Analysis Of Whores, Wives, And Slaves By Sarah B. Pomeroy

This paper will discuss the well-published work of, Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses,
Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975.
Print. Sarah B. Pomeroy uses this book to educate others about the role women have played throughout ancient history. Pomeroy uses a timeline to go through each role, starting with mythological women, who were called Goddesses. She then talks about some common roles, the whores, wives, and slaves during this time. Pomeroy enlightens the audience on the topic of women, who were seen as nothing at the time. Men were seen as the only crucial part in history; however, Pomeroy 's focus on women portrays the era in a new light.
Pomeroy talks about the reason she wrote the book with the

She uses Roman literature, to find more information about the ruling classes. The chapter goes through the jobs women held and how they varied by social status.
The final chapter of the book reviews the effects of Religion on Roman women. It relates the topic to modern day Italian customs today. Roman religion had two types of cults. The first religion was the native cult that supported what the state said and was supported by the state. The second was the imported oriental cultures. Religion is talked about in a positive way in the book. The roman women sought joy and release from religion and were included in festivities. Women were sacrificed for religion at a young age, they had to be a virgin, though.
Sarah B. Pomeroy states that her book titled Goddesses, Whore, Wives, and Slaves, is the first ever book to be comprehensive in English. She claims that her reasoning for writing this book is that historians and other scholars have lacked information, been biased, and have failed to give different views on women while writing Classical literature. Her goals for this book was to capture the way women lived and were treated during the Greek and Roman worlds. Pomeroy uses evidence from fine arts,

The author, Sarah B. Pomeroy, writes this book in a style that resembles a textbook with many examples. She structures it in a timeline chronologically telling the events and breaking up the subject matter. The book lacked personality, although she had strong opinions that came through when writing the book, the style of writing lacked personality and was hard to read at times. The subject matter I found very interesting, considering it correlated with my class currently. At times, while I read this book, I found myself angry with men because of their brutal and thoughtfulness of women. Pomeroy plays on the heartstrings of women by not including the kind stories

that men did for women during these times, although there were probably few. I would recommend this to others who want to know more about the treatment of women and the roles that they played in history. It is hard for me to believe all that was stated in the book was factual because of the fact women did not write during the time and the written scripts could have been written from a male perspective. As well as that there were not lots of information left behind, and paintings can be hard to