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The John Batchelor Show

IRON CHANGED EVERYTHING: 5/8: A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

IRON CHANGED EVERYTHING: 5/8: A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire  by  Emma Southon  (Author)

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

1737 LONDINIUM

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is

0:04.7

This is CBS I on the World. Here's John Bachelor

0:11.9

Continuing with Emma's Emma's Saghey, the new book is A Rome of One's Own, the forgotten women of the Roman Empire,

0:18.0

it is now the Roman Empire. The monarchy is gone. The memory of the monarchy pleases Augustus, the

0:26.2

Emperor. The Republic has gone. The memory of the republic came to this moment when

0:32.3

Augustus will present himself as a man who saves the

0:35.7

Republic by making himself the first among equals, the Princeps. He has a daughter

0:41.8

however and herein lies a tale.

0:45.0

Emma, this is Julia Caesar Phileas, who becomes when she's 11 years old,

0:51.0

born 39 BC, comes when she's 11 years old,

0:54.4

Julia Agustifilia.

0:57.0

Augustus wanted sons, he wanted heirs.

1:00.4

He has a daughter who has a mind of her own. She's very well educated and then she's married to Marcellus at 13 years old. Why?

1:09.0

Marcellus was her cousin. What was Augustus thinking?

1:12.0

He was trying to make a son-in-law. So this is where we go back to that those stories of the Sabine women. The

1:20.3

closest thing there is to a son-in-law and he wanted Marcellus to be his heir.

1:26.0

He's the daughter of his sister Octavia, the daughter, he's the son of his sister Octavia,

1:31.2

and he wanted to make him his heir by making him his son-in-law, the

1:36.6

closest thing he could to his son.

1:38.0

So what he uses Julia for is to marry her to the people that he wants to be his proxy sons.

1:46.0

In other words, Liby and Dionysius and all the historians have delivered this Augustus who isn't real. The real Augustus

1:56.3

doesn't have blood. He has cold water for vain. And Julia's mother he gets rid of on her birthbed, Escheronia.

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