Читать книгу The Women’s History of the World - Rosalind Miles - Страница 24

This classic route to power derived from access to the men who wielded it, in a direct reversal of the previous rule of the matriarchies. One of the clearest indications of its scope comes from the impressive careers of ‘the Julias’, a powerful female dynasty of two sisters and two daughters who ruled in Rome during the third century A.D. The elder sister, Julia Domna, first struck into Roman power politics when she married the Emperor Severus. After her death in 217, her younger sister Julia Maesa took over, marrying her two daughters, also Julias, with such skill that they became the mothers of the next two emperors, through whom the three women ruled with great effect until 235. Another mistress of this game was the Byzantine Empress Pulcheria (A.D. 399–453). Made regent for her weak-minded brother when she was only fifteen, Pulcheria later fought off a challenge to her supremacy from her brother’s wife, and after his death ruled in her own right, supported by her husband, the tough General Marcian: husband in name only, Marcian was never allowed to break his wife’s vow of chastity which after her death enabled her to be canonized as a saint.