reviews

‘Debunking misogynist myths of ancient Rome… this retelling of the lives of much-maligned Roman women sees their plight through a contemporary feminist lens’

Guardian

'Joan Smith has fought for women her entire working life. Now she takes that struggle to the ancient world in a book that is pacy, witty and authoritative, retelling the stories of nearly two dozen women long maligned by poets, historians and Hollywood screenwriters – showing how the women of the long-ago past faced the same victim-blaming, gaslighting, double standards and misogynistic habits of mind that haunt our own era. In the process, she both opens up a new perspective on ancient Rome and sheds fresh light on our current world, confirming that when it comes to the way society looks at and treats women, we’re not quite as modern as we like to think. Eye-opening'

Jonathan Freeland, author of The Escape Artist

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