Gender, memory, and identity in the Roman world

Preface -- Tabula gratulatoria -- Introduction / Jussi Rantala -- Public agency of women in the later Roman world / Ville Vuolanto -- Religious agency and civic identity of women in ancient Ostia / Marja-Leena Hänninen -- The invisible women of Roman agrarian work and economy / Lena Larsson Lovén -- 'Show them that you are Marcus's daughter': the public role of imperial daughters in Second- and Third-century CE Rome / Sanna Joska -- Defining manliness, constructing identities: Alexander the Great mirroring an exemplary man in late Antiquity / Jaakkojuhani Peltonen -- 'At the age of nineteen' (RG1): life, longevity, and the formation of an Augustan past (43-38 BCE) / Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence -- Conflict and community: Anna of Carthage and Roman identity in Augustan poetry / Jussi Rantala -- Dress, identity, cultural memory: Copa and Ancilla Cauponae in context / Ria Berg -- The goddess and the town: memory, feast, and identity between Demeter and Saint Lucia / Marxiano Melotti -- Varius, multiplex, multiformis - Greek, Roman, Panhellenic: multiple identities of the Hadrianic era and beyond / Arja Karivieri -- Mental hospitals in pre-modern society: antiquity, Byzantium, Western Europe, and Islam / Christian Laes

This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history - gender, memory and identity - and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of this volume is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise both the literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of this volume as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity