More Details

Summary:

""Here I lie, a matron... I was wife to Fortunatus, my father was Veturius. Unlucky woman, born twenty-seven years ago and married for sixteen - one bed, one marriage - I died after six births, just one child remains." This epitaph of a Roman woman named Veturia, who died in the 3rd century BCE, starkly captures the relentless cycle of birthing, rearing, and burying children that defined the lives of ancient Mediterranean women. In this book, Anna Bonnell Freidin asks: how would Veturia and her family have understood such losses, child after child? What kinds of strategies might she have employed to protect herself and her infants, to equip them for better futures? How would she, her family, and any caretakers have worked to mitigate the dangers of pregnancy and birth? Put more generally, how did Romans approach the risks of childbearing? Freidin demonstrates how the perceptions of these fears and risks not only affected the ways individuals cared for their bodies, but also influenced Roman culture on a much greater scale. Freidin explores this against the backdrop of the Julian laws, which were introduced in 18BC by Rome's first emperor, Augustus, and were meant to guard against the perceived risk that women - and elites generally - might avoid childbearing. They formed part of an ideology of family values, central to imperial messaging for the next three hundred years. From elite medical treatments to birth charms to metaphorical language used by ancient authors to describe birth, Freidin marshals a wide range of evidence and theoretical frameworks to explore both the construction and distribution of risk in a deeply patriarchal, imperialist culture, one in which an ideology of fertility and control confronted the unpredictability of the environment and which, in turn, shaped Roman views of risk as they expanded their empire. Mistakes, misfortunes, and interventions in the reproductive process were seen to have far-reaching consequences, reverberating for generations, altering the course of people's lives, their family history, and even the fate of an empire"-- [Provided by publisher]
"How Romans coped with the anxieties and risks of childbirth. Across the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, anxieties about childbirth tied individuals to one another, to the highest levels of imperial politics, even to the movements of the stars. Birthing Romans sheds critical light on the diverse ways pregnancy and childbirth were understood, experienced, and managed in ancient Rome during the first three centuries of the Common Era. In this beautifully written book, Anna Bonnell Freidin asks how inhabitants of the Roman Empire--especially women and girls--understood their bodies and constructed communities of care to mitigate and make sense of the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. Drawing on medical texts, legal documents, poetry, amulets, funerary art, and more, she shows how these communities were deeply human yet never just human. Freidin demonstrates how patients and caregivers took their place alongside divine and material agencies to guard against the risks inherent to childbearing. She vividly illustrates how these efforts and vital networks offer a new window onto Romans' anxieties about order, hierarchy, and the individual's place in the empire and cosmos. Unearthing a risky world that is both familiar and not our own, Birthing Romans reveals how mistakes, misfortunes, and interventions in childbearing were seen to have far-reaching consequences, reverberating across generations and altering the course of people's lives, their family histories, and even the fate of an empire"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Notes on Language, Text, and Translation
• Introduction: Risk and "the Matter of the Mother"
• 1 Veturia at Scale: Kinship, Community, and Empire
• 2 Cornucopia and Rudder: Imagining Generation, Embodying Risk
• 3 Bodily and Social Order in Soranus's Gynecology
• 4 Technologies of Hope: Amulets, Materiality, and Affect
• 5 Fate and Fortune: Living with Uncertainty, Understanding Loss
• Conclusion: Traces and Outlines
• Bibliography
• Index

Author/Creator:

Freidin, Anna Bonnell, 1985- , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Birthing Romans: childbearing and its risks in Imperial Rome [by Freidin, A.B.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Birthing Romans [by Freidin, A.B.] (Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2024] — ISBN 9780691226279; LCCN 2023054453)

Subjects:

Childbirth — Rome — History

Childbirth — Social aspects — Rome

Pregnancy — Rome — History

Pregnancy — Social aspects — Rome

Reproductive health — Rome — History

Reproductive health — Social aspects — Rome

Women — Rome — Social conditions

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 17, 2024).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxi, 314 pages) : illustrations

Call Numbers:

RG513 .F74 2024eb

ISBNs:

0691226296 (electronic book)
9780691226293 (electronic bk.)
9780691226279 (hardcover) [Invalid]
9780691226286 [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2023054454

OCLC Numbers:

1416896489