The Past and Present Society

The Family in Late Antiquity: The Experience of Augustine

Author(s): Brent D. Shaw
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Past & Present, No. 115 (May, 1987), pp. 3-51
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650838 .
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THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY:

THE EXPERIENCE OF AUGUSTINE*
Few historical problems are free of paradox. The Roman family is
no exception. The contradiction between the ideas and images Romans held concerning the family, and the actual means and practices
by which it was created, present the historian with both dilemma and
opportunity. Research into the structure and the conception of the
"Roman family" has revealed a seeming discontinuity between the
dominant ideology concerning the family and the practical realities
of family life. By "Roman family" is meant, rather broadly, the
typical living and reproductive unit in which most of the urbancentred populations of the western Roman empire lived their lives in
the period from the first to fifth centuries after Christ. Studies of
Roman elite conceptions of family during this period, as expressed
by the primary termsfamilia ("family") and domus(household), show
decisively that literary and legal expressions for the family never
narrowed to mean the nuclear-family unit that we customarily associate with the term (that is to say, the mother-father-childrenunit to
the exclusion of other relatives and dependants). Rather, the principal
words which Romans had at their disposal to describe "family" seem
consistently, till the end of the empire in the west, to have designated
a rather wide range of persons including agnatic descendants, cognates and dependants in a large lineage extending vertically over
several generations through time.
When one studies the empirical phenomenon of "family", however, the actual practice of these same persons over the whole of this
period seems to have been rather different. A range of data indicates
that the dominant centre of family relationships, in terms of primary
duties, obligations and affections, was that of the nuclear family.
And the whole spectrum of vocabulary referring to persons actively
involved in "the family" seems to be restricted mainly to persons in
* The author would like to thank all those who offered their criticism and advice
on this paper in the course of its writing, especially Peter Brown, Averil Cameron,
Julius Kirshner (and members of the University of Chicago history seminar), Richard
Saller and Susan Treggiari. My final note of thanks, the saddest to record, is to the
one who offered the sternest and most profitable comments, but who, alas, can no
longer receive this token of gratitude: to Sir Moses Finley.

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the nuclear-family group.1 What is more, the hiatus between the

concept of family and its actual practice seems to have widened during
the period of the later empire; at least our perception of the distinction
as it is reflected in the source materials is considerably sharpened.
More than ever before, sentiments, actions and obligations were tied
to the kinship core of the family, whereas the terminology for the
family itself was concentrated more intensely on the wider conception
of the extended household. To a certain extent the problem may
result from the very pronounced class bias in our literary sources
which predominantly reflect upper-class ideals and practices. Nevertheless an obvious question arises regarding the persistence of the
apparent contradiction between practice and ideology.
A way out of the impasse would be to examine, in as much detail
as possible, the relationships in the kinship core of the family, and
their connections to adjacent elements of the Roman familia, and to
concentrate the investigation on the critical period of the later empire
when the contradiction between idea and practicewas becoming most
apparent. For this enquiry, it would be best to select a series of
firsthandwitnesses, of Christianderivationand from a similarregional
background, who might take us some distance from the upper-class
sources and ideas referred to above. The triad of Tertullian (c. 200),
Cyprian (c. 250) and Augustine (c. 400) offers one of the most
consistent data sets from the period that meets our stipulated conditions. But there are problems. Although Tertullian did write explicitly on subjects relevant to the family, such as marriage, sexuality
and the role of women, his works are rather disappointing for the
social historian. Because his writings are so unremittingly prescriptive
and normative in character, they offer little prospect of a bridge
between idea and practice. Then again, we have little control over
the perspective or place of the author himself. His background is
only imperfectly known; it is best to admit that we can rescue
very little about his origins or circumstances.2 Of the latter part of
1 For details of the argument advanced here, see B. D. Shaw, "Latin Funerary
Epigraphy and Family Life in the Later Roman Empire", Historia, xxxiii (1984), pp.
457-97. The method used to evaluate the data for the later empire is that developed
for a similar analysis of materials dating to the early empire: see R. P. Saller and
B. D. Shaw, "Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians,
Soldiers and Slaves", Jl. Roman Studies, lxxiv (1984), pp. 124-56. On the concept of
family, see R. P. Saller, "Familia, Domus and the Roman Conception of the Family",
Phoenix, xxxviii (1984), pp. 336-55; B. D. Shaw, "The Concept of Family in the Later
Roman Empire: Familia and Domus", forthcoming.
2 T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, 2nd edn. (Oxford,
1985), chs. 2-4, 6, is the best critical approach to what has been an overly indulgent
(cont. on p. 5)

