Agnodice is a legendary figure said to be the first female midwife or physician in ancient Athens. Her story, originally told by the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus in his Fabulae, has been used to illustrate issues surrounding women in medicine and midwifery. Agnodice is not generally considered a historical figure, but her legend has influenced discussions about gender roles in medical professions.
Childbirth and obstetrics in classical antiquity were studied by the physicians of ancient Greece and Rome. Their ideas and practices during this time endured in Western medicine for centuries and many themes are seen in modern women's health. Classical gynecology and obstetrics were originally studied and taught mainly by midwives in the ancient world, but eventually scholarly physicians of both sexes became involved as well. Obstetrics is traditionally defined as the surgical specialty dealing with the care of a woman and her offspring during pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium (recovery). Gynecology involves the medical practices dealing with the health of women's reproductive organs and breasts.
Mary Hamilton Swindler was an American archaeologist, classical art scholar, author, and professor of classical archaeology, most notably at Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan. Swindler also founded the Ella Riegel Memorial Museum at Bryn Mawr College. She participated in various archaeological excavations in Greece, Egypt, and Turkey. The recipient of several awards and honors for her research, Swindler's seminal work was Ancient Painting, from the Earliest Times to the Period of Christian Art (1929).
Maria Wyke is professor of Latin at University College, London. She is a specialist in Latin love poetry, classical reception studies, and the interpretation of the roles of men and women in the ancient world. She has also written widely on the role of the figure of Julius Caesar in Western culture.
Barbara Elizabeth Goff is a Classics Professor at the University of Reading. She specialises in Greek tragedy and its reception; women in antiquity; postcolonial classics and reception of Greek political thought.
Rhiannon Ash is a British classical scholar specialising in Latin literature and Tacitus. She is professor of Roman Historiography in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. She was formerly a lecturer at the Department of Greek and Latin at University College, London.
Helen V. Lovatt is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She is known in particular for her work on Latin epic literature especially from the Flavian period.
Helen Hazard Bacon was professor of classics at Barnard College. She was known in particular for her work on Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus. Bacon was also well known for her work on classical themes in the poetry of Robert Frost and in the mythological writing of Edith Hamilton. Bacon was president of the American Philological Association in 1985.
Véronique Dasen is a Swiss archaeologist and Professor in Classical Archaeology and Art History at the University of Fribourg. Her research is led in a multidisciplinary and anthropological perspective. Her research interests range from ancient iconography and material culture, the history of the body, of medicine and magical practices to gender studies, history of childhood, and ludic culture.
Jennifer Baird, is a British archaeologist and academic. She is Professor in Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on the archaeology of Rome's eastern provinces, particularly the site of Dura-Europos.
Michele Renee Salzman is a distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. She is an expert on the religious and social history of late antiquity.
Ruby Blondell is Professor Emerita of Classics and Adjunct Professor Emerita of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington; prior to retirement, they were the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of Humanities also at the University of Washington. Their research centres on Greek intellectual history, gender studies, and the reception of ancient myth in contemporary culture.
Emily Wilmer Cave Wright was a British-born American classical philologist, and a contributor to the culture and history of medicine. She was a professor at Bryn Mawr College, where she taught Greek. Wright's works include, The Emperor Julian’s relation to the new sophistic and neo-Platonism (1896), A Short History of Greek Literature, from Homer to Julian (1907), Julian (1913–23), Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists (1922), Against the Galilaeans (1923), Hieronymi Fracastorii de contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione libri III (1930), and De morbis artificum Bernardini Ramazini diatriba (1940). Giovanni Maria Lancisi: De aneurysmatibus, opus posthumum (1952), and Bernardino Ramazzini: De Morbis Typographorum (1989) were published postmortem.
Emma Stafford is Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Leeds. Her work focuses on Heracles/Hercules and his reception.
Allison Glazebrook is Professor of Greek Social and Cultural History, Gender and Sexuality, and Greek Oratory at Brock University. She was President of the Classical Association of Canada 2018–20.
Deborah Kamen is Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. Her research is on Greek cultural and social history, with a particular focus on ancient slavery.
Emily Hauser is a British scholar of classics and a historical fiction novelist. She is a lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter and has published three novels in her 'Golden Apple' trilogy: For the Most Beautiful (2016), For the Winner (2017) and For the Immortal (2018).
Milette Gaifman is a historian of ancient art and archaeology. In 2022 she was named the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Classics and History of Art at Yale University. Her scholarship focuses on Greek art of the Archaic and Classical periods.
Sophia Xenophontos is a Greek-Cypriot classicist and Senior Researcher at the Academy of Athens, and formerly an associate professor of Greek at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is also affiliate scholar with the University of Glasgow, where she was previously lecturer in Classics and principal investigator and director of the Byzantine Aristotle project funded by the AHRC. Xenophontos is an external collaborator for the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina project and the founder and editor-in-chief of the book series ‘Theorising the Greek and Roman Classics’.
Christopher A. Faraone is an American classicist. He is the Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago. His work largely covers the study of Ancient Greek poetry, religion and magic, from sources such as text, myths, rituals, and hymns, and from objects such as pottery, papyrus, inscriptions on gems, curse tablets, and figurines or effigies. Faraone is considered to be a foremost scholar on ancient Mediterranean magic.
