Antiquity was a hotbed of heroes, but its heroines remain largely obscure. Miranda Jessop finds classicist Daisy Dunn drawing back the veil...
As Dr Daisy Dunn joins me on Zoom, she appears every bit the modern woman. Her heart, however, remains where it has been since she fell in love with Latin as a teen: back in the distant past.
In fact, she has devoted her life to exploring it. An award-winning classicist and author, fluent reader of both Latin and Greek, she not only harbours a passion for the ancient world, but longs to see an increase in diversity amongst those studying Classics. To which end, her new book introduces readers to an incredible cast of women often pushed to the sidelines of history.
Her love for antiquity, indeed, dates back to her childhood in Wimbledon, where she still lives
“My mother was a painter and fine artist, while my father was a sculptor,” she tells me. “They would always take my sister and me to art galleries, and then on holiday we would go to amphitheatres in the South of France and to other ancient sites. I also went on school trips to Fishbourne Roman Palace [in Sussex] and, without fully realising that it was where my interest lay, I found that I was always drawn to the past.”
Much, though, she says, is due to her Latin teacher at Ibstock Place School in Roehampton.
“She was fantastic. Were it not for her, I can’t really imagine that I would ever have fallen in love with Latin. She inspired so many of us. Latin and Greek subject matter is quite explicit, and she is very open; she doesn’t beat around the bush. I stuck with Latin because of her and we are still in touch today. She’s only just retired at the age of 83!”
When Daisy won a scholarship to the sixth form at Lady Eleanor Holles in Hampton, this same teacher started giving her Greek lessons after school, visiting her house on a Friday night and instructing her from scratch. It was a labour of love from which the fruit was not lost: Daisy went on to read Classics at St Hilda’s, Oxford, then still an all-female college. Not until her final year were boys admitted – a decision which, as an undergraduate entitled to vote on the matter, Daisy opposed.
“I found that Classics at Oxford was very male-dominated. In my year there were lots of boys who had been learning Greek and Latin since they were six; lots of old Etonians. Girls were still very much in the minority and many of them hadn’t been privately educated. I thought that it would be good to keep St Hilda’s as a place for girls who hadn’t had that head start.”
With my own state school educated niece interested in reading Classics at university, I am curious as to whether more state sector pupils are now engaged in that area of study. It is evidently a question close to Daisy’s heart.
“My first job was actually working for an organisation called the Joint Association of Classical Teachers, which was set up to get more Classics teaching into state schools. That gave birth to a charity called Classics For All, for which I do events today,” she explains.
Based on research from 2010 which estimated that Classics was taught in only 25% of state schools – compared with 75% of schools in the independent sector – the charity was created to reverse this trend, enriching the lives and raising the aspirations of young people from all backgrounds through learning about the ancient world.
Beyond the confines of academe – she has a PhD from University College London and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld to go with her Oxford degree – Daisy has firmly established herself as a critic and cultural commentator with seven books under her belt. The latest is hot off the press. Spanning 3,000 years from the birth of Minoan Crete to the demise of the Julio-Claudian dynasty – the line of early Roman emperors that ground to a halt with the suicide of Nero in AD 68 – The Missing Thread is a new history of the ancient world told, in groundbreaking style, through the women who shaped it.
“For centuries,” insists Daisy, “men have written histories of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors and kings. But when it comes to women – Cleopatra and Boudica aside – writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones.”
In this volume, Daisy inverts that tradition and puts women at the centre of the narrative. We read of Enheduanna, frequently cited as the earliest named author in history; the daring love poet Sappho; Telesilla, another poet, famed for her supposed role in the defence of the city of Argos; Artemisia, sole female commander on either side in the Greco-Persian Wars; and Fulvia, who fought a war on her husband Mark Antony’s behalf, only to be threatened with missiles aimed at her clitoris.
For Daisy, the book is the culmination of 15 years of intensive research
“I went right back to the beginning and reread every single literary source I had ever come across. I studied inscriptions on tombs in Rome, looked at the art and explored the archaeological evidence too.”
All her textual reading, moreover, was in Latin and Greek.
“A true classicist should work with the sources rather than rely on a translation. In that way, you pick up the whole tone with all the nuances.”
For the launch of The Missing Thread, Daisy chose a long white dress complete with a red stole and a gold crown.
“I wanted to wear something that a classical woman would recognise if we were to rewind two thousand years,” she explains, her admiration for the extraordinary women she documents abundantly clear.
“It’s time to explore what real women were really up to. It’s completely unfair that we’ve heard of Julius Caesar, Nero and Alexander the Great, and yet most of the women who did just as much in the ancient world are still anonymous. We need to make them household names. I want people to read about these women so that they can be talked about and not just left in the shadows.”
Daisy Dunn is at Barnes Bookfest on Sept 21 (2pm) as part of the Renaissance Women event, barnesbookfest.org and at Queens Park Book Festival queensparkbookfestival.co.uk on Sept 1. Her book The Missing Thread is out now.
