Empresses-in-Waiting comprises case studies of late antique empresses, female members of imperial dynasties, and female members of the highest nobility of the late Roman empire, ranging from the fourth to the seventh centuries AD. Situated in the context of the broader developments of scholarship on late antique and byzantine empresses, this volume explores the political agency, religious authority, and influence of imperial and near-imperial women within the Late Roman imperial court, which is understood as a complex spatial, social, and cultural system, the centre of patronage networks, and an arena for elite competition. The studies explore female performance and representation in literary and visual media as well as in court ceremonial, and discuss the opportunities and constraints of female power within a male dominated court environment and the broader realms of imperial activity. By focusing on imperial women, the volume not only addresses questions of gendered rhetoric and agency but throws into relief general dynamics in the exercise of imperial power during a period in which the classical Mediterranean world at large, as well as the Roman monarchy, underwent crucial transformations.

An Open Access version of the Lewis Dagnall’s chapter The Empress Sophia and East Roman Foreign Policy will be available on publication on the Liverpool University Press website.

Table des matières :

Christian Rollinger and Nadine Viermann, Empresses-in-Waiting? An Introduction

Anja Wieber, Towards a history of scholarship on late antique imperial women –From Theodora, the tigress to matronage

Mads Lindholmer, Constructing Power through Rituals: The Case of Theodora

Pavla Drapelova, Empresses on Early Byzantine coins (6th to 7th centuries): Evidence of Power?

Silvia Holm, Empress with Agency: Eusebia’s Efforts to Consolidate the Constantinian Dynasty

Belinda Washington, John Chrysostom’s Letter to a Young Widow: Reflections on Imperial Women Roles at Regime Change 106

Silvio Roggo, The Empress Sophia Reconsidered

Lewis Dagnall, The Empress Sophia and East Roman Foreign Policy

Nadine Viermann, Dynasty, Endogamy and Civil Strife: Martina Augusta and the Role of Imperial Women in the Early Seventh Century

Geoffrey Nathan, Augusta unrealized: Anicia Juliana and the Logistics of Place

Christopher Lilington-Martin, Antonina patricia: Theodora’s Fixer at the Female Court and the Politics of Gender in Procopius

Marco Cristini, Matasuintha: From Gothic Queen to Imperial Woman

Julia Hillner, Epilogue: Imperial Women After Curtains

Informations pratiques :

Empresses-in-Waiting. Female Power and Performance at the Late Roman Court, éd. Christian Rollinger Nadine Viermann, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2024 ; 1 vol., 352 p. (Women in Ancient Cultures). ISBN : 978-1-80207-593-9. Prix : GBP 107,00.

Source : Liverpool university Press