Women and the Polis: Public Honorific Inscriptions for Women in the Greek Cities from the Late Classical to the Roman Period

This work is the first complete corpus of Greek inscriptions issued by city institutions in honour of their female citizens and foreigners, with the exclusion of Hellenistic queens and women belonging to families of the Roman magistrates. The corpus lists 1131 women fulfilling such criteria. The Greek texts are accompanied by lemmata, English translations and relevant commentaries. Based on the collected evidence, the authors analyse the phenomenon of honorific inscriptions for women as an important symptom of change of citizen mentality. Pointing to the political context in which such honours were bestowed, the phrasing of the texts, character of praiseworthy actions, and the fact that these honours were carved in stone and set up in conspicuous places in cities all reflect what the male part of the city populace thought about women in general and their presence in public spaces in particular. The book is a helpful resource for all those interested in ancient history, social history, and gender studies.