Book Review: "The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World"

Despite some notable flaws, Daisy Dunn's new book offers a powerful and sweeping look at some of the most powerful women of antiquity.

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I’ve been looking forward to reading Daisy Dunn’s The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World ever since I saw it in the new releases section of Barnes & Noble. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter you know that I love popular history, I love antiquity, and I love books that explore the roles and lives of women in history. In many ways this book ticks all of those boxes and, though I have some criticisms (more on those in a moment), for the most part I devoured this book and think it will make a useful and enlightening read for anyone wanting to learn more about the very important roles that various women played in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The Missing Thread is quite far-ranging in its subjects, ranging from women like Sappho to Aspasia, Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi to Agrippina the Younger, who achieved remarkable political and social power thanks to her marriage to the aging Claudius and her manipulations of her son, Nero. As she makes clear in her introduction, her purpose is to read between the lines of the classical historians in order to highlight the ways that women influenced the unfolding of ancient history. Even though the men of antiquity were often the ones who seemed to be the engines of social and political change, Dunn reminds us again and again that there is much truth to the old adage that behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.

One of the more remarkable, and exciting, aspects of this book is just how much it demonstrates the agency that women had, even in the most restrictive of cultures. Dunn reminds us that just because the men of antiquity didn’t always care about women and their interests and lives, this doesn’t mean that they didn’t have them. What’s more, no culture–not even Athens, notorious for its efforts to keep its women as restricted as possible–were ever entirely coherent in their views on women (as Pericles’ long affair with Aspasia, one of the most formidable women of her age, makes abundantly clear). Furthermore, as the Minoans and the Etruscans make clear, there were some cultures in the ancient Mediterranean who allowed women at least a bit of autonomy, both sexual and otherwise.

Then there were the warriors. These were the women, like Fulvia (the wife of Marc Antony) who were more than capable and willing to take to the field of battle, even if doing so meant that she would be the recipient of all kinds of opprobrium from the likes of Octavian who, nevertheless, found women indispensable to his own growing power. As the position of the emperor grew in power and standing, so did that of the many women who comprised the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. Thus it was that women like Livia, the wife of Augustus managed to wield power from her husband’s side, even as she adopted the attitude and appearance of a suitable Roman matron. There’s even a bit of symmetry between husband and wife, for just as Augustus had to maintain the fiction that he was restoring the virtues and offices of the Republic while essentially ruling as a king, so Livia had to masquerade as a traditional Roman matron while flouting the rules of femininity, playing a key role in her husband’s administration. It’s a role that many of her successors would also try to fill, with varying degrees of success.

For, as their Greek counterparts could have told them, ascending the heights of political influence was often a treacherous proposition, as Julia the Elder, her daughters Julia the Elder and Julia the Younger, and Agrippina the Elder all found out to their regret. This was true even of the latter’s daughter, another Agrippina, who achieved remarkable power and influence, only to be brought to ruin by the son that she’d done so much to raise up. Women being punished for daring to seek out too much political power is a recurring theme in Dunn’s book, and these moments are potent reminders of the ever-present peril that women of the ancient world faced in their rigidly patriarchal societies.

As much as I enjoyed the book, I do have some quibbles with both its methodology and its approach to its subject. A friend of mine remarked that the book doesn’t include early enough evidence from archaeology, which has done so much to illuminate the lives and experiences of women throughout history but particularly in the ancient world. Given that, as Dunn herself acknowledges in her introduction, the male writers of the ancient world often didn’t care much about women unless they were behaving badly or were members of the upper classes, it would have been helpful, I think, to have more enlightenment from the archaeological record, if for no other reason than to show more of what life was like for those who didn’t happen to be be born into the upper echelons of society.

I also find it a bit curious that Dunn decides to end the book with Agrippina and the women of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, when they would be followed by some remarkable imperial women, including the redoubtable matriarchs of the Severan Dynasty. I understand that no book can take account of everything, and that there has to be a cutoff point somewhere, but I would have liked to see a more thoroughly-described reason behind why she chose the end of the Julio-Claudians.

Lasly, I was also a bit irritated by the somewhat misleading title. A casual glance might lead one to believe that Dunn is going to look at women from all over the ancient world, but it quickly becomes clear that this is largely a history of the Greco-Roman world. For that matter, I’m genuinely surprised that we don’t see more mention of the women of ancient Egypt, particularly since there were a number of them, most notably Hatshepsut, who actually managed to rule the kingdom by the Nile in their own right.

Overall, I ended up being quite mixed on The Missing Thread. While I think it’s always a good thing to draw out the stories of women in antiquity–particularly given the extent to which the history of the ancient world is still a contested space in the culture wars–I also think it’s important to draw our attention to the women who were at the margins of society in other ways. Still, the book is a potent reminder of the many extraordinary women of antiquity, and it’s worth a read for that reason alone.