October - 2026

Brill’s Companion to Ancient Women and War in the Mediterranean World (Brill, 2025, pp. xxiv, 620, $217.00), edited by Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller, is a collection of studies on the relationship between women and warfare in the ancient world. Designed to challenge stereotypes regarding women’s participation in ancient conflicts—which often cast them merely as victims or transgressors—the studies in this volume encompass a diverse range of regions, time periods, themes, and source materials. Spanning from ancient Mesopotamia to the Roman Empire of the fourth century, and covering topics such as war-associated goddesses, women’s active involvement in conflicts, literary texts, iconographic representations, and material culture, the collection offers a rich overview of recent scholarly debates on the subject. For those interested in an approach “from below,” the volume includes notable studies on sexual violence against women in wartime, the presence of women in military camps, the experiences of widows of fallen soldiers, and the roles women played in intelligence operations—gathering and disseminating strategic information.

In Intellectual Property: Learned Slaves and Educated Freedmen in Republican Rome (Princeton University Press, 2025, p. 264, $39.95), Harriet Flower examines a variety of textual sources to investigate the lives of highly literate enslaved people and freedmen in Republican Rome. From the flute player Licinius—who shaped the rhetorical style of Gaius Gracchus—to the teacher and grammarian Tyrannio of Amisus, who was brought to Rome as a prisoner of war, the author maps the networks of relationships in which these literate enslaved individuals and freedmen were embedded. She explores how slavery shaped their intellectual trajectories, the high value the Roman slave system placed upon them, and the diverse roles they played. Regarding their activities, Flower highlights, among other things, their proximity to influential figures, their work as co-authors and collaborators on literary texts across various genres, and their achievements as authors in their own right—well-recognized in their own time.