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Beyond the institution of marriage, its norms, and rules, what was
life like for married couples in Greco-Roman antiquity? This volume
explores a wide range of sources over seven centuries to uncover
possible answers to this question. On tombstones, curse or oracular
tablets, in contracts, petitions, letters, treatises, biographies,
novels, and poems, throughout Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 107 couples
express themselves or are given life by their contemporaries and
share their experiences of, and views on, marital relationships and
their practical and emotional consequences. Renowned scholars and
the next generation of experts explore seven centuries of source
material to uncover the dynamics of the married life of
metropolitan and provincial, famous and unknown, young and old
couples. Men's and women's hopes, fears, traumas, joys, endeavours,
and needs are analysed and reveal an array of interactions and
behaviours that enlighten us on gender roles, social expectations,
and intimate dealings in antiquity. Known texts are revisited, new
evidence is put forward, and novel interpretations and concepts are
offered which highlight local and chronological specificities as
well as transhistorical commonalities. The analysis of married life
in Greco-Roman antiquity, from ongoing vetting process to place
where to find security, reveals the fundamental yearning to be
included and loved and how the tensions created by the sometimes
contradictory demands of traditional ideals and individual
realities can be resolved, furthering our knowledge of social and
cultural mechanisms. Married Life in Greco-Roman Antiquity will
provide valuable resources of interest to scholars and students of
Classical studies as well as social history, gender studies, family
history, the history of emotions, and microhistory.
Modern scholarship often discusses Roman women in terms of their
difference from their male counterparts, frequently defining them
as 'other'. This book shows how Roman male writers at the turn of
the first century actually described women as not so different from
men: the same qualities and abilities pertaining to the domains of
parenthood, intellect and morals are ascribed by writers to women
as well as to men. There are two voices, however: a traditional,
ideal voice and an individual, realistic voice. This creates a
duality of representations of women, which recurs across literary
genres and reflects a duality of mentality. How can we interpret
the paradoxical information about Roman women given by the
male-authored texts? How does this duality of mentality inform us
about gender roles and gender hierarchy? This work analyses
well-known, as well as overlooked, passages from the writings of
Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Quintilian, Statius, Martial
and Juvenal and sheds new light on Roman views of women and their
abilities, on the notions of private and public and on conjugal
relationships. In the process, the famous sixth satire of Juvenal
is revisited and its topic reassessed, providing further insights
into the complex issues of gender roles, marriage and emotions. By
contrasting representations of women across a broad spectrum of
literary genres, this book provides consistent findings that have
wide significance for the study of Latin literature and the social
history of the late first and early second centuries.
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