[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
In a trenchant recent essay on the history of philosophy, the intellectual historian Sophie Smith has neatly skewered ‘the women’s recovery industry’: that is, the tendency of popular historiography to employ the trope of ‘forgotten women’ who have been ‘lost to history’. Such rhetoric not infrequently erases decades or generations of (often precarious) academic work on these historical figures.[1] The editors of this new collection on imperial women in late antiquity are too astute—and much too cognisant of the history of scholarship—to fall into this trap. In their introduction, Christian Rollinger and Nadine Viermann set out a dense scholarly archaeology, while stressing the dangers of a related cliché, beloved of biographical studies: the ‘exceptional’ female political actor (3). In the context of the recent flourishing of critical work, they set out the contribution of the volume as closer attention to the institutional context of these women’s agency: the imperial court. ‘The analyses here have in common that they step away from gendered and, at times, misogynistic rhetoric and instead try to uncover the underlying mechanisms of female involvement in imperial politics and court procedure that are telling not only with regard to these women, but also with regard to the functioning of imperial rule at large.’ (13) The individual chapters pursue this goal with varying degrees of success.
In the first chapter (which doubles as a second introduction), Anja Wieber offers a pointed summary of historiographical developments: from ‘fairy tale’ (15; not to mention, misogynistic) approaches, through to structural accounts and the deconstruction of the bad empress. Wieber provides a handy primer on debates around the public or private status of the empress (both and neither) and the place of women in the palace (flexibly segregated), before defending her own coinage of ‘matronage’ as a term of art for their political influence.
Part I follows directly on from Wieber’s analysis in considering imperial women engaged in ‘political brokerage’. Silvia Holm (ch. 2) persuasively recontextualises the role of Eusebia in the regime of her husband, Constantius II. Eschewing the ‘stereotypical selfless mediator’ (47) depicted in a panegyric by Julian and the ‘power-hungry schemer’ (47) of Ammianus, Libanius and Zosimus, Holm outlines the empress’s role as a ‘politically active representative of imperial rule’ (46). Her account of Eusebia’s support for Julian is particularly persuasive in showing how the empress’s interests (future protection) coincided with those of the regime (expanding the imperial college). Belinda Washington (ch. 3) uses John Chrysostom’s Letter to a Young Widow as the point of departure for a study of imperial women after fourth-century regime change. Washington stresses that they generally avoided execution or penal exile (unlike imperial women in earlier periods of Roman history). Indeed, many were the target of marriage proposals, which were portrayed by John as an occupational hazard for elite widows more broadly (68).
Silvio Roggo (ch. 4) and Lewis Dagnall (ch. 5) each revisit the supposed political dominance of Sophia during the reign of her husband, Justin II. Neither study seeks to deny outright her significance, especially after Justin’s retreat from active rulership after 573 due to some form of mental illness. Roggo convincingly argues that modern depictions of Sophia as a ‘regent’—and her supposed attempt to coerce Justin’s new co-ruler, Tiberius, into marriage—reflect a too credulous reading of John of Ephesus’ character assassination in the Ecclesiastical History. While Roggo suggests that Sophia’s influence waned after Tiberius’ appointment in 574, Dagnall detaches her from Justin II’s bellicose (and disastrous) foreign policy prior between 565 and 573. His study is convincing in attributing to Sophia the implementation of renewed payments to foreign rulers during the political crisis of 573/574. Finally, Nadine Viermann (ch. 6) traces the political manoeuvring of Martina during an even more devastating combination of power vacuum and external invasion: the death of her husband, Heraclius in 641 amid the Arab conquests. As with Holm on Eusebia, Viermann reads between the lines of hostile near-contemporary sources to narrate the actions of ‘a woman who tried to break out of her ascribed role as wife and mother and assert her position in Constantinople’s political landscape’ (154). The failure of these efforts to take over ‘the emperor’s core responsibilities’ (153) during her son’s minority meant an end to their rule, mutilation, and exile.
The chapters in Part II consider ‘Performance and Representation’. Mads Ortving Lindholmer (ch. 7) seeks to vindicate Procopius’ claims that Theodora was included alongside Justinian in the admission rituals of the imperial assemblies and that this was a political novelty. Lindholmer suggests that the performance of subservience to the empress at this ‘daily ritual’ (171) could have been ‘internalized’ by the imperial couple’s service aristocracy (174). Meanwhile, Pavla Gkantzios Drápelová (ch. 8) explores the reappearance of augustae on imperial coinage under Justin II and Sophia after a notable gap of seventy-four years. This was a slight return: late sixth- and seventh-century empresses only feature on copper coinage, and Sophia is the only one named; with her exception, they are portrayed as an ‘abstract symbol’ (194) of ‘dynastic continuity’ (193).
