A Women's History of Ancient World

Host Mitch Jeserich welcomes British researcher, historian, and critic Daisy Dunn (about), an award-winning classicist and the author of The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World. Her website is daisydunn.co.uk.

• AUDIO: Women in the Ancient World | KPFA

The Missing Thread

Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, a magisterial new history of the ancient world told, for the very first time, through women.

For centuries, men have been writing histories (his story) of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors, and kings. But when it comes to incorporating women, aside from Cleopatra and Boudica, writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones.

While Penelope and Helen of Troy live on in the imagination, their real-life counterparts have been relegated to the margins.

In The Missing Thread, researcher Daisy Dunn inverts this tradition and puts the women of history at the center of the narrative. These pages present Enheduanna, the earliest named author, Telesilla, who defended her city from attack, and the gay poet Sappho.

Here is Artemisia I of Caria, sole female commander in the Graeco-Persian Wars, and Locusta, Rome’s premier toxicologist. Cleopatra may be the more famous, but Fulvia, Mark Antony’s wife in Rome, fought a war on his behalf.

Many other women remain nameless but integral. Through new examination of the sources combined with vivid storytelling, Daisy Dunn shows us the ancient world through fresh eyes and introduces us to an incredible cast of ancient women, weavers of an entire world.

Around 4,000 years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over 1,000 years later, Sappho wrote great poems of gay longing and desire.

For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women — whether they were simply sitting at their looms knitting at home or participating in the highest echelons of power — were up to something much more interesting than most histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.

In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines. It is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon.

Spanning 3,000 years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor (Anatolia, Turkiye), from the Persian Empire (Achaemenid Empire) to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire.

The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history (her story), and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage. More

• PRESS: Daisy Dunn: author, historian, journalist
• The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World
• Guest Daisy Dunn, Host Mitch Jeserich, Letters & Politics (KPFA.org), Berkeley, CA, 10:00-11:00 am, April 24, 2025; Dhr. Seven and Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly