The Roman Family

‘the roman family’ in recent research

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‘THE ROMAN FAMILY’ IN RECENT RESEARCH: STATE OF THE QUESTION BERYL RAWSON Australian National University

Study of the family in historical perspective is comparatively recent, although interest in ‘the family’ in contemporary societies has been strong for at least a century and especially with the development of Sociology as an academic discipline. This lack of historical research might seem surprising for what is taken to be a fundamental institution of our society and, it is assumed, of most earlier societies, especially those of Western Europe. P. Laslett speculated on the reasons for the lack of research on ‘the past condition and development of the human family’: scarcity of evidence, difficulties of dealing with the evidence which does exist, and the problem of defining the subject. He settled for ‘the coresident domestic group’ as his definition (1972: 1). The problem of definition is a topical one now in Roman family studies, as we shall see below (and this explains the quotation marks in the title of this paper). 1 Another problem for family studies is the all-encompassing nature of the subject. W.K. Lacey, writing the first book on the family in classical Greece, pointed this out: ‘The all-pervading role of the family has the result that there is scarcely any topic in Greek civilization in which the family is not concerned’ (1968: 9). So too for Roman history. The first book was published in 1986 (edited by Rawson), but a variety of topics in articles and chapters since 1966 had paved the way. There had been a growing recognition of the potential for Roman social history of the great mass of Latin inscriptions, especially epitaphs. Crook (1967) had revealed the light which Roman law could throw on the workings of Roman society. Most of the chapters in that book had implications for ‘the family’, beyond the formal, juristic rules of previous Roman 1 This paper was originally intended as a discussion-opener at the 2001 SBL conference. It still aims not only to convey information and some assessment of the state of the field but also to suggest possibly fruitful lines of future enquiry into early Christian families.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Also available online – www.brill.nl

Biblical Interpretation 11, 2

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law studies: the variations of status amongst the sub-elite; transmission of property, especially in the family; marriage; jobs. The 1986 book on ‘the Roman family’ recognized that a diversity of sources should be used, and in combination rather than in specialised isolation from one another. The subsequent Roman Family books (Rawson 1991, Rawson and Weaver 1997) reflect an expansion of the sources used and in the methodological problems explored. A 1984 article by Saller and Shaw was to be a milestone and a turning-point for Roman family studies, but when the first international conference on ‘The Roman family’ was held in Canberra, Australia, in 1981, leading to the first book, the work of Saller and Shaw in this field was unknown. The unprecedently extensive epigraphic database of Saller and Shaw (1984) made possible at least two things: (i) correlations between commemorative practice and familial relationships, and (ii) systematic regional comparisons. It also provided the basis for a re-examination of age at marriage for both males and females (Saller 1987; Shaw 1987), thus contributing to a better understanding of the relationships between spouses and between parents and children. These studies took our understanding well beyond that of Hopkins (1965), with its more restricted social class focus and more diffuse geographical scope. It is relationships and the concept of ‘the family’ which have led to most discussion in the last decade or so. The importance of regional differentiation has attracted less attention, although there has been general recognition that ‘the epigraphic habit’ was a sign of Roman culture, characterising the Western Mediterranean as opposed to the Eastern, and that within the West there were specific regional differences. The third Roman Family conference in Canberra did include Italy beyond Rome in its purview (and in the title of the consequent book, The Roman Family in Italy, Rawson and Weaver 1997); and the 2001 Roman Family IV conference at McMaster University in Canada deliberately chose wider geographical parameters for its discussions. Papers’ titles included ‘Family Structures in Roman Lusitania: Social Change in a Roman Province?’; ‘Performing the Family in Roman Gaul’; ‘Famille et parenté dans l’Afrique romaine’; ‘The Jewish Family in Judaea from Pompey to Hadrian’; ‘Searching for the Family in Roman Egypt’; and ‘The Roman Family in the Greek East’. More generally in Roman history, the question of ‘Romanization’ and regional cultural differentiation is now being much discussed: two examples


