Uncivil

A lively, propulsive chronicle that reframes a familiar period in ancient history, a time of great political and social turmoil—the end of the Roman Republic—asking a simple question: what did Rome’s civil wars look like from the women’s point of view?
Previous histories of Rome have focused on the warring generals involved in the sixty years of near-constant civil war: Caesar, Brutus, Mark Antony, and Octavian. Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen, is one of the only female names associated with Rome’s civil wars. Yet these vast political and social disruptions had equally dramatic consequences for the elite women of the time—the wives, daughters, and mothers of the empire’s leaders.

Uncivil retells Rome's civil wars from the point of view of the women who lived through them—not as footnotes to the careers of great men, but as agents, survivors and, in some cases, formidable political operators in their own right. Across the most unstable decades in Roman history, women of every rank—aristocratic, middle-class and freed slaves—were deployed to serve men's ambitions, their marriages brokered, their loyalties traded, their losses unmourned.

Organized around individual women—among them Fulvia, Octavia and Cleopatra—Joan Smith's history is radical in its reframing. Cleopatra emerges not as the seductive foreign threat of Augustan myth but as a capable strategist who came within reach of becoming Rome's first empress. Others are revealed as figures of unexpected power, making consequential decisions under conditions of repeated grief and loss.

Bracingly revisionist and compulsively readable, this is Roman history as it has rarely been told.

Women of Ancient Rome, Revealed: A groundbreaking history of the fall of the Roman Republic told through the lives of elite women caught in—and shaping—decades of civil war.

A Fresh Perspective on the Roman Civil Wars: Looks beyond Caesar, Brutus, Mark Antony, and Octavian to the wives and daughters used as political currency in a violent age.

Feminist History: Goes beyond traditional, male-oriented chronicles focusing on strategy, maneuvers, and bloodshed to reveal the personal costs of war on those caught in its wake.

Cleopatra and Her Roman Counterparts: Centers on Fulvia, Octavia, and Cleopatra—three women who resisted limits and wielded power in a system designed to silence them.

Revisionist History with Modern Themes: Explores gender, propaganda, sexual slander, and historical bias—revealing how women who challenged norms were punished in life and memory.