Female Civic Presence in Roman Greece

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How did women shape the public life of Greek cities under Roman rule? This volume explores female civic presence and self-representation in Roman imperial Greece, revealing the varied ways in which women participated in, influenced, and were commemorated by their communities. Bringing together nine contributions by historians and archaeologists, it focuses on the first to third centuries CE and encompasses Achaea, Macedonia, Crete, and the Cyclades, as well as comparative perspectives from elsewhere in the Greek East.

Combining literary sources, inscriptions, portrait sculpture, and architectural evidence, the volume challenges interpretations that assign women a secondary role in civic society or understand their activities chiefly through their male relatives. Its chapters examine women as benefactresses, priestesses, initiates, participants in intellectual life, and dedicators of honorific monuments. They also investigate how women helped sustain prominent families and establish networks across cities and provinces. Throughout, the emphasis falls on the relationship between individual agency, familial identity, and the institutions that enabled -and constrained- women’s public participation. Organised into two sections, “Wider Themes” and “Regional Views,” the collection brings thematic inquiry into dialogue with closely contextualised regional studies.

This volume was shaped by two international scholarly meetings held in Athens in 2022 and 2024, and the research project Greek Matronae: Female Civic Presence and Self-Representation in Imperial Greece, funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I./ELIDEK) under its “3rd Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to Support Post-Doctoral Researchers” and hosted by the Institute of Historical Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation. The collection addresses an area (Imperial Greece) that has received less systematic attention than Asia Minor or the Latin West. Then, it offers a multifaceted account of women’s public lives and provides new points of reference for scholars and students of ancient history, archaeology, gender, portraiture, and the Greek world under Roman rule.

Photo credit | Marble bust of Meletine daughter of Primos, from the Metroon of Peiraieus. 2019 ©Tony Querrec; MND 1014, Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Louvre Museum.