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are Woolf 1998, on Cisalpine Gaul, an area where Christianity developed quite early, and the wider geographical scope of the volume edited by Fentress (2000). I believe that regional differentiation is one of the promising directions for the future, and I shall return to it below. Familial Relationships The Saller-Shaw analysis (1984) of 12,000 to 13,000 epitaphs (from a sample of about 25,000) from the Western Mediterranean showed that ‘the bonds that Romans chose to represent [in commemorations] were overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) between husband and wife or parents and children’ (Saller 1994: 98). They did not argue that ‘the household’ was co-extensive with these nuclear families, and did not preclude the existence of other relationships, but they argued that their evidence identified the primary bonds of affection and duty in Roman personal relationships. This has been widely accepted, and has been the basis of much subsequent work; but it troubled those who wished to take greater account of the other occupants of households (slaves, exslaves, perhaps other relatives and dependants) and those who could not accept the centrality of the conjugal group in a society of frequent divorce and high mortality. Bradley has been the main proponent of the instability of the conjugal family (e.g. 1991a and b). Martin (1996) and Hope (1997) have argued that the evidence of epitaphs and tombs reveals elaborate networks of relationships of which the conjugal family was only one element. These debates have opened up two important areas of further study, not unconnected with each other: (a) domestic space (material context of the household), and (b) the component elements of a household (household structure and dynamics). These are nuanced studies, beyond the polarisation of nuclear vs extended family. New developments in archeology and anthropology have been integrated into this work. Domestic Space Archaeologists of the ancient world have in recent years engaged with the methods of the New Archaeology, recognising how prehistorians have been able to analyse material evidence to describe

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the physical organisation of domestic space and to extrapolate from that what patterns of social relations took place within. A recognition that ethnocentric assumptions can affect interpretation of material has carried over from archaeology to the study of other sources for ancient society. This has been a radical change for classical archaeology, which used to be closely linked to Classics and considered subsidiary to the study of classical texts. (This has had an effect on the training of archaeologists; I have heard sharp arguments from postgraduate students based in Classics departments that the language and textual study required of them was overemphasised at the expense of other methodologies, including ethnography and anthropology.) Smith (1997) used the phrase ‘text-hindered archeology’. Snyder recognised this problem for the study of early Christianity in his 1985 work, Ante Pacem. He saw that archeological data had been presented ‘in the light of patristic literature and early church tradition’, that archaeological material had been used ‘to supplement the tradition or even prove its validity’. This approach, he said, assumed a continuity of tradition and was likely to read later developments into an earlier stage of Christianity. For example, we know something of fourth century Christian House Churches; but this should not be automatically extrapolated back to an earlier time. First and second century House Churches ought to be envisaged in the environment of what we know of Roman (and other non-Christian) housing of that time, rather than in the remodelled and adapted buildings of the fourth century. In the mass of scholarship on domestic space in the last decade or so, work of particular interest includes Wiseman (1987), Wallace-Hadrill (1994), Barton (1996), Laurence and Wallace-Hadrill (1997), Nevett (1997), George (1997), Ellis (2000), Hales (2000), and Allison (2001). The third Roman Family conference recognised this topic in 1994, with three papers by younger (women) archeologists, and ‘Space’ featured in the title of the consequent book (Rawson and Weaver 1997: The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space). These three scholars (Allison, George, Nevett) have since produced further work which has advanced the study of families and households in ancient Greece and Italy, emphasising the interaction between spatial settings and domestic practices. Nevett’s 1999 book on housing in ‘the ancient Greek world’ embraces not only mainland Greece but also Sicily and the SW