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Cyprian's life we are much better informed, but the information

contains little that is germane to an enquiry on the family. And his
writings are even less useful, more purely ideological, than are those
of Tertullian.3 Therefore, although we can employ some of the data
provided by Tertullian and Cyprian, we are compelled to use them
sparingly and with caution, and mainly as an adjunct to a much more
important and promising set of writings, those of Augustine.
Although the massive corpus of Augustinian writings contains at
least as much prescriptive material as is found in Tertullian and
Cyprian, it also includes an important additional element of positive
observation.4 In Augustine's works, especially in the sermons and
homilies delivered to the common people (the plebs) of his congregation, in his verbal tracts and public exegeses of the Psalms and
other biblical scriptures, and in his extensive correspondence, we
find constant allusions to family life as lived by his parishioners and
others in the region of Hippo Regius in north Africa. Often the
exegetical comments in these writings were produced in order to
interpret biblical statements in the light of the everyday experience
(n. 2 cont.)

tradition. He, at least, is willing to face the hard fact: we know virtually nothing of a
biographical nature about Tertullian that is useful to an understanding of his writings.
L. Stager, Das Leben im romischenAfrika im Spiegel der Schriften Tertullians(Zurich,
1973), is pedestrian, but provides basic references to the few data directly relevant to
our enquiry that can be extracted from Tertullian's works.
3
See, for example, V. Saxer, Vie liturgiqueet quotidiennea Carthagevers le milieu
du Ile siecle(Rome, 1969), chs. 7-8. One could analyse this sort of normative material
endlessly, but if no point of contact is struck between it and actual behaviour the
analysis tends to reduce to a history of ideas. See, for example, S. Ozment, When
Fathers Ruled: Family Life in ReformationEurope (Cambridge, Mass., 1983) for an
illustration of the problems involved. Ozment's analysis is both competent and detailed,
but excessive dependence on purely normative source materials, with little external
control or internal criticism of them, leaves the reader dubious and uncertain as to the
real practice of the ideas he describes.
4 The
truly mountainous bibliography of studies on Augustine - surely one of the
most studied individuals from all antiquity - would seem to guarantee that the data
on family in his writings would already have been exploited many times over. Such
does not seem to be the case. Apart from some brief "social history" asides found in
the standard biographies, there has been surprisingly little use of these data. This very
rich source of information remains almost wholly untouched by social historians. What
is presented here, therefore, is only a small indication of what could be done - the
results, as it were, of a premiersondage.General works that were of some use include:
M. Madeleine, The Life of the North Africansas Revealedin theSermonsof St. Augustine
(Washington, D.C., 1931); M. E. Keenan, The Life and Times of St. Augustine as
Revealed in his Letters (Washington, D.C., 1935); F. van der Meer, Augustinusde
Zielzorger (Utrecht, 1949), trans. B. Battershaw and G. R. Lamb as Augustine the
Bishop (London, 1961; repr. 1978); cf. French trans. Saint Augustin,pasteur d'dmes
(Paris, 1955; repr. 1959), a rather ethereal appreciation prefiguring the tone and
approach of P. Brown, Augustineof Hippo (London, 1967); and A. G. Hamman, La
vie quotidienneen Afriquedu Nord au tempsde Saint Augustin(Paris, 1979), esp. pt. I.

