Classicist and novelist Annelise Freisenbruch describes the challenges and vicissitudes of the lives of women in ancient Rome and tells Diana Bentley why she chose Hortensia to be the heroine of her first novel, Rivals of the Republic.
Few authors could be as well qualified as Annelise Freisenbruch to write a novel about the adven-tures of a young aristocratic woman in Rome in the 1st century BC. An historian and scholar with a PhD in Classics from Cambridge University, Freisenbruch is the author of the acclaimed The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars, a compelling study of the lives of the women of the imperial family. In her debut novel, Rivals of the Republic, Freisenbruch uses her expert knowledge to plunge us into the brutal world of ambitious aristocrats and ruthless politicians with the real historical figure of Hortensia as a wily heroine.
Your novel, Rivals of the Republic, focuses on Hortensia and her father, the great orator and Cicero’s rival, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. What do we know about them and why did you choose to write about Hortensia?
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