
A Rome of One's Own
The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire
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Narrated by:
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Danielle Cohen
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By:
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Emma Southon
About this listen
From the acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of twenty-one extraordinary women to upend our understanding of the ancient world
The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “the Doing of Important Things.” It is a history of winning battles, passing laws, and “Having Important Opinions in Public.” 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 get when women get out of control, but history is more than that.
Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own will correct that. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with the Important Things, but also all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background—or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of individuals, twenty-one women who span the length of its territory and its centuries, who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry, lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. A social and cultural history 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.
©2023 Emma Southon (P)2024 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Richard Miles
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased.
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Outstanding! This is THE book on Carthage.
- By Haakon B. Dahl on 01-21-13
By: Richard Miles
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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The Once and Future Sex
- Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society
- By: Eleanor Janega
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future.
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Get a Rosalie Gilbert book instead
- By Jennifer Martin on 07-11-23
By: Eleanor Janega
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The Poison King
- The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy
- By: Adrienne Mayor
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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A National Book Award finalist for this epic work, Adrienne Mayor delivers a gripping account of Mithradates, the ruthless visionary who began to challenge Rome’s power in 120 B.C. Machiavelli praised his military genius. Kings coveted his secret elixir against poison. Poets celebrated his victories, intrigues, and panache. But until now, no one has told the full story of his incredible life.
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A mythic & complicated life of a charismatic King
- By Darwin8u on 06-15-13
By: Adrienne Mayor
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Femina
- A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
- By: Janina Ramirez
- Narrated by: Janina Ramirez
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.
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Fascinating look at the “silent majority”
- By Amanda on 04-04-23
By: Janina Ramirez
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
- By: Anthony Everitt
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.
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An eloquent man, and a patriot
- By Darwin8u on 01-19-15
By: Anthony Everitt
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The Northwomen
- Untold Stories from the Other Half of the Viking World
- By: Heather Pringle
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Until Scandinavia converted to Christianity and came under the rule of powerful kings, the Vikings were a dominant force in the medieval world. Outfitted with wind-powered sailing ships, they left their mark, spreading terror across Europe, sacking cities, deposing kings, and ransacking economies. But as much as we know about this culture, there is a large missing piece: its women. In this revisionist portrait, science journalist Heather Pringle turns those assumptions on their head, using the latest archaeological research and historical findings to reveal this group as they actually were.
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Worthy of a literary award!
- By Anonymous User on 05-19-25
By: Heather Pringle
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All the Shah's Men
- An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard, Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, Kinzer reveals the involvement of Eisenhower, Churchill, Kermit Roosevelt, and the CIA in Operation Ajax, which restored Mohammad Reza Shah to power. Reza imposed a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection.
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Hard to please
- By Rick on 09-25-04
By: Stephen Kinzer
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Kill Anything That Moves
- The Real American War in Vietnam
- By: Nick Turse
- Narrated by: Don Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."
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A book that shakes you to your core
- By Gary Yevelev on 04-26-15
By: Nick Turse
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Amazons
- Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
- By: Adrienne Mayor
- Narrated by: Fran Tunno
- Length: 16 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Amazons - fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world - were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons.
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Warning: Images NOT Included
- By Linda on 11-25-14
By: Adrienne Mayor
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Founding Partisans
- Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In Founding Partisans, master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.
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Very educational
- By Mark Mears on 02-21-24
By: H. W. Brands
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Unbecoming a Lady
- The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews That Shaped America
- By: Therese Oneill
- Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman, Chanté McCormick
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Slut. Shrew. Sinful. Scold. The 19th- and early 20th-century American women profiled in this collection were called all these names and worse when they were alive. And that’s just fine. These glorious dames earned those monikers, and one hundred years later they can wear them proudly! With irresistible charm and laugh-out-loud impertinence, New York Times bestselling author Therese Oneill chronicles the lives of eighteen unbecoming ladies whose audacity, courage, and sheer disdain for lady-like expectations left them out of so many history books.
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Ida B Wells
- By Teresa Smith-Dixon on 01-06-25
By: Therese Oneill
Wonderful!!!
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This is a really great book. It's great history and great fun.
Another Wonderful Work
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Reminded me I love to learn and read histories
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Fabulous!
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Rome (Emma’s Version)
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Truly lovely. So much information and so fun to learn
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Lovers of the Vulgar History podcast, this one’s for you!
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The Empire from a neglected perspective
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Very informative and filled with humor
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Another banger.
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