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of the common people of his parish. Often, too, Augustine's quasinormative statements have greater value for the social historian than
do those of Tertullian or Cyprian, precisely because he gives us
enough context to understand the operative assumptions that lie
behind them - aspects Augustine assumes to be true of his own
society that allow the normative values to have a function. The
evidence used in this enquiry is therefore drawn overwhelmingly
from those works that tend to report and to comment rather than to
advise and exhort: the letters and those parts of his sermons and
commentaries on scripture where he is attempting to communicate
to his listeners by drawing on what he assumes to be common
experiences of their everyday life. The sermons, especially, are a
rather direct access to the immediacy of that life, given the fact that
they seem to be, for the most part, transcriptsof addresses delivered
largely ex temporeby Augustine to his congregationat Hippo, marked
by frequent on-the-spot digressions and asides on current concerns.5
Material of an overtly theological nature has purposefully been
avoided. Of course, all observations and reports are interpretations
and, given Augustine's dominant Christian ideology, hardly any
statement of his escapes some of that influence. It is never possible
in such cases to build an "air-tight" hermeneutics. But surely that is
not the point. Augustine offers us an incomparable opportunity to
achieve a better understanding of our subject, and the attempt is
probably worth while on that basis alone. What is more, the Augustinian corpus is especially valuable because of a singular quality of its
author. Whatever other caveats may be made in respect of his work,
no one would care to deny that Augustine himself was an acute
observer of his world, and one with a sympathy finely attuned to a
whole range of human behaviour relevant to our subject, from the
learning experiences of infants to feelings of love, fear, hatred and
envy that motivated their parents.
This body of data is also substantiated by another that is wholly
absent in the cases of Tertullian and Cyprian: Augustine's account
of his upbringing - the reflections on his own family life in the
Confessions(written c. 397-401).6 Especially in respect of this autobi5 See R. J. Deferrari, "St. Augustine's Method of
Composing and Delivering
Sermons", Classical Philology, xliii (1929), pp. 97-123; 193-219; M. Le Landais,
"Deux annees de predication de Saint Augustine, v: dictee ou predication?", in H.
Rondet et al., Etudes Augustiniennes(Paris, 1953), pp. 38-48.
6 Most of the extant scholarly work on family life in the Confessionsis
unfortunately
marred by a strain of pseudo-psychological musing that is of no historical value; even
worse, if that is possible, are the theologically oriented interpretations. Neither sort
of secondary literature will be referred to in this paper.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

ography, however, there must be a note of caution: not a word of

Augustine's writings survives (perhaps intentionally so) from the
period before his move towards conversion to Christianity (that is,
in the years just before A.D. 386/7). All the formative years of his life
up to the age of thirty, when he was part of his parents' family, are
therefore seen through the prism of a later ideological commitment
that profoundly distorted his conception of his own earlier life.
Nevertheless these later reflections, going back to some of his earliest
extant writings such as the de Beata Vita (386), allow us an unparalleled insight into the family life of one man in late antiquity. To a
certain extent, Augustine's recollections can also be checked against
knowledge of structural aspects of the Roman family derived from
external sources, and against his own observations and assumptions
about the family lives of his parishioners when he was priest (from
391) and later bishop (from 395/6) of Hippo Regius. But if we are to
rely so heavily on the perspective of one man and his life, we
must ask what sort of representative he is. Notorious dangers of
historiographyattend when a society is analysed through the relations
and perceptions of a single individual.7 First of all, if our perspective
is derived from the viewpoint of one man in late antique society, we
must be aware of how biased it will be in one obvious way: it will
reflect a predominant male ideology of the world, though, to be sure,
a world in which this ideology was both conceived and acted upon
in a society where power was primarily male-directed.8 That very big
and continuing problem aside, there still remain those factors that
7 See, for
example, A. Macfarlane, The Family Life of RalphJosselin: A SeventeenthCenturyClergyman(Cambridge, 1970); and the criticisms of E. P. Thompson, "Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context", Midland Hist., i (1972), pp. 41-55.
In spite of the criticisms, the data can be used in a justifiable way: K. Wrightson,
EnglishSociety, 1580-1680 (London, 1982), pp. 45 f., 102 f. Most objections, including
Thompson's, relate to Macfarlane's abuse of the data. Dependence on single-case
representativesis indeed open to such pitfalls: consider P. Gay, Educationof theSenses,
I: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (Oxford, 1983), and the problems
related to the extensive use of the case of Mabel Loomis Todd. If we are to study
anything other than statistical contours of structural aspects of the family, however,
we will have to depend on individual cases. If placed in context, with firm indications
of their social parameters, they need not be statistically representativein order to offer
useful perspectives to the historian; cf. the use of Samuel Pepys and James Boswell
by L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriagein England, 1500-1800 (New York, 1977),
chs. 11.2, 6.
8 The absence of equivalent mention of daughters or sisters in
Augustine's perspective of the family, for example, is a notable instance of this cultural blindness. They
are "invisible people" in his view, but perhaps only to the degree to which they were
actually subordinated in the power structure of the family?