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tip of Italy. She identifies a development in the concept of privacy, and of private vs public life, from the end of the fifth century to the late third century bce. But this consisted of architectural methods of isolating visitors from some household members, rather than of segregating females from males within the household. The older ideas of gender separation in Greek society seem not to be well founded for the Hellenistic period; so gender separation of early Christians is also unlikely, whether they were living in predominantly Greek or Roman society. George’s 1997 book on Roman domestic architecture focussed on Northern Italy, but for our purposes her separate papers of that year (1997a, 1997c) are perhaps of more interest, as they discuss in detail inter-relationships within the house between residents and guests and between residents of different social status and roles. She pointed out the difficulty of identifying specific slave quarters in most Roman houses. Slaves were ubiquitous throughout the houses of their owners and usually had no independent space, although areas such as the kitchen and stables were probably populated mostly by slaves. ‘Since the identity of the slave is subsumed by that of the master, we must look to the master and the other members of the family, and at their activities in the house, to find the slave’ (George 1997c: 24). For instance nurses, paedagogi , and grooms all had close interaction with particular members of the family. There does, however, seem to be a difference in the decoration of household shrines depending on whether they are in service (slave) areas or in areas for reception and family living. The representations in the latter areas are, of course, finer; but also tend to depict the Penates, the household’s protective gods whose cult was in the hands of the paterfamilias. In service areas the Lares and the genius are more frequent—a cult in which slaves and freedmen had a larger role. ‘The distinctions between these shrines does suggest a separation in cult activity within the house along lines of status’ (1997c: 23). What are the implications for slaves in the House Church?2 Penelope Allison has published widely, especially on Pompeian households, their decoration, and artefact assemblages. For our purposes, it is her work on the original location of artefacts—many of them very humble, such as loom weights, needles—which is of 2 George has also done important iconographical work, analysing representations of the family, women, and slaves, for example George 2000 and 2001.

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most interest. The organisation of artefacts can reveal actual patterns of activity. (Note, however, the methodological problem of dislocation of artefacts vs excavators’ reports.) Allison has also done a magisterial critique (2001) of recent work on Roman domestic space, setting out, for the future, methodological and theoretical approaches to Roman material culture which are most likely to throw light on Roman domestic behaviour. She criticises the way in which literary texts have in the past set the agenda for Roman history, although she concedes the contribution of recent work in epigraphy. She argues that different questions need to be asked of different kinds of sources, and that each kind of source must be assessed in its own terms. For instance, the labels provided by literary sources may not be appropriate to the material evidence yielded by archeology. If we transfer literary nomenclature for spaces (e.g. atrium, cubiculum, peristylum) to material remains, there is a danger that we will treat the labels as part of the archeological primary source and prejudge the function of that space. ‘The labels found in the Roman written sources may not be appropriate for dwellings built and occupied by people whose social and cultural milieu probably bore little resemblance to those writing such texts.’ When there is a ‘lack of fit’ between artefacts or architecture and texts for identifying the use of space, primacy should not be given to only one kind of evidence. Wherever possible, we should contextualise all of the evidence—and be prepared to be surprised. This might help us identify patterns of household behaviour which do not necessarily accord with our own assumptions of the most ‘appropriate’ or ‘natural’ use of any particular space. The decorative scheme in houses does seem to be connected with the function of rooms, their visibility and privacy. WallaceHadrill has led the work in this field and in devising the concept of a ‘houseful’ (1991). (Although I thoroughly endorse this concept, I have to express here my own doubts about how generally Romans lived in large, pullulating households. This relates too to the possible persistence of the atrium house into the second century. I envisage the great majority of the population in Rome, and perhaps other major towns and cities, living in small, cramped apartments which had little space for more than the conjugal family and a small number of slaves. For such people, ‘the neighbourhood’ is a significant wider space and set of relationships.) This line of investigation may well prove profitable for early Chris-


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tian families. Their use of the House Church makes it important for us to understand as well as possible what the material environment of the house was and how best to interpret it. Balch (2003a and b) provides a discussion of some of the household art to which Christian residents and visitors were exposed. Again, however, we need to beware of our own cultural assumptions. Clarke (1991) made assumptions about women’s quarters and children’s bedrooms on the basis of wall paintings, but there is no archeological evidence to support such division of space. I suspect that erotic scenes were much more widespread throughout a house than we would now think appropriate.

