Race, Gender, and Queenship in Book 2 of Vitruvius’s de Architectura

This paper engages with intersectional feminist theory to explore how Vitruvius’s story about the Carian queen Artemisia II in Book 2 of De Architectura illuminates first-century B.C.E. Roman attitudes of hostility towards non-Roman women in spaces of political power—especially given what would have...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arethusa 2022-12, Vol.55 (1), p.19-45
Main Author: Kim, Patricia Eunji
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
1st century
Attitudes
Cleopatra (69-30 BC)
Feminism
Gender
Hellenistic
Intersectionality
Political power
Queens
Race
Roman civilization
Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio)
Women
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Summary:This paper engages with intersectional feminist theory to explore how Vitruvius’s story about the Carian queen Artemisia II in Book 2 of De Architectura illuminates first-century B.C.E. Roman attitudes of hostility towards non-Roman women in spaces of political power—especially given what would have been the recent defeat of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. The paper has two goals: first, I argue that first-century B.C.E. accounts of queen ship configure Artemisia and Cleopatra as raced and gendered embodiments of opposition to the idealized image of Roman imperial masculinity. Second, I demonstrate how race-oriented feminist frameworks can productively bear on historical analyses and classical studies.
ISSN:0004-0975
1080-6504
1080-6504
DOI:10.1353/are.2022.0001