2/8: A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon (Author)1
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Rome-Ones-Own-Forgotten-Empire/dp/1419760181/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “the Doing of Important Things.” And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.
Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.
1593 Roman women
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batson with the author, Emma Southern. |
| 0:06.7 | Her new book is A Rome of One's Own, the forgotten women of the Roman Empire. |
| 0:10.5 | Forgotten, not in the least in this telling, because we go immediately to, we'll go quickly |
| 0:16.4 | through the story of a couple of Etruscan kids, some Lucamo, who is a Corinthian, is a Greek, but he marries |
| 0:27.1 | an Etruscan young woman named Tanakil, and they pick up stakes and go to the new Rome. And |
| 0:34.4 | through an amazing series of coincidences, they become the king and queen of Rome. |
| 0:41.5 | I'm going fast through their story, not only because it's fantastic, but because I want to get to Lucretia and Tullia, |
| 0:49.9 | because I'm looking for this diad that sustains the Roman telling. |
| 0:55.6 | We're recalling always that this pleases Augustus. |
| 0:59.8 | So we're not getting a story here, as we understand history. |
| 1:04.4 | We're getting a story here that pleases the boss. |
| 1:08.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:09.5 | Tanakil and, well, Tararkinius, he takes on the name of an Etruscan city to make himself |
| 1:18.5 | king. |
| 1:20.5 | Tarkinius and Tannachille produce heirs, and those heirs become the kingship between the 8th century and the 6th century. |
| 1:31.5 | And in the telling, it's important to come across a woman named Lucretia because Emma assures me |
| 1:39.1 | you can remove all the women in these stories except for Lucretia and you're okay, but if you remove Lucretia, you've lost Rome. |
| 1:48.8 | Yes. |
| 1:49.3 | Lucretia is a good woman at home spinning wool for a toga. |
| 1:55.6 | And her husband and his friends are out battling somewhere. |
| 1:59.6 | And one night they're drinking. |
| 2:01.4 | And they propose to each other, what is their test? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.