Household/Family Structure and Dynamics The need for contextualisation is also being recognised for inscriptions, especially epitaphs: details of provenance, nature of the material used, structure of any whole complex to which an inscription belongs. This might throw light on groups which shared burial spaces. Unfortunately, this is not possible for most of the inscriptions in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), but it is possible at a few sites (e.g. Isola Sacra, the Vatican cemetery), and more recent publications of inscriptions are being more careful about providing contextual details. Hope (1997) has done some work on the Isola Sacra necropolis along these lines, noting that the tomb design provided for many who were not explicitly named. Those explicitly named were almost always members of the conjugal family, but there were general, anonymous categories such as ‘libertis libertabusque’, sometimes with ‘posterisque eorum’ added, and (less often) ‘suis’. Hope argues that the architecture of the tomb mimicked the house of the living and that provision for these anonymous groups reflects the composition of the household (its flexibility, ‘the uncertainty of its size, and its mixture of blood relatives and freed dependants’) (1997: 77). Just as there was a ‘houseful’, there was a ‘tombful’. This is useful; but it does not justify the implication that the explicitly named relationships in epitaphs do not ‘reflect reality’. We have to be clear what sort of ‘reality’ is at issue. I believe that the epitaphs do reflect the core group of affective relationships (and thus support the argument of Saller and Shaw). But this core group is not necessarily the whole household, as Hope rightly sees. Formulae such as ‘li-

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bertis libertabusque posterisque eorum’ (and the comparative rarity of ‘posteris suis’) bear further investigation. My sampling suggests that these formulae are not used in Christian epitaphs. More systematic study of those epitaphs could establish absence or rarity, and speculate on what significance there might be in this. A great deal of the scholarship on ‘the Roman family’ in recent decades deals with relationships in one form or another. Examples include the chapters in the three volumes edited by Rawson or Rawson and Weaver (1986b, 1991, 1997); Wiedemann (1989), Bradley (1991a), Champlin (1991), Treggiari (1991), Dixon (1992, 2001), Parkin (1992), Saller (1994), Gardner (1998) and Corbier (1999). Individual works have focussed on mothers, fathers, marriage, slaves and masters and fosterage. My own book (forthcoming) will focus on children and childhood in Roman Italy. Sophisticated work on the demographic structure of Roman society (Parkin, Saller) has provided new insights into fertility and mortality and the implication of those for family relationships. Hopkins had shown many years ago (1966) that epitaphs could not provide a reliable picture of life expectancy or mortality rates. But now the application of model life tables and computer simulation have helped construct useful probabilities of kin relationships. Anthropologists’ work in high-mortality societies has illuminated how people respond to the loss of family members, especially infants and young children. It is clear that, even when premature deaths of children might have been expected, real grief and grieving could occur. Golden (1988; 1990) has discussed this, with particular focus on classical Athens. This has taken us beyond the generalisations and moral deductions of earlier writers. The work of Stone had been influential, and his pessimistic or lurid judgments on eighteenth century English society (as in Stone 1977) had been extrapolated backwards to ancient societies. Thus it was argued that, with high infant and early-childhood mortality, parents must have become hardened to such losses and must have distanced themselves from their young in order to cope. Further, this must have caused a low valuation of young children and allowed child abandonment (‘exposure’) and infanticide without regret or recrimination. Similar fulminations of the Church Fathers in these matters also need to be more carefully contextualised and deconstructed, in the light of new approaches. Ancient Roman historiography had itself been moralising. It set


