Sarah B. Pomeroy

Sarah B. Pomeroy (born March 13, 1938) is an American Professor of Classics.

Early life and education

Sarah Pomeroy was born in New York City in 1938. She attended the Birch Wathen School, taking Latin and ancient history among other subjects. She graduated high school at age 16, and began a degree course at Barnard College in Classics, taking courses at Columbia University alongside those at Barnard, due to the small size of the Barnard department at the time. She was named a Distinguished Professor of Hunter College in 1996, and in 2003, she was awarded the title of Professor Emerita of Classics and History of Hunter College and The Graduate Center. She has also been elected to the American Philosophical Society. Its lasting influence led to its reissue in 1994, and it has been described by an editor at Random House as "one of the five paradigm-changing books of the 20th century." and Pomeroy herself describes the book as being part of her teaching the "first course in America on women in antiquity." Her other works include Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (1994), Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (1998), Spartan Women (2002), and, with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, the textbooks Ancient Greece: a Political, Social, and Cultural History (4th edition, 2017) and A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture (3rd edition, 2011).

Books Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (Schocken, 1975); Ancient History (with Stanley M. Burstein, 1984); Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (Schocken, 1984); Women's History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill, 1991); Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary, with Xenophon (Clarendon Press, 1994); Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (Oxford University Press, 1997); Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History (with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Oxford University Press, 1999); Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife: English Translations, Commentary, Interpretive Essays, and Bibliography (Oxford University Press, 1999); Spartan Women (Oxford University Press, 2002); A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture (with Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Oxford University Press, 2004); The Murder of Regilla: A Case of Domestic Violence in Antiquity (Harvard University Press, 2007); Pythagorean Women (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer (with Jeyaraney Kathirithamby, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018); Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer: An Illustrated History (American Philosophical Society Press, 2021);

Front cover of Sarah B. Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity (1975)