PAST AND PRESENT

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made Augustine a peculiar man of his times. Where, then, are we to

place him in the matrix of late Roman society?
Most significant for our purposes is the oft-repeated assertion that
Augustine came from a poor family.9 The evaluation seems to be
provoked more by a dominant esoteric and theological Augustinianism than by any critical historical judgement. Perhaps Augustine's
background was "poor" when seen from the perspective of the
towering fortunes accumulated by the upper classes in the later
empire (that of a Petronius Probus, for example, or of a Melania).
But when viewed in the social context of its place, the provincial
town of Thagaste, Augustine's family was certainly not poor. His
parentswere of good social standing (honesti)and were from the ranks
of the local ruling order, the curiales.10In a late Roman municipality
like Thagaste this status hardly guaranteed the possession of massive
wealth or power; but the rank surely suggests that Augustine's father
Patricius is to be located in the uppermost echelons of local society
in terms of his wealth. The bottom end of the social spectrum
of curiales was, admittedly, composed of men of modest wealth;
necessarily so, given the steeply attenuated distribution of property
in most regions of the Roman world. Large amounts of land around
Thagaste would have been in the hands of the emperor, absentee
upper-class landlords who were not susceptible to local municipal
burdens (for example, in this case, Melania) and a few of the local
powerful.
But Patricius had fields spread about the town, his house had
numerous specialized slaves in it, and he was able and, more important, had the disposition to pay for a higher education for his sons 9 Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, pp. 21 f.; Hamman, Vie quotidienneen Afrique du
Nord, p. 100, are typical; also characteristic is J. J. O'Meara, The YoungAugustine:
An Introductionto the Confessionsof St. Augustine(London, 1954; repr. New York,
1980), who unsuccessfully attempts to make compatible the evidence of Patricius'
wealth and the claim to poverty; he is finally compelled to admit that the family
belonged to "the upper classes" and was "out of sympathy with the majority of
Numidians" (pp. 25-8). The trend is continued in G. Bonner, St. Augustineof Hippo:
Life and Controversies(London, 1963; repr. New York, 1985), p. 37; and, more
recently, by H. Chadwick, Augustine (Oxford, 1986), pp. 6, 32: Patricius was "far
from being rich"; Augustine came from "a relatively impecunious provincial family".
10 Possidius, VitaAug. 1 (PL, 32, 33). Hereafterall referencesto the source materials
will use the following standard abbreviations:PL = Patrologiaecursuscompletus,series
Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64); CSEL = Corpus Scriptorunm
EcclesiasticorumLatinorum(Vienna, 1866 and continuing); CCL = CorpusChristianorum, seriesLatina (Turnhout, 1953 and continuing). If a CCL edition exists reference
is made to it alone, failing that to CSEL or, failing either of these, to the Migne
edition. All translations from the original texts are mine.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

something that very few other fathers in the district could do.11 It is
often claimed that a season's delay in the young Augustine's education, apparently compelled by a constricted family budget in that
year, is a sure sign of the family's poverty. But this is hardly so. In
the agrarian economy that was at the base of Patricius' household,
lean years were a recurrent phenomenon which produced periodic
liquidity problems even for moderately well-off landowners. In these
circumstances, hard cash to be dispensed for a son's formal education
was hardly a high priority. In tendentious and committed argument
Augustine was later to claim that he came from a poor family, but
the statement is made in a context that must make one suspicious of
its truth value.12 Moreover, in referring to the bequest of his paternal
inheritance (or a large part of it) to the church at Thagaste, Augustine
states that the gift represented about a twentieth of the church's total
landed wealth. We do not know exactly what the total was, but by
late 411 the church had benefited from a century of considerable
bequests by patrons, including the immense gifts of land and other
property made by the younger Melania in the preceding year. Augustine's portion of his paternal inheritance (shared with at least one
brother and one sister) was therefore hardly inconsequential. An
inheritance of that size, to which must be added those of Augustine's
siblings, gives us some conception of the size of the original patrimony
that must have constituted Patricius' undivided estate.13 What is
more, the clear impression gained from reading about Augustine's
paternal estates, and those of his peers, is not one of poverty but
rather of substance.
We must therefore remove Augustine from the ranks of the poor.
He was from a family that was part of the "curial class", though
perhaps the lower end of it. Such a subdecurial family may well have
been experiencing some of the acute fiscal pressures that were being
exerted on the group as a whole at this time.14 If true, then Augustine
11 Confess. 2.3.5 (CCL, 27, 19-20); cf. 6.7.11 (CCL, 27, 80-1).
12 Serm. 356.13
(PL, 39, 1579-80); see the edition of C. Lambot, Sancti Augustini
sermonesselecti duodeviginti(Utrecht, 1950), pp. 140-1, where Augustine speaks of
himself as a poor man (homopauper) born to poor parents (de pauperibusnatus). The
context is a struggle between Augustine and some of his subordinate clergy over the
place of property in the church at Hippo. The statement has been taken at face value
at least since Migne's introductory biography (PL, 32, 66).
13Ep. 126.7 (CSEL, 44, 13).
14
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Strugglein the Ancient Greek World(London,
1981), pp. 467 ff., an interpretation of materials found in A. H. M. Jones, The Later
Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economicand AdministrativeSurvey(Oxford, 1964),
pp. 737-57.