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out to teach lessons, to offer models of good behaviour to copy and of bad behaviour to avoid. But beyond this educative role Roman historians had their own agenda, which postmodern literary critics have recently been deconstructing. In the area of ‘the family’, the absence of specific and precise population data has, until now, allowed modern historians to generalise at will. But with new methods, especially in historical demography, some of these generalisations and judgments can be rebutted. Scheidel (2001b) provides a salutary discussion on the alleged fertility decline in the later Roman empire and Romans’ refusal to bear children. Quantification has now come to Roman social history. The data and the statistics are deficient, to put it mildly, and, when early attempts to use epigraphic data to establish average life expectancy and mortality rates were shown to be invalid, scholars turned aside from quantitative work for a while. Brent Shaw led the way in exploring the cultural significance (mentalité) of funerary commemoration. This remains a continuing stream in work on relationships. The work of Hopkins in the sixties was crucial for recognition of the limitations of epigraphy for demography: he had been trained in Classics, Sociology and Demography. He used UN model life tables to show the improbability of earlier demographic projections. He returned to his sceptical argument in 1987. But in 1987 Saller published the first results of a computer simulation which made creative use of the model life tables: he combined epigraphic information on age at marriage and other demographic parameters (average life expectancy, fertility distribution) to give a profile of the Roman family over its life cycle. These new methods have produced plausible probabilities of what Rome’s demographic profile might have been like. One result has been a revision of the stern paterfamilias stereotype: Saller’s work has shown that mortality rates were such that by early adulthood most young men and women had lost their paterfamilias and were sui iuris. Many children were deprived of a close relationship with a parent by a parent’s early death. At the age of five, the probability of having a father alive was perhaps 88 per cent, but by the age of ten this had reduced to about 75 per cent, and by the age of fifteen it was about 63 per cent. Corresponding figures for mothers were 91, 81 and 72 per cent.3 The implications of all this for 3

Probabilities are for ‘ordinary’ (non-senatorial) males, as in Table 3. 1. e of

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relationships between spouses and between parents and children are clearly important. The sibling relationship has not been much studied,4 but it too can be illuminated by the computer simulation if the tables are used judiciously. Modern sociologists identify the sibling relationship as an important source of socialization. If there are changes in the number of children in a family, or in the age structure of such children, this will have an effect on the social support and source of education available to any child of that family. Siblings might have been expected to provide an important bond for Roman children in a world of lost or absent parents and non-kin carers. They do not, however, figure largely amongst the dedicators of epitaphs (Saller and Shaw 1984: 136). In any Roman family, the number of siblings close enough in age to have close interaction was quite low. Saller’s computer simulation of kin relationships at different ages suggests that most children had one or two living siblings. These probabilities, however, can disguise large age gaps. They also include newborn infants who were likely to die before establishing any real relationship with older siblings (Saller 1994: Table 3. 1. d). Remarriage could add half- and step-siblings, but these could be of very different ages, especially when a father’s second or later wife was of a generation younger than himself (Bradley 1991a: 131-38). Moreover, half- and step-siblings did not share any of the bonds of infancy and early rearing which literary sources identify as the essence of sibling relationships. Even first marriages could have children widely spaced in age. Premature death of some children was one cause; there were also long periods when husbands were absent on business or duty; and there was an unknowable degree of personal choice, for considerations of property, health, or more private reasons. There is no evidence that parents concentrated their child-bearing in the early years of their marriage (Saller 1987: 32). Some well-known mothers bore children over what must have been their whole fertility cycle (such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi in the second century bce; Faustina the Younger, empress in the second century ce). The ageSaller 1994. Probabilities for females (Tables 3. 1. b) are similar. NB: the ‘probabilities’ are estimates, not to be pressed for precise calculations. 4 Bannon 1997 is explicitly on this relationship, but her work is, on the whole, limited to literary and legal material and largely ignores epigraphy and demography. This, in my view, reduces its value for the workings of sibling relationships in society at large.


