Pregnancy and birth are experiences woven into our fabric of life; on a universal scale these are an essential part of human reproduction, but underlying this is a complex, multi-layered and intersecting milieu, with political, socio-cultural, religious and personal factors influencing these events both in the past and today. Despite being typically celebrated occasions, pregnancy and childbirth were, and remain, some of the most precarious and risky moments for both mother and offspring alike. The vivid depiction of an expectant mother — both anxious and excited for what is to come — is one that transcends temporal bounds.

In Birthing Romans Anna Bonnell Freidin adeptly explores the varied ways in which pregnancy and childbirth were experienced, conceptualized and managed in ancient Rome during the first three centuries AD. Empathetic and compassionate in its depiction and exploration of women’s lives, this book is richly diverse in its perspectives and sources, highlighting the variable ways women, their familial and care networks, as well as wider society navigated, embraced and perceived childbearing. Integrating medical texts, funerary inscriptions, poetry, linguistics, religious doctrine, astronomy, votive objects, and more, Bonnell Freidin adopts a multifocal lens to explore pregnancy and childbirth two thousand years ago. Successfully amalgamating the array of challenges, considerations and roles that women, expectant mothers, and those who survived childbirth could and/or would be expected to subsume, this book expertly considers the complex intersection between these in personal, public, religious, and even legal contexts. As Bonnell Freidin herself states ‘…birth is a lynchpin in the (in)stability of orders personal, imperial and cosmic’ (p. 260).

Emerging from Birthing Romans is thus both a personal and public depiction of pregnancy and childbirth in the Roman Empire, with explorations of individual apprehensions, anticipation and preparations for these events, alongside a clear portrayal regarding the more generalized Roman preoccupation around hierarchy and order, where an individual’s role and place in society had far reaching legal, imperial and social implications. What materializes from Bonnell Fredin’s work is a messy picture — not a homogenous illustration of pregnancy and childbirth but a tapestry of experiences (chosen or dictated). Acknowledging that unique and individual narratives are often too ephemeral to grasp in full, Bonnell Freidin captures the diversity of experience through the voices of numerous women; from elites to those of lower status, from those Roman born to those assimilated into the empire, and of both free and enslaved women. Revealed through these narratives are shared experiences of both the beauty and tragedy of pregnancy and birth. Subsequently, what becomes centrally apparent is that pregnancy, childbirth, and women’s bodies more generally, are enmeshed and moulded by an array of endogenous and exogenous factors, embodying the realities of life in the Roman world and influenced by the hierarchy of the Roman Imperial system.

Birthing Romans is structured into five primary chapters, with each focussing on a central theme, yet woven throughout is the story of Veturia. We meet Veturia in the introduction — a real Roman woman, whose epitaph relays that she gave birth to six children, five of whom perished, with Veturia herself only 27 years of age upon death. The stark reality of childbearing (and the risks of being a woman) in the Roman world is instantly laid before us.

In Chapter 1 the roles of women in Roman society are explored, demonstrating how the demand for them to be wives and mothers is entwined with male and wider social expectations. Discussion includes the biological risks and realities of young marriage and childbearing, as well as short birth spacing and the relentless cycle of pregnancy often experienced (including Veturia). Reduced life expectancy and the likelihood of infant mortality is considered, with mourning and loss integrated within the reproductive life cycle. From here, Chapter 2 adopts a more theoretical approach, focussing on two metaphysical analogies of pregnancy and childbirth — landscapes and waterscapes. These analogies link childbearing to either seasonal crop cycles (e.g. sowing, tending and harvesting) or perceive pregnancy as a voyage, one that is unknown, and potentially both rewarding and risky. Though a little abstract, Bonnell Fredin explores these metaphors and the reality of how such theoretical concepts impacted on physical practice, behaviours and recommended actions for pregnant women in the Roman Empire. Chapter 3 subsequently centres on the communities of care and the roles of midwives, family, friend and kin networks during pregnancy and labour, as well as highlighting which women would likely have had (and not have) access to these. Material objects associated with childbearing are the focus of Chapter 4. Referring to these objects as ‘technologies of hope’, Bonnell Freidin explores how votive offerings, particularly amulets, were used prior, during and after childbirth. The final chapter, Chapter 5, explores the reality and emotion of infant loss. Here it becomes evident how much hope, anticipation and even expectation was placed on Roman offspring. This section discusses the ways in which Romans attempted to mitigate blame, exploring the transactional relationships between the human and divine, where justification and responsibility of infant loss become interlinked with fate.

Birthing Romans is an intimate and detailed exploration of women’s lives utilizing a theoretically informed framework to explore ideas of identity, social status, risk, blame, communities of care, divine and material offerings, and medical treatment in some of the most precarious moments of a woman’s life, pregnancy and childbirth. This book is ambitious in scale, covering a lot of ground, but doing so intricately and carefully. Ultimately, this book makes us keenly aware of the complex world that Romans existed in, where individual wishes and choices operated within a system of strict hierarchical regulation. Throughout Bonnell Freidin juxtaposes concepts to immerse the reader in the duality of Roman life, exploring maternal experiences through these varying perspectives (e.g. private and public, male and female, human and divine, fate and fortune, birth and death). The impact of Birthing Romans on the reader is visceral — the thread of human connection is clearly drawn between then and now; the same feelings of anxiety, anticipation, fear and hope likely course through the veins of women today, just as they did 2000 years ago.

Claire M. Hodson

Durham University

claire.m.hodson@durham.ac.uk