10

PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

was indeed a marginal man in danger of being "squeezed" downwards, but who had a rare opportunity for escape from his local
surroundings - perhaps the ideal candidate for a conversion. Thus
Augustine can be seen in his own life as representative of the lower
ranks of a regional upper class. This simple observation, however,
means that our best witness for the period does not reflect family life
as lived by the vast majority of the inhabitants of the region from
which he came. These aspects of plebeian family life, however, can
be glimpsed in the vignettes, allusions, explanations and inadvertent
asides about the common people of his world that pepper the bishop's
writings. Concerning his own family, we are also reasonably well
informed by these same sources. But in them we also perceive the
contrast between the idea and the reality of family referred to at the
beginning of this paper. His own experience of family relations was
concentrated overwhelmingly on the rather narrow circle of his
mother and father, his siblings and his own child. Notices of persons
outside this group are rather rare; they include the chance mention
of some nieces, a nephew and two cousins, each case being alluded
to in passing only once.15 For all that, nuclear-family relations were
most definitely not Augustine's idea of "family".
As an entree to Augustine's world of family relations we might
begin by attempting to grasp his conception of the family as a part
of the whole social order. In traditionalformal thought the household
had been considered the irreducible unit of society. Below it were
only isolated individuals; out of it arose all more complex groups,
culminating in the state. Such a schematic location of the house had
already been given conscious expression by Aristotle some seven to
eight centuries earlier. More directly influentialon Augustine's formal
thinking were Stoic ideas. According to Stoic ideology, the household,
however artificial its formation, had come to be accepted as a part of
the natural order of society as a whole, represented at its pinnacle by
the state. Although Augustine did accept this place of the house and
conception of natural order, it would be a mistake to leap to the
conclusion that he also accepted the family as the irreduciblebuildingblock of society. In fact for him the atom of society was not the
"family", but the union of man and woman; it was the joining (copula,
copulatio)of man and wife that represented the seed-bed of state and
15 See the notices in the standard reference works:
J. R. Martindale et al., The
Prosopographyof the Later Roman Empire, II: A.D. 395-527 (Cambridge, 1980); A.
Mandouze, Prosopographiechretienne du Bas-Empire, I: Afrique, 303-533 (Paris,
1982).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

11

society. 16 The household was a higher-level part of the natural order

stemming from the biological/creative powers of men and women.
The latter copulatio was subordinate to the power flowing down
through the social order, through the household, which dictated the
relationships in it: the husband above the wife, the parents over the
children. 17

