With „Lebensbilder römischer Frauen“, Andrea Rottloff presents a welcome addition to the growing literature on women in the ancient world. Her volume offers an intriguing interdisciplinary mix of archaeological material, literary and sub-literary texts, and artistic representations, and it manages to highlight the lives of a number of "ordinary" Roman women that usually do not figure prominently in historical textbooks. Rottloff organizes her material partly chronologically, partly thematically. The first three chapters follow the life of a Roman woman from birth and childhood through engagement and wedding to marriage, divorce, and widowhood. Rottloff’s initial warning, „,Die Römerin‘ gibt es nicht“ (p. 10) is confirmed by the following chapters that focus on the distinctly different lives of affluent women, pagan priests and Christian ascetics, female philosophers and physicians, artisans and artists, women in the Roman provinces, female slaves, and finally women working in disreputable professions such as prostitutes, dancers, and female gladiators. The last chapter of the book returns to the chronological overview of the lives of Roman women by discussing their funerals and typical grave goods.

The book’s strong emphasis on Late Antiquity means that it offers many fascinating glimpses on the experiences of Christian women that get much shorter shrift in comparable works. Another unusual and especially attractive feature are 29 short „portraits“, the „Lebensbilder“ of the book’s title, that interrupt the survey-like main narrative to focus in more detail on individual women. For example, based on a bundle of papyrus documents that were found in 1961 hidden in a cave on the west coast of the Dead Sea, Rottloff sketches the life of an affluent Jewish woman, Babatha, in the Roman province of Arabia during the early second century CE. A silver box from a treasure hoard buried during Alaric’s sack of Rome (410 CE) serves to feature the Roman Proiecta and her relative Pelegrina, members of a senatorial family (pp. 82-84). A tombstone for a little girl from Mainz, the baby of Telesphoris, gives Rottloff the opportunity to discuss her parents' potential origins and trade, the legal status of their relationship, and the typical elements of infant portraits.

The most problematic feature of the book is that it contains no footnotes at all, possibly in an attempt to appeal to a general audience. The author of a quote is usually (albeit not always) mentioned by name. Still, that may not always suffice to track down an interesting reference.1 Similarly, inscriptions lack their CIL, AE, or other identifying numbers. The bibliography is organized thematically to make up for the lack of a scholarly apparatus, but this will satisfy neither the specialist nor the general reader who has no access to a well-stocked research library. Indices would also have increased the usefulness of the book. And finally, readers without classical training would probably have appreciated a glossary of the many untranslated Latin terms as well. Moreover, Rottloff seems to approach some of her sources rather uncritically. For example, on p. 166 she cites "eine Quelle" as evidence for the claim that Roman women were attracted to gladiators, "was diese Frauen lieben, ist das Schwert." This quote comes, of course, from Juvenal's notoriously misogynistic Sixth Satire ("ferrum est quod amant," 6,112) and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The same is true for Martial's hardly credible assertion that someone spent his entire fortune, 100,000 sesterces, for a single female slave (p. 154, cf. Martial. 2,63).

On the whole, however, the book seems well-informed. Rottloff clearly knows the relevant literature.2 As a philologist, I profited especially from her expertise in archaeological matters, in particular her discussion of grave goods, amulets, and jewelry. Rottloff's archaeological expertise shines, for example, when she scrutinizes the evidence for female physicians brought forward by the archaeologist Ernst Künzl and shows that only one grave, a cremation in Cologne, can be securely identified as belonging to a woman doctor (pp. 117-18).

Outright errors exist, but they are few and far between. On p. 15, for example, Rottloff has young men assume the "tunica virilis" instead of the "toga virilis" as a symbol of adulthood. Moreover, her translation of the funeral inscription for the Vestal Virgin Cossinia (AE 1931, 78) on p. 91 contains several mistakes. "Undecies senis quod Vestae paruit annis / hic sita virgo manu populi delata quiescit" means, "Because she obeyed Vesta eleven times six [66] years, the virgin that lies here is resting [here] after being carried to her grave [delata] by the hand of the people."3 Instead of an accurate translation, Rottloff offers a paraphrase of the first line, "nachdem sie 11 Mal ihre Lebenszeit beim Eintritt ins Priesteramt der Vesta gedient hat." Since Vestals entered the priesthood between 6 and 10 years of age, she concludes that this could mean anything from 66 to 110 years of service, which is of course nonsense. Cossinia served 66 years, and she was between 72 and 76 years old when she died.

These kinds of glaring errors are rare, though. Besides, the many well-chosen illustrations alone would be worth the price of purchase. In contrast to the majority of books on Roman women, which are written by English-speaking scholars, Rottloff's book depicts many interesting items held by German and Austrian museums, in Augsburg, Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Dresden, Kempten, Linz, Mainz, Regensburg, Stuttgart, Trier, Vienna, and Würzburg. Moreover, the quality of the pictures, especially those in color, is excellent. I was surprised, however, to find no portraits of Livia and Octavia accompanying their biographies (pp. 56-57). In fact, the quality of the pictures is so good that it allowed me to discover another mistake. In the case of a tomb stone from Cologne (RSK 310), I could see on the photograph that the Longinus, who set up the stone for his wife Bella, describes himself not as "vir illustris", as Rottloff reads, but as "vir illaeius", id est, "her husband".4 Thus Rottloff's comment on the inscription (p. 170) is not quite fair to Longinus: "Der Stein wurde von einem Longinus gesetzt, der sich zwar als 'vir illustris' bezeichnet, nicht aber als Ehemann. Sollte ihm sein Stand wichtiger gewesen sein als seine Beziehung zu Bella?" Such occasional mistakes, however, do not by any means distract from the overall usefulness of the book. It offers a fascinating and very readable introduction into the subject that will interest amateurs and specialists alike.

Anmerkungen:
1 Full references are given only in two cases, both on p. 24.
2 The bibliography is probably not meant to be comprehensive but contains most relevant work up to 2002, plus one item each from 2003, 2004, and 2005. Some omissions are puzzling, though: Not one work by Suzanne Dixon is listed. The chapter on birth could have benefited from the inclusion of: French, Valerie, Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World, in: Skinner, Marilyn (Hg.), Rescuing Creusa. New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity (Helios 13.2), Lubbock 1987, pp. 69-84 <http://www.indiana.edu/~ancmed/midwife.htm>.
3 Rottloff translates "delata manu populi" incorrectly with "gegeben in die Hand des Volkes".
4 The vulgar form "illaeius" appears in a few late Latin inscriptions.