Women and modesty in late antiquity Goths invaded Rome in 410 AD and like many aristocratic families a household of three wealthy Christian senatorial women fled across the Mediterranean to their land holdings in North Africa. They bore the name Anici one of the oldest richest and most respected Roman clans. The family matriarch Proba and her daughter in law Juliana both widows traveled with Julianas young daughter Demetrias. Three years later all were publically acknowledged as exemplary Christian ascetics and their household was a refuge for ascetic Christian women of different ranks This book offers a fresh approach to some of the most studied documents relating to Christian female asceticism in the Roman era. Focusing on the letters of advice to the women of the noble Anicia family Kate Wilkinson argues that conventional descriptions of feminine modesty can reveal spaces of agency and self formation in early Christian womens lives. She uses comparative data from contemporary ethnographic studies of Muslim Hindu and indigenous Pakistani women to draw out the possibilities inherent in codes of modesty. Her analysis also draws on performance studies for close readings of Ambrose Augustine Jerome and Pelagius. The book begins by locating itself within the complex terrain of feminist historiography and then addresses three main modes of modest behavior dress domesticity and silence. Finally it addresses the theme of false modesty and explores womens agency in light of Augustinian and Pelagian conceptions of choice