This conception of family receives perhaps its fullest expression in

the nineteenth book of the City of God, which contains a discussion
of the origins of the power and role of the paterfamilias. First, the
household comprehends all those under paternalauthority, including
children and slaves. Sons and slaves are distinguished by the critical
factor of heirship (that is, their access to family wealth).18 However
much sons might be subject to servile punishment by the father, or
even by the father's slaves, it was the proprietorialfact of the inheritance that separatedthem from slaves.19In this sense, the terms domus
(household) and familia ("family") seem to overlap considerably, if
they are not actually synonymous.20 Secondly, the role of the father
which defines the household is a power relationship: he dominates
because he must enforce the peace of the household to ensure its
harmony. He achieves this goal in the first instance by the infliction
of corporal punishment.21 The household is thus seen primarily as a
16 Civ.
Dei, 15.16.3 (CSEL, 40.2, 95): "Therefore the joining (copulatio)of male
and female, in so far as it pertains to humankind, is the seed-bed (seminarium)of the
state/society (civitas)"; cf. de Bono Coniug. 1.1 (CSEL, 41, 187): "The natural origin
of human society is the joining of man and wife". Both passages are heavily Stoic in
tone; cf. Cicero, de Off., 1.17.54: "The origin of society is in the joining (coniugium)
of man and woman, next in children, then in the household (una domus), all things
held in common; this is the foundation (principium)of the city and, so to speak, the
seed-bed of the state (seminariumreipublicae)". In phrasing his conception in this way,
Augustine was also following the Roman-law definition of marriage: "Marriageis the
joining (coniunctio)of male and female" (Dig. 23.2.1). The claim is made in virtually
every modern text on the subject that Augustine holds "the family" to be the
fundamental unit of society; but in his own terms he does not. The sort of tradition
from which his thinking is derived, as can be seen in the Cicero passage, conceived
of a series of steps leading from the "copulation" of man and woman, through children,
then the domus, to the state. The need to claim that Augustine holds "the family" to
be the essential natural unit of society is a false one demanded by modern ideological
positions, principally those espoused by certain churches.
17 Civ.
Dei, 19.16 (CSEL, 40.2, 401); cf. Quaest. in Hept. 1.153 (CCL, 33, 59).
18 Civ. Dei, 19.16 (CSEL, 40.2, 401).
19 In real life, as well; see En. Psalm. 117.13 (CCL, 40, 1662): "Often a father
orders his sons to be punished by his wickedest slaves; he is preparing the inheritance
for the former, the leg irons for the latter".
20 Civ.
Dei, 19.16 (CSEL, 40.2, 401).
21
Civ. Dei, 19.16 (CSEL, 40.2, 402): "If anyone in the household (domus)who
sets himself against the domestic peace (domesticapax)by his disobedience is corrected,
by word or by whip (seu verbo seu verbere)or by any other just and legal type of

(cont. on p. 12)

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PAST AND PRESENT

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microcosm of the regimen of discipline and punishment that is part

of a whole web of social control. The peace of the family has a direct
relationship to the "civic peace" of the state. The father has to fill
the role of disciplinarian and owner (that is, one who dominates) so
that the household might fit into the wider social order.22 The
sceptical readermight properly object that this is just so much theory,
and heavily derivative at that. For the social historian, however,
derivative thinking is not as great an impediment as it is for the
historian of ideas. The continuity of traditional ideas can be quite
useful to life in the real world. How then are we to make sense of
what Augustine has to say, since he clearly sees the household in
rather traditional terms: as a network of power relations extending
downwards through the father of the family? To assess the meaning
of these conceptions in his mind we must first see if his conceptions
of domusand familia are themselves traditional.
For Augustine familia generally has a very strong proprietory
sense, and therefore encompassed all things in the ownership or
"domination" of the father, including slaves. Familia was one of
those material or quasi-material things which every good proprietor
strove to increase; it is included in standard lists where other such
goods are gold, silver, land, fine clothes, cattle, clients and honours.23
That idea was not just theoretical, but was rooted in Augustine's
observation of the psychological drive of men to possess goods such
as wives, sons, male and female slaves, clothes, houses, and so
on.24 Tertullian shared this view, and is explicit on the proprietorial
significance offamilia. Selecting a list of unmarriedand childless men
typical of the Roman world - the soldier, the eunuch and the celibate
bachelor - he states that these men too have their own "families",
though not, from his moralizing perspective, as fertile and productive
(n. 21 cont.)

punishment to the extent allowed by society, it is for the benefit (utilitas) of the one
who is corrected, that he might be returned to the peace from which he has broken".
22 Civ. Dei, 19.16 (CSEL, 40.2, 402): "The conclusion is sufficiently clear that the
peace of the household (pax domestica)relates to the peace of the state (pax civica); that
is to say, that the ordered harmony of ruling and obedience of those living together in
the same house (cohabitantes)refers to the ordered harmony of ruling and obedience
of citizens (cives) in the state. Consequently, it follows that the father, in considering
the rules by which he might rule his own household (domussua), should adopt those
of the state, so that his house will fit in with the peace of the state".
23 En. Psalm. 32.ii.15 (CCL, 38, 265); 70.i.16 (CCL, 39, 953); 137.8 (CCL, 40,
1983); 143.18 (CCL, 40, 2085-6); Serm. 14.4.4 (CCL, 41, 187); 20.4 (CCL, 41, 266);
311.13 (PL, 38, 1418); In Ep. Iohann. ad Parth. 3.11 (PL, 35, 2003).
24 Serm. 297.5.8
(PL, 38, 1362); En. Psalm. 143.18 (CCL, 40, 2085-6); and n. 23
above.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

