The history books are filled with the names of men – it’s time for women to get the credit they deserve

It is a great failing of our times that, while we strive to champion women in modern society, our view of the past continues to be dominated by men, writes Daisy Dunn

Sappho embraces her fellow poet Erinna in a garden at Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos (Simeon Solomon/Tate Britain)

How many people from the classical world can you name in 10 seconds? Julius Caesar, perhaps? Alexander the Great, Emperor Claudius, maybe Nero? Homer, Plato, Pericles, or Cicero? Extra points if you said Cleopatra and Boudica. Any other women?

I have studied antiquity for many years but until recently, I would have been as guilty as the next person of reeling off a list like that above. It was only, in fact, while researching my latest book – the first history of the ancient world to be written through women – that I realised just how few female classical names trip off the tongue.

Given another 10 seconds, I might have added Sappho, the great poetess of Lesbos and – as any fan of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius would – Livia, Vipsania and Agrippina, too. The temptation then would be to name Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Pandora and Penelope but that would be cheating, for they belong to the realm of myth.