WIVES OF THE ROMANS: 1/8: The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World Hardcover – July 30, 2024 by Daisy Dunn (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
by Daisy Dunn (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Missing-Thread-Womens-History-Ancient/dp/0593299663
Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines and is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon. Spanning three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian Empire to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire. The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage.
1593 ROMAN WOMEN
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| 0:24.9 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:26.9 | Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:31.4 | This is CBS. I on the world. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm John Batchelor. |
| 0:42.5 | The classical world, the new book, The Miss thread, a women's history of ancient worlds. |
| 0:51.8 | This is Daisy Dunn, the author, and she's done us all the favor of compiling a list of women over several hundred years, |
| 0:56.6 | and in fact, a thousand years, if you look at the reflections upon them at the turn of the BC to AD, a thousand years of women in part contributing to the building |
| 1:06.9 | of the Greco-Roman world, the one we live with here in the United States and Europe |
| 1:12.3 | lives with. The traditions of the Roman world are the traditions of the Greek world, our emphasis |
| 1:18.2 | on democracy. Well, women were there all the time as mothers, as wives, and as schemers. And it's a joy to |
| 1:26.4 | welcome Daisy Dunn to begin, of course, with the Iliad, |
| 1:30.6 | written by Homer, except for there's a story that was started a long time ago, B.C.E. and continued |
| 1:41.5 | into the 19th century and might still have some merit. |
| 1:47.3 | That is that Homer was female. |
| 1:50.8 | Daisy, congratulations, Fantasia. |
| 1:53.7 | Who was she and who we know her to be now? |
| 1:56.5 | Good evening to you. |
| 1:58.4 | Good evening. |
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