Women and Monarchy in Macedonia

by Elizabeth Donnelly Carney

The American Historical Review writes, "Elizabeth Donnelly Carneys book presents an exhaustive account of the careers and identities of the royal women of ancient Macedonia from the beginnings of the Argead dynasty in the sixth century B.C.E. to the defeat of the last Antigonid king by the Romans in the second century B.C.E., discussing in total some forty-two women from the relatively well known to the completely obscure. In her first seven chapters, Carney alternates between a main narrative, with a chronological, institutional emphasis, and individual biographical essays or inserts that consider motivation and personal perspective. The inserts actually comprise the majority of the text of these chapters (in the twenty-five pages of chapter six, for example, there are roughly eighteen pages of insert on seven different women). The dual approach also extends to the book as a whole; the biographical approach dominates the first part of the book, while the final two chapters abandon the biographical approach for analytical narrative.