The charismatic Fulvia amassed a degree of military and political power that was unprecedented for a woman in Ancient Rome. Married three times to men who moved in powerful circles, including Marc Antony, Fulvia was not content to play the usual background role that was expected of a wife - instead she challenged the Roman patriarchy and sought to increase her influence in the face of determined opposition.It's rare to know so much about a particular Roman woman, but Fulvia was so ...

This is the first comprehensive study of prosthetics and assistive technology in classical antiquity, integrating literary, documentary, archaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence to provide as full a picture as possible of their importance for the lived experience of people with disabilities in classical antiquity. The volume is not only a work of disability history, but also one of medical, scientific, and technological history, and so will be of interest to members of multiple acade...

In a dream landscape radiant with jewels, a father sees his lost daughter on the far bank of a river: ‘my pearl, my girl’. One of the great treasures of the British Library, the fourteenth-century poem Pearl is a work of poetic brilliance; its account of loss and consolation has retained its force across six centuries. Jane Draycott in her new translation remakes the imaginative intensity of the original. This is, Bernard O’Donoghue says in his introduction, ‘an event of great sig...

Dedicating objects to the divine was a central component of both Greek and Roman religion. Some of the most conspicuous offerings were shaped like parts of the internal or external human body: so-calledanatomical votives. These archaeological artefacts capture the modern imagination, recalling vividly the physical and fragile bodies of the past whilst posing interpretative challenges in the present. This volume scrutinises this distinctive dedicatory phenomenon, bringing together for the f...

Over, Jane Draycott's third book, takes its title from a sequence of twenty-six poems based on the international phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... In these and other pieces Draycott creates a world of echoing voices and reflections. She evokes the mirrors and doorways, dreams and night-time journeys that transform the familiar: entrances into a different reality. Over explores liminal places where ocean meets land, land drops to ravine, lives intersect in piazzas. The poem...

'A thoroughly rapacious woman...as cruel as she is greedy' Cicero' A woman who took no thought for spinning or housekeeping...m eddlesome and headstrong' Plutarch' [She] caused the death of many, both to satisfy her enmity and to gain their wealth ' Cassius Dio' She acted in a haughty manner towards those who were placing her i...

Jane Draycott's translation of Pearl reissued as a Carcanet ClassicA Poetry Book Society Recommended TranslationIn a dream landscape radiant with jewels, a father sees his lost daughter on the far bank of a river: "my pearl, my girl." One of the great treasures of the British Library, the fourteenth-century poem Pearl is a work of poetic brilliance; its account of loss and consolation has retained its force across six centuries. Jane Draycott in her new tran...

The first modern biography of one of the most fascinating, and unjustly neglected, female rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene. Princess, prisoner, African queen – and surviving daughter of Cleopatra VII.In 1895, archaeologists excavating a villa at Boscoreale, outside Pompeii, uncovered a spectacular hoard of high-quality Roman silverware. In the centre of one especially fine gilded dish was a bust of a female figure with thick curly hair, deep-set eyes, ...

The first biography of one of the most fascinating, and unjustly neglected, female rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene. Princess, prisoner, African queen – and surviving daughter of Cleopatra VII.In 1895, archaeologists excavating a villa outside Pompeii unearthed a hoard of Roman silverware. Among the treasures was a bowl featuring a female figure with thick, curly hair, deep-set eyes, a slightly hooked nose and a strong jaw, and sporting an elephant scalp headdress. Mod...

The Kingdom of Jane Draycott's fifth collection is clearly a world we know, altered a little by Draycott's distinctive, prismatic lyricism, whose loving attention to place and our moment is skewed in a way that opens the world afresh. Here are England's towns and countryside, roads and ports and sushi chains, yards and herbs, an airport and a columbarium, and poems that consider art in a time of plague by way of meditation on Titian, Apollinaire and Derek Jarman.

Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy examines the roles that the home, the garden and the members of the household (freeborn, freed and slave) played in the acquisition and maintenance of good physical and mental health and well-being. Focussing on the period from the middle Republic to the early Empire, it considers how comprehensive the ancient Roman general understanding of health actually was, and studies how knowledge regarding various aspects of health was transm...

Following the success of her T. S. Eliot Prize-nominated Over and award-winning translation of the medieval Pearl, Jane Draycott returns with her fourth collection of poems, The Occupant. With a rhythmic subtlety and metrical poise that have become hallmarks of her verse, Draycott hints at the existence of a world of dreamlike clarity underneath our own. In the National Gallery a gardener cuts away the flower from a still-life canvas to replant in his own garden; in an abandoned sanatorium...