As empress Livia grows older and more powerful, a new generation sweeps onto the scene, changing imperial Rome forever. Let’s walk with the Agrippinas, both Elder and Younger, to find out what their lives were like in this fast-changing time.
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Bras have been around for a long time in one form or another. Let’s follow their evolution from ancient times to more modern ones, tracing the many shapes they’ve taken and what they have to tell us about women’s lives throughout history.
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Let’s trace the paths of some of Rome’s first imperial superstars: the wives, sisters, and daughters who rose with Octavian to become ancient Rome’s first family, famous throughout the Roman world. Livia, Octavia, Julia the Elder. Who were these women, behind the rumors and the legends? How much influence did they wield and what mark did they leave?
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Cleopatra maneuvered her way through Egyptian, Greek, and Roman politics, defying the odds to keep the Ptolemaic dynasty – and Egypt’s independence – going. But what of all the Cleopatras who came before her? Only one of her forebears truly set the tone for the dynasty, creating a mold that had royal Ptolemaic women ruling not from behind their husbands, but beside them. That woman is Arsinoë II. Let’s dive into the wild and crazy ride that was her life.
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Cleopatra, the last great queen of Egypt, doesn’t really need an introduction. You can see her in your mind already: Pretty and sultry with her cat-eye makeup, covered head to toe in shiny gold. Extravagant, self-serving: this epic seductress used every magic trick in her lady arsenal to hold onto power. That’s the Cleopatra the ancient Romans want us to see. The truth is that few women’s stories have been more brutally revised by sexist haters. Who was Cleopatra, beyond the smoke and hate and glitter?
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Let’s explore the relationship between women and poison, from the ancient world to today: the ones they wielded and the ones wielded upon them.
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What was it like to be a woman in the ancient Roman Empire? Let’s find out.
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Our grooming habits are a contested issue, no more so than the question of what we do with our hair down below. This is especially true for women, for whom the question of whether or not to keep the hair down there has been always been charged with social and sexual meaning. How has our relationship with our pubic hair changed over time, from ancient past to present? What influences our feelings and grooming practice? Join me and Lyndsey Craig, a grad student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (who has conducted a study on this very issue), as we dive into this tangled and fascinating aspect of womanhood through the ages.
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Let’s dive into the lives and times of the women who helped shape Alexander’s Greatness, and accomplished a whole lot of their own along the way. Get ready to enter Macedonia. We’ll face assassinations, intrigue, a little snake worship, warrior women, and an epic battle for an empire that would put Game of Thrones to shame.
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The ancient world saw its fair share of warrior women, living on the move, hunting and fighting, living and dying on their own terms. It turns out the Amazons were as real as it gets. Who were these women the Greeks saw in their pleasant dreams and worst nightmares? Let’s go hunting beyond the myths and legends to try and find them.
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When it comes to the words that made it through time to us, ancient Greece is particularly loud with men’s voices. But if you listen, you hear one woman through the crowd—we still hear her today, thousands of years after she lived. Heralded as a genius in her time, she was called “The Poetess” and “The Tenth Muse.” People made coins with her face on them, and created honorary statues of her all over Greece. Even Aristotle, that grumpy bastard, wrote she was “honored even though she was a woman.” Sappho wrote poetry that rocked her ancient world.
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Ancient Greece has a rep for liking their ladies silent, veiled, and chained to the loom. But was life for women in places like Athens really so restrictive? Let’s strap on our sandals and go find out.
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