The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World

One of The Smithsonian’s 10 best history books of 2024

One of BBC History Magazine's best books of 2024

“Thoroughly researched and sprightly…. a complete history of the [Mediterranean world] with the women added back in, as they always should have been.”—The New York Times

A dazzlingly ambitious history of the ancient world that places women at the center—from Cleopatra to Boudica, Sappho to Fulvia, and countless other artists, writers, leaders, and creators of history

Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other 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 and 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 three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian 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, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage.

Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist and the author of The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation. She read Classics at Oxford before receiving an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and her PhD from UCL. She lives in London, England. Her website is www.daisydunn.co.uk.