Elodie Harper, Women of Ancient Rome Wanted Freedom – Books
(by Mauretta Capuano) (ANSA) – ROME, DECEMBER 10 – A dive into ancient history, in Pompeii, to tell how women have always fought for their dignity. This is what Elodie Harper makes us do in ‘Lupe di Pompei’ (Fazi Editore), the first novel of a trilogy that revealed the English journalist and writer to the public and critics.
“We all take it for granted that in the classical world women accepted things as they went. This thought bothered me even as a girl. When I began to study the Roman world closely, I realized instead that the women of Rome have always tried to win more freedom”. You tell ANSA Elodie Harper, today a guest at the Fair Più libri più libera alla Nuvola in Rome, that you will finish tomorrow.
“The thing I care most about is showing how much humanity there was in them” explains Harper who tells the story of Amara, the daughter of a doctor who, on the death of her father, is sold into slavery and prostitutes herself in the brothel of Pompeii where he meets other girls, each with their own story, but she doesn’t give up.
“The main motivation was to write about the lives of women and female slaves. The documentation we have available from classical sources is not much, but objects and environments have come down to us that did not only concern patrician life. They were even rooms and rooms where the slaves lived have been preserved. Pompeii is a lost world however, thanks also to the continuous discoveries that are made, it allows for a journey through time. I am a very visual author and have a place available that you can see and visit it was an ideal setting” says the author in first place in the British charts with this book that has sold 100,000 copies in less than a year , being published in 16 countries and among the most viewed on TikTok , in the wake of the The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. “In the case of my book, it’s not about mythology but about portraying the daily life of these women. But the principle is the same, looking at the past, looking at antiquity from a female point of view. A book set in Roman Pompeii cannot do without mythology anyway because it is everywhere: statues, paintings of gods. Daily life is infused with representations of gods and myth,” says Harper.
“TikTok: it’s a very democratic phenomenon, it comes from the readers directly. In particular, there are young women at the root.
We have all grown up with the stories of ancient mythology, however women have always struggled to see themselves reflected in these tales of mythical heroes” she underlines. Each chapter is opened by quotations from classical authors “and also from the same period as the events told. I studied Latin literature and the texts all have to do with what happens in that specific chapter. And then there are the Pompeian graffiti to make the daily voice of the people who live in Pompeii heard.
I created the character of Pliny using the voice that I seemed to catch from his Natural History to make him a living and real person. In any case, the quotes shouldn’t force anyone to read those texts, they’re an extra,” says Harper who has had an option on the rights to a television series.
In the second volume, already released in England and the United States, which will be released in Italy next spring again by Fazi, “Amara has become a courtesan and therefore has climbed a few steps socially, however the relationship between her and her former companions is still central to the story, especially with Victoria. If in this first book the point of observation was survival, now the book focuses on her life choices and in particular on the importance of romantic love” anticipates the writer.
After all, ‘Le Lupe di Pompei’ is a book about friendship: “the women of the brothel were forced to stay close to each other, to help each other to survive. I wanted to tell not only the suffering but also their friendship because when talk about prostitutes always talk about them in relation to their relationships with males. But surely when these women seek support and relief and a minimum of rest from their condition it can only come from others like them. Amara and Dido were both born free and became slaves only in that context. Certainly this is an element of friction with the others” underlines the writer. (HANDLE).
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