Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of childbirth complications -- including maternal and infant mortality -- and of how such complications were handled by ancient midwives and physicians. There are graphic references to surgical procedures.

Tara Mulder joins me in the Lesche to discuss her brand new book, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (University of California Press 2026). 

You can read a Q&A with Tara on the UC Press blog here. 

Tara's personal website: taramulder.com

Ancient texts/authors

• Hippocratic corpus
• Galen of Pergamon
• Soranus of Ephesus
• Agrippina the Younger's lost memoirs

Modern scholarship

• Bonell Freidin, Anna. 2024. Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Ancient Rome. University of Michigan Press. 
• Hug, Angela. 2023. Fertility Ideology and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome. Brill. 

About our guest

Tara Mulder is assistant professor of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an affiliation in Gender and Women's Studies. She is the editor of the forthcoming volume, A Cultural History of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Antiquity. As the daughter of a home birth midwife, she has assisted in over two dozen births. More of her writing on pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, medicine, gender, and sexuality in antiquity can be found at taramulder.com. 

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

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