Pliny's Women Constructing Virtue and Creating Identity in the Roman World

Pliny's Women provides a comprehensive consideration of the many women who appear in the letters of Pliny the Younger. Combining detailed prosopography with close literary analysis, Jacqueline Carlon examines the identities of the women whom Pliny includes and how they and the men with whom they are associated contribute both to this presentation of exemplary Romans and particularly to his own self-promotion. Virtually all of the named women in Pliny's nine-book corpus are considered. They form six distinct groups: those associated with opposition to the principate; the family of Pliny's mentor, Corellius Rufus; his own family members; women involved in testamentary disputes; ideal wives; and women of unseemly character. Detailed analysis of each letter mentioning women includes the identity of its recipient and everyone named within, its disposition within the collection, Pliny's language and style, and its significance to our perception of the changing social fabric of the early principate.

1. Pliny: enemy of tyrants; 2. Pliny: model protégé; 3. Pliny: champion of the vulnerable; 4. Pliny: creator of the ideal wife; 5. Pliny: arbiter of virtue.

Jacqueline Carlon is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In addition to awards for her teaching, Dr Carlon has received the Rallis Award from the Boston University Humanities Foundation and the 2008 Barlow-Beech Award for Distinguished Service to the Classical Association of New England, of which she was president in 2005.