This casebook presents representative texts from Roman legal sources that introduce the basic problems arising in Roman families, including marriage and divorce, the pattern of authority within households, the transmission of property between generations, and the supervision of orphans.

In Widows and Patriarchy Thomas McGinn explores the implications of an analytical understanding of patriarchy. He takes up Moses Finley's argument that ancient society was structured by a 'spectrum of statuses' and applies this insight to the position of women, primarily that of widows, in three historical periods: classical antiquity, late medieval and early modern Europe, specifically England and Germany, and the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century West. Widows are potentially of great significance, for they comprise in all these cultures a problematic category of adult women who are notionally independent of males. Their status and role become a focus for concern about gender relations, as though the widow was a sort of 'woman-plus'. A particular source of anxiety about widows is the fact that they are sexually experienced, though - ideally - not sexually active.The book examines rights at private law, economic privilege and its absence, freedom of movement in general, including the question of bodily integrity and fear of physical interference, and, the entitlement to decide whether and whom to remarry. Two principal types emerge from representations of widows across cultures, the merry and the mourning. Since antiquity, widows have been a byword for the weak and oppressed. Do the facts as recovered sustain this image or not? What does the answer to this question tell us about where widows rank in relation to other women in any given society?

This is a study of the legal rules affecting the practice of female prostitution at Rome approximately from 200 B.C. to A.D. 250. It examines the formation and precise content of the legal norms developed for prostitution and those engaged in this profession, with close attention to their social context. McGinn's unique study explores the "fit" between the law-system and the socio-economic reality while shedding light on important questions concerning marginal groups, marriage, sexual behavior, the family, slavery, and citizen status, particularly that of women.

This casebook presents representative texts from Roman legal sources that introduce the basic problems arising in Roman families, including marriage and divorce, the pattern of authority within households, the transmission of property between generations, and the supervision of orphans.