Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity

First published in the 1970s, Sarah B. Pomeroy’s Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves was a pioneering attempt to place women at the centre of the history of classical antiquity. Drawing on literary, legal and historical evidence, Pomeroy reconstructs women’s lives across ancient Greece and Rome and asks how status, law, family, labour and social expectations shaped their experiences.

The study ranges from women represented in myth and literature to wives, workers, enslaved women and those whose lives are only faintly visible in sources largely written by men. It examines both the realities of daily life and the ideals ancient societies constructed around gender, revealing substantial differences across periods, communities and social classes. A foundational work in the study of women in antiquity, the book remains an important introduction to questions that transformed the way historians approach the classical world.