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gap between father and child thus lengthened as the marriage went on, and lengthened further when he remarried (to a considerably younger new wife). The age-gap between mother and child was never so great. Few of our sources evoke a picture of a household full of brothers and sisters in the way that some more modern sources do. Studies of households and families of the late eighteenth century in the north-east of the American states (Demos 1972; Greven 1972) have revealed larger families than in earlier or later periods of English or American history. With better health but few effective methods of family limitation, parents in these states had children at fairly regular intervals, of whom fewer died at young ages. So at some stages of the family life cycle there were many siblings living at home (in comparatively small houses), aged from infancy to young adulthood with few large age gaps. Conclusions can be drawn from this picture about intra-family relationships and (as in Greven) diversion of tensions to outside the household. If in Roman families close sibling relationships were more rare, that might, of course, have made them more precious. In any case, the subject should be thought about further for any implications which it might have for the Christian use of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ for non-kin members of their congregation. One problem with the computer simulation of the Roman kinship universe is that it does not take account of remarriage and the presence of half- and step-siblings. This is one of the reservations which Bradley expresses in a generally very favourable review (AHR 1995: 1232) of Saller 1994. Bradley takes Cicero’s family as ‘the best-known Roman family case history’ and stresses the extensive family relations attested there: ‘husband and wife, father and children, brother and brother, and uncle and nephew—relations both within and without the domus’. These are the relationships, he says, that need exploring, to avoid the assimilation of family to household. In response, one might say that we cannot know how typical this individual case history is; that there is now some doubt about the frequency of remarriage, especially as women grew older; that there are many historical examples of children growing up without a sibling of like age in the household (Cicero’s own son and daughter, separated by at least eleven years of age; Caesar’s wife Calpurnia and her younger brother; Vespasian’s sons); and that literary sources place particular emphasis on full siblings (e.g. Valerius Maximus 5. 5; Musonius Rufus frag-

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ment 15). So I am not convinced that the computer-generated profile is misleading or unreasonably limited. Nevertheless, this discussion shows that there is still scope for further work on the shape and composition of ‘the family’. Connected with the apparent lack of coeval siblings is the incorporation of ‘surrogate’ children into a household, for example alumni, uernae, delicia. A conference in Paris, convened by Mireille Corbier, devoted itself to the theme of ‘fosterage’, with contributions focussing on several different disciplines and societies to provide a comparative perspective. This brought directly into the Roman Family ambit previous anthropological work which can sensitise us to the cultural relativism of our familial models and language. Esther Goody elaborated on different models of parenthood observed in parts of Western Africa, where the various parenting roles might not always be vested in one set of ‘parents’. These contributions have been published in the collection edited by Corbier (1999). An area of considerable progress in recent years is the seasonality of life-cycle patterns: mortality, marriage, and birthing (Shaw 1996; 1997; 2001). These studies are still, to some extent, experimental, but they allow us to glimpse something of the cultural and biological factors which shaped ancient populations, in particular the population of Roman Italy from the first to the fifth centuries ce. For his most recent work, on birthing cycles (2001), Shaw uses those Christian epitaphs which give very precise details both of age at death and date of death (1447 persons), thus allowing a calculation of the month of birth. He argues that, although the inscriptions date to the fourth and fifth centuries, the deductions are valid for all of ‘the high period of the Roman empire’ because of the relative stability of birthing cycles over long periods. His text and graphs show that, in general, the high points of birthing were February-March and, to a lesser extent, September-November. The corollary is that the lowest rate of birthing was in December (a phenomenon observable in many other early modern European birthing cycles). However, although the general pattern applies to ancient Rome and the rest of Italy, there is one significant difference: Rome has an additional high point of birthing in December. If (as Shaw does) one attributes the generally low point in December to the effect of Lenten prohibitions on marriage and consistent sexual activity, it raises the question of why Rome was different: what were the reasons for ‘the variable effects of reli-


