Author's Response

Initially, Flemming acknowledges the template of feminist approaches in the widely known studies by Joan Scott and Judith Butler, but perceptive readers will note that Flemming does not implant any modern paradigms of gender or sex as basic in her analysis (Medicine, pp. 22-25 with nn. 40-45). In fact, she carefully qualifies the use of such paradigms, writing, "This focus on the failure of the past to conform to the present is, however, maintained at the expense of the successes of self-conformity, the various ways the past has worked in its own terms, with its own orderings of its own concepts and categories" (Medicine, p. 13, citing Park and Nye's criticism of Laqueur). Moreover, "[it is] better . . . to look at what aspects of human existence, as it was then understood (italics Flemming), are implicated in this appeal [to nature], are thus made natural, and which remain outside it, are considered conventional, or otherwise non-natural in some way" (p. 17).

Flemming demonstrates her sensitive response to modern blueprints proposed by students of gender by stating that ". . . societies have been (and still are) concerned, in different ways and to different degrees, with the categories of male and female, with what it is, what it means, to be a woman or a man . . . this inevitable but variable facet of social organization [is what] Scott designates, in its entirety, as gender, [and] this all-encompassing concept, as given further depth by Butler . . . will be adopted in the present study . . ." [but] "The Reference to Butler is not to suggest, after all, that the apparatus of gender will function in the Roman context as it does now . . ." (p. 24). [End Page 877] [Begin Page 879]

Flemming does not pick and choose her sources on the theories of gender, any more than she selects only those ancient texts that suit such purposes: she carefully melds arguments from modern theory into a more inclusive context for understanding a Greek or Latin tract. One can only admire the intellectual prowess delineated in the concise acknowledgement of Greek philosophy and its utter relevance to medicine (telling is her employment of Nussbaum's theories of therapies of desire in ancient philosophy), and added to Flemming's comprehension of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the rest, is her control of modern philosophy including Wittgenstein.

As I wrote in my review, Medicine deserves many readings, and perhaps a slight revision of that single line will mollify Green and her colleagues, so that they do not become irritated at someone who has valued feminist scholarship for almost three decades: "one cannot label this volume as merely feminist by any definition." Eliminate the quotation marks, add a merely, and I think Green and I, and her 87 colleagues, can simply agree on the brilliance of Medicine and the Making of Roman Women.