On Monday 15th January, the Classics department held a symposium, complete with a Roman feast, on The women that shaped the Roman Empire for our Senior Classicists. Dr Emma Southon, an eminent historian, author and comedian, beamed in to inspire us to consider the often forgotten voices of women in history. 

Dr Southon explored the lives of four Roman women: Turia who saved her husband’s life not once but thrice and beat off bandits who tried to occupy her home; Julia Felix, the ambitious and successful business woman who offered the aspirational middle classes of Pompeii the chance of a five-star spa and restaurant experience… for a fee; Lepidina, a woman familiar to our Year 4s through their Minimus course, who lived with her family in Vindolanda in northern Britain and spent her time looking after children and holding birthday parties; and finally Perpetua, the twenty-year-old breast-feeding woman of Carthage, who refused to renounce her faith and paid with her life in the amphitheatre. Four stories each giving a different perspective on women’s lives and how they changed, across time and across class lines. 

As the feminist Sveltlana Alexievich said, ‘When women speak they have nothing or almost nothing of what we are used to reading and hearing about; how certain people heroically killed other people and won. Or lost. What equipment there was and what generals. Women’s stories are different and about different things…There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanely human things.’