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gious observance that were more muted in the urban environment’? As Shaw says, ‘If this observation is borne out by other studies … it would be a significant additional result of this study that would connect something as unusual as the historical demography of birthing with the cultural geography of practices as profound and widespread as those linked with early Christian behavior and belief’. Scheidel’s own contribution to his 2001 volume is an excellent up-to-date analysis of ‘progress and problems in Roman demography’. There is a shorter survey by Frier (2000) in the new edition of the Cambridge Ancient History. To the extent that the evidence allows, it would be useful to explore the distinction between Rome and the rest of Italy in the Christian record, especially the inscriptions. It has been argued for some years, since Saller-Shaw (1984), that it was the urban, slave-owning societies (especially Rome and Ostia) which left most commemoration of children: sons, daughters, and the surrogates mentioned above. One can venture several hypotheses to explain this, but the reasons are not readily self-evident. As these were the societies where early Christianity developed, it would be useful to examine how closely Christian evidence fits, and why. Rome was a multicultural society, and we need more analyses of different ethnic/linguistic/religious groups. Noy has produced a recent study (2000) on ‘foreigners’ at Rome, which provides thought for further elaboration of some aspects, including a comparison of Jewish and Christian communities at Rome. There is also the age-specific nature of Greek-language against Latin epitaphs of Rome to which MacMullen has referred (1982): the Greek epitaphs focus on older dedicatees, whereas those in Latin give much greater attention to the death of the young, especially those under ten years of age.5 Does this distinction hold for the Christian epitaphs in Greek and in Latin at Rome? If so, this may be a pointer to ethnic distinctions within early Christianity; if not, it would suggest an effect of Christianity overriding characteristics of the rest of the Roman population. This leads to the question of regional differentiation within the Roman empire, and the extent to which such differences were reflected in the early Christian community at Rome.

5

See my comment and graph in Rawson 2003.

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Regional Differentiation As noted above, the Roman Family IV conference (2001) heard papers on ‘the family’ in various parts of the Roman world. As Arjava pointed out (‘The Roman Family in the Greek East’),6 there might be little in common amongst geographically defined ‘Roman’ families, namely families living anywhere under Roman rule and paying taxes to Rome. A more narrowly defined Roman family would be one ‘which followed a certain legal, social or cultural pattern originating in the city of Rome’. He argued that such a Roman model became widespread, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, after the general conferral of Roman citizenship in 212 ce (the constitutio Antoniniana). He believes that ‘Roman social and cultural models’ were being adopted in the East already by the mid-third century, much earlier than usually assumed. Criteria for such adoption include powers of the paterfamilias; the legal position of women as in property, inheritance, and guardianship; the ius liberorum; the position of daughters vis-à-vis sons. His conference paper dealt mainly with papyri from Egypt, but in his larger project he will deal with papyri, inscriptions, and law. Some inscriptions from the Roman period in the East were analysed by Martin (1996) from the viewpoint of family structure, showing interesting differences in epigraphic patterns over even quite a small geographic area. Although I criticised the direct application of such patterns to the Roman material, I saw the potential of his analysis for refining the concept of ‘the family’, for identifying regional differences, and for trying to explain the cultural and geographic factors behind such differences (Rawson 1997). If there are sufficient chronological indicators, it might be possible to identify changes due to ‘Romanization’.7 Might it also be possible to differentiate commemorative practices, family and household structure, and values in Rome in the light of what we learn of the East? Such studies would further our understanding of acculturation processes, and might enable us to locate early Christianity within such processes.

6

I am grateful to Dr Arjava for a pre-publication copy of his paper and correspondence about that paper and his larger project. The papers from that conference are currently being edited by Michele George. 7 I myself suspect that inscriptions and iconography in the East show Roman influence even earlier than mid-third century.