Part III considers ‘non- and near-imperial women’ (a slightly awkward term, given the broad definition of ‘imperial women’ offered in the introduction). Geoffrey Nathan (ch. 9) uses the prominent late fifth- and early sixth-century Constantinopolitan aristocrat Anicia Juliana as a ‘control’ (206) on the agency of empresses. This is a trenchant and carefully argued piece, although I am not totally convinced its central conceit holds. In Nathan’s account, Juliana’s independence of action in rebuking the bishop of Rome, directing monumental building, and cultivating a masculine imperial image of authority in fact surpass the possibilities for an imperial consort (esp. 222). Christopher Lillington-Martin (ch. 10) seeks to reconstruct the role of Antonina, wife of the general Belisarius, within the Justinianic regime’s structures of power. His account of her career is suggestive, if qualified by an inevitable reliance on some of the most dubious passages of Procopius’ invective. Marco Cristini (ch. 11) traces the textual presentation, dynastic use, and potential agency of the Gothic princess Matasuintha across her career in Ravenna and Constantinople. His conjectures include a religious vow before her coerced marriage to Witigis (at 247) and her marriage to Germanus in 549 as an indication of Justinian’s choice of the latter as his heir (254-56).
A ‘Conclusion’ by Julia Hillner draws out the themes of the volume (and is worth the price of admission on its own). Hillner offers provisional remarks on a series of problems which require granular study across the late third to early seventh centuries: the presentation of the imperial couple as a political unit; the presence or absence of imperial women in political and ceremonial spaces; the form that their ‘dynastic potential’[2] took (whether as mere symbols or, more practically, custodians of institutional memory, political connections, and insignia of office); and their exposure to violence, especially during regime changes.
Empresses-in-Waiting is a welcome addition to critical study of female political actors and the intersection of gender and political history in late antiquity. As a historian teaching in a (depressingly) monoglot environment, I commend this trans-national group of scholars for making the fruits of European (and especially German) historiography on imperial women more accessible to students and researchers in Anglophone contexts. Their close readings will inform the next round of work, not only on the likes of Eusebia and Sophia, but also imperial women more broadly. With this future work in mind, Hillner’s envoi has the unintended outcome of highlighting one issue with the composition of the volume. Although these essays are intended to move from the individual to the structural—or, perhaps better, the interplay between the two—the focus of most chapters on a single imperial woman unavoidably pulls the analysis back towards the biographical. These specific empresses and members of imperial and aristocratic dynasties have been chosen because of their distinctive—dare I say it, ‘exceptional’—political agency and representation. Yet what exactly might be considered ‘normal’ for an imperial woman is something of a moving target (compare Nathan, 205). This problem is crystallised by varying approaches to the hostile representation of imperial women, a basic starting point for most chapters. Does such invective ‘discredit’ the actions of an individual like Theodora and close off routes for her successors to exercise ‘matronage’ (e.g. Viermann, at 153)? Or is its virulence an index of the efficacy of her ceremonial presentation (e.g. Lindholmer, at 171-74)? Might its repetition across these three centuries be a sign that such political activities were actually ‘normal’? As Hillner’s conclusion suggests, these are live questions without straightforward answers. A more diachronic approach to particular facets of female political agency and representation—as practised by Washington and Gkantzios Drápelová in their essays—might help to move these debates forward. The studies in Empresses-in-Waiting will surely help to set the terms for those future syntheses.
Authors and Titles
Introduction
Empresses-in-Waiting? An Introduction (Christian Rollinger and Nadine Viermann)
Towards a History of Scholarship on Late Antique Imperial Women: From Theodora, the Tigress to Matronage (Anja Wieber)
Section 1: Political Agency and Power Brokerage
Empress with Agency: Eusebia’s Efforts to Consolidate the Constantinian Dynasty (Silvia Holm)
John Chrysostom’s Letter to a Young Widow: Reflections on Imperial Women’s Roles at Regime Change (Belinda Washington)
The Empress Sophia Reconsidered (Silvio Roggo)
The Empress Sophia and East Roman Foreign Policy (Lewis Dagnall)
Dynasty, Endogamy, and Civil Strife: Martina Augusta and the Role of Imperial Women in the Early Seventh Century (Nadine Viermann)
Section 2: Performance and Representation
Constructing Power through Rituals: The Case of Theodora (Mads Ortving Lindholmer)
Empresses on Early Byzantine Coins (Sixth to Seventh Centuries): Evidence of Power? (Pavla Gkantzios Drápelová)
Section 3: Non- and Near-Imperial Women at the Imperial Court
Augusta Unrealized: Anicia Juliana and the Logistics of Place (Geoffrey Nathan)
Antonina Patricia: Theodora’s Fixer at the Female Court and the Politics of Gender in Procopius (Christopher Lillington-Martin)
Matasuintha: From Gothic Queen to Imperial Woman (Marco Cristini)
Conclusion
Imperial Women after Curtains (Julia Hillner)
Notes
[1] Sophie Smith, ‘A Comet That Bodes Mischief’, London Review of Books, 25 April 2024, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/sophie-smith/a-comet-that-bodes-mischief
[2] This phrase is from Anja Busch, Die Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie. Macht und Repräsentation kaiserlicher Frauen im 5. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, 2015, 214-17.