ABSTRACT
What do women want? This eternal question grows even more difficult when we ask it about women of the ancient Roman world, whose voices have not merely been lost by the accidents of a history two millennia in the making, but ignored by the ideological presuppositions of those who sought to maintain that history and write its narratives. We have little evidence that records directly the “voice(s)” of Roman women. The evidence we do have records these voices indirectly, and thus poses profound methodological problems.1 In this chapter I want to consider one tantalizing source of indirect evidence of a woman’s “voice,” Apuleius’ Apology.2 I find this text tantalizing for two reasons. First, it tells a story of domestic drama and intrigue-a woman’s story, in the male, public genre of courtroom oratory. Second, the Apology contains the story of what one woman wanted. Indeed, it is the simple fact of this woman’s desire that initiated the events that Apuleius recounts.