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Other Aspects Arjava’s project (above) also reminds us of the importance of Roman law as a source for social history. Crook (1967) pioneered this path, and much of the recent work on the Roman family has drawn on legal sources. Judith Evans-Grubbs took such work into the fourth century with her book on Constantine’s marriage legislation (1995), and at the 2001 conference her paper focussed on parent-child conflict in the Code of Justinian. Nathan (2000) relies to a considerable extent on the law code, although a wide range of other source material is also used. In using legal sources we should heed Saller’s warning (1997) about the dangers of excessively legalistic concepts of ‘the family’. As early as 1984, Saller was discussing the language used by Romans to refer to familial structure, especially domus and familia; and he has done much to explain the implications of pietas. Recently I have been trying to identify and understand the language used of affections. Can one speak of ‘love’ in another, remote society? Modern literary criticism is now much occupied with the resonances of some vocabulary and how to ‘read’ particular phrases and expressions. One point of departure might be examination of the terms used in the Digest for degrees of relationship, and the passages on reciprocal obligations and protections between family members need elucidation. There has been some earlier study of these from a strictly legalistic viewpoint; but there might be profit in reexamining them from the point of view of social relationships. For instance, what can be deduced about the relationships which are protected from testifying against each other in court (Digest 22. 5. 4, Paul)?—stepfathers and stepsons but not stepmothers or stepdaughters, whereas cousins both male and female are specified. In my book (forthcoming) on children and childhood in Roman Italy I have a chapter on ‘Public Life’, in which I argue that the material context, the ritual, the entertainment, the symbolism, the aural and visual aspects of the city had a powerful socialising effect on children. Children of early Christian families lived in the same environment, so some thought might be given to the interaction of public and private for such children and their families. One particular aspect of public life which is receiving current attention is the violence of the amphitheatre. Kyle (1998) and Potter and Mattingly (1999) provide insights into ways of trying

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to understand this phenomenon. It is noteworthy that early Christian criticism of the amphitheatre was part of general criticism of pagan festivals rather than of the violence itself and its potentially barbarising effect on individual spectators. Death, burial and commemoration are vital issues for any community, and they have a particular role for religious communities. I have discussed aspects of this in Rawson 2003b, and there is still much to be said on the topic. Connected with this is iconography: Christians did not represent themselves as families as frequently as did other Romans, in art or inscriptions: the familial and everyday context of their lives was of less importance than biblical metaphors and the prospect of a future life (Huskinson 1996: 119-21; Shaw 1996). When, however, secular relationships were mentioned they were most likely to be those of spouses or of parents and their children. A close study of the various representations of Jesus could be rewarding. Many of our questions would be better answered if we could establish chronological development. Many scholars are pessimistic about the possibility of identifying any significant social change over quite long periods, such as from the first to the third centuries ce. I myself, however, believe that there is a congruence in the evidence of law, commemorative practices, and iconography which suggests greater sensitivity to ‘the family’, and especially to children, during the second century. Veyne’s claim (1978) that there was a correlation between this and Roman fathers’ loss of political power can not be substantiated. But other reasons might be explored. The attention to children pre-dates any discernible Christian evidence. Was there was an emphasis on children in early Christianity, and, if so, was it different in Rome from elsewhere? How influential was the environment of imperial Rome on early Christianity? The growing dialogue between Romanists and Early Christianity scholars might illuminate such questions. Regional differentiation is an important element in recent studies of ‘Romanization’, and must have contributed to different developments of early Christianity. The sparse evidence for Christianity in Rome in the first two centuries or so ce can be supplemented by archaeological and anthropological analysis of public space and domestic architecture in that city, if we see the early Christian community as a sub-set of the large, multi-cultural population of imperial Rome. Comparative use of the epigraphy and iconography of


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Christians and others could highlight similarities and differences in commemorative practices and attitudes to family relationships.

Abstract In the past two decades of rapid expansion, the study of ‘the Roman family’ has developed from its early focus on the city of Rome and on legal, literary and epigraphical sources to a wider geographical canvas and to more extensive use of archaeological material. The whole range of sources is now being applied to particular problems, providing different perspectives and a better chance of contextualising specific details. Of the new methodologies available, demography and the archaeology of domestic space are proving most productive. Questions most frequently debated are the Romans’ concept of ‘the family’ and the nature of family relationships. There is a growing recognition that regional and cultural differentiation must be taken into account: generalisations about ‘the Mediterranean world’ or even ‘Greco-Roman culture’ are seldom useful. Similarly, regional differentiations in early Christianity are being recognised: Christian communities were likely to share many of the characteristics of the city or area in which they were developing. This makes the growing dialogue between Romanists and Early Christian scholars profitable and stimulating, and topics of particular fertilisation are those of family relationships and domestic space.

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