Book contents
- Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Timeline
- Historical Contexts
- Introduction
- Part I The Deep Past
- Part II The Bronze Age
- Part III The Iron Age
- Part IV The Hellenistic Worlds
- Part V The Age of Empire
- 24 Cleopatra Selene
- 25 Eutychis
- 26 Achillia and Amazon
- 27 Perpetua
- 28 Zenobia
- 29 Hypatia
- 30 Theodora
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
26 - Achillia and Amazon
from Part V - The Age of Empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2023
- Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Timeline
- Historical Contexts
- Introduction
- Part I The Deep Past
- Part II The Bronze Age
- Part III The Iron Age
- Part IV The Hellenistic Worlds
- Part V The Age of Empire
- 24 Cleopatra Selene
- 25 Eutychis
- 26 Achillia and Amazon
- 27 Perpetua
- 28 Zenobia
- 29 Hypatia
- 30 Theodora
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is a warm dark night in the great city of Rome. You are squeezed with your friends into the terraces of one of the most impressive buildings of the Roman empire, the Colosseum, lit by the flickering light of hundreds of torches, part of a crowd of thousands of city-dwellers eager and ready to be entertained. Everyone knows the emperor Domitian (ruled ad 81–96) always puts on a good show, but there is to be nothing ordinary about tonight’s bloody spectacle, for the emperor has laid on not only a performance of gladiators but this time female gladiators.1 As the women troop out, sword-arms clad in armour, shields at the ready, and bare-chested, a thrill runs through the massed ranks of the shouting crowd. Tonight would be a night to remember.
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- Information
- Women in the Ancient Mediterranean WorldFrom the Palaeolithic to the Byzantines, pp. 212 - 218Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023