Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives

Everyone can name a couple made up of famous, rich, or powerful partners, who cultivate a joint media image which is stronger than either of their individual identities. Since the 1980s they have been known as "power couples". Yet while the term is recent, the concept is not. More than 2,000 years ago, Greeks and Romans became aware of the media potential of couples and used it as an instrument to reinforce political power. Notable examples are Philip II of Macedonia and Olympias, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, or the Emperor Augustus and his wife Livia.Power Couples in Antiquity brings together the reflections of ten specialists on Greek and Roman power couples from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE. It is focused on the birth and the development of the "ruling couple" in the Hellenistic Greek kingdoms and in Rome between the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. By taking some emblematic cases, this book analyses the redistribution of public and private roles within these couples, examines the sentimental bonds or the relations of domination established between partners, explores how these relationships played out in private, and highlights the many common points between ancient and contemporary power couples. This book offers a fascinating insight into power dynamics in the ancient world, exploring not only the subtleties within these often complex relationships, but also their relationships with their subjects through the cultivation and manipulation of their joint public image.

About the Author

Anne Bielman Sánchez has been Professor of Ancient History at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, since 2005. Her research focuses on social problematics, especially on female public activities in the Greek Hellenistic world and in the Republican Roman world: queens, priestesses, female magistrates, and benefactors. Works include Inventer le pouvoir féminin: Cléopâtre I et Cléopâtre II, reines d’Egypte au IIe s. av. J.-C. (2015, co-authored with Giuseppina Lenzo) and Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome (2016, co-edited with Isabelle Cogitore and Anne Kolb). From 2016 to 2019, she is leading a project funded by the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research (FNS) that explores the phenomena of "couples" in Greco-Roman antiquity.