13

as those of married men.25 At the other end of the spectrum of

meaning, familia merges with domusor household. In this sense the
conception of domusincluded the extended aristocratic lineage, the
illustrious or noble family, such as that of the Anicii.26 But domus
itself extended in meaning from this network of personal and property
relations to the physical structureof the house itself. This house(hold)
was linked both physically by its placement, and more abstractly
through its paternal head, to the state, the "home town". Thus
one identified in turn with one's paterna domus and one's patria.27
Otherwise the meanings could overlap completely even within the
same context: one could say that when a father fell ill he returned to
his physical house (domus)to be tended, but in illness he continued to
manage the affairsof the house (domus)in the sense of his household.28
Domus, therefore, could narrow in meaning to household in the
seemingly limited sense of the physical structure built for its inhabitants.29 But the constriction in meaning is probably only apparent
for us; it probably did not exist for those men because of the
metaphoric associations that stemmed from the simple mention of
the physical home. Merely to have a domusimplied that one also had
a familia, and vice versa. Boarders (inquilini), for example, were
distinguished by the fact that they themselves did not have a domus,
but merely lived in one; in substance, they were seen as persons
detached from households.30 The house was also integrally connected
with one's social standing; honour was judged from the domusitself,
and its decor. The mere sight of a magnificent domus, like fine
clothing, was a sufficient guarantee that the inhabitant was of high
social rank.31 Simple things mattered a lot: the more elaborate your
drapery, the greateryour honour.32And, just as important, the house
and its physical artefacts, things as mundane as drinking-cups, could
25

Tertullian, de Cast. 12.3.

Ep. 150 (CSEL, 44, 381).
27
Confess. 4.4.9 (CCL, 27.44).
28 En. Psalm. 102.6
(CCL, 40, 1456).
29 Annot. ad Job, 2.7 (CSEL, 28.2, 565); En. Psalm. 32.ii.20-1 (CCL, 38, 268-9;
connecting the habitaculumwith the hereditas);Tract. 10 in Iohann. 9. (CCL, 36, 1056); Tract. 37 in Iohann. 8 (CCL, 36, 336); Serm. 219 (PL, 38, 1088). Some references
among many; see also Ep. 29.5, 39.2, 65, 99, 115, 122.2.
30 See nn. 40-2 below.
31 En. Psalm.
32.ii.12, 18 (CCL, 38, 263, 267-8); cf. Serm. 302.21.19 (PL, 38,
1392).
32 Serm. 51.4.5
(PL, 38, 336); cf. En. Psalm. 25.ii.12 f. (CCL, 38, 149 f.); one
could act excessively in this respect, however; one had to beware "lest you decorate
your house like a new whorehouse": see Tertullian, de Idol. 5.11 (CCL, 2, 1117) and
ad Uxor. 1.8.3 (CCL, 1, 392).
26

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PAST AND PRESENT

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provide a family continuity that could not be attained by actual

demographic succession.33
Augustine's conception of family and household also carried with
it a strong sense of co-residence of the persons involved.34 But as we
know from many modern studies on the subject of the pre-industrial
family in the west, residence (Augustine's cohabitantes)could take
many forms and hardly necessitated all persons literally living under
the same roof.35 So just how far did the household extend? Augustine
certainly included the familia of slaves and dependants attached to
the kin-core of the household. An incident in the Confessionsmakes
clear just how integral that connection was. Augustine reports that a
free-born member of a house (una domus)might see a slave touching
something which they themselves are not permitted to touch; they
then feel indignant. Although there is a single dwelling (habitaculum)
and one family (unafamilia), not everyone is allowed to go everywhere
in it. Since the report is made from the vantage point of a free-born
child in the kin-core of the house, it is clear that slaves too were
regarded as wholly part of the largerfamilia that lived in the same
house.36 The core household, then, consisted of a restricted number
of elements (huband/father, wife/mother, children and slaves), all of
which had to stand in a firm hierarchical relationship to each other
and to perform their proper role in order for there to be a proper and
therefore peaceful and happy house.37 As we move away from the
kin-core and a clearly defined set of dependants like chattel slaves,
however, we do not find any clear dividing line between the motherfather-child(ren) triad and the rest. For example, when speaking
of the hatreds and divisions between kin that are exacerbated by
33 For example, Serm. 17.7.7 (CCL, 41, 242); portraits (tabulapicta) of the owner
"in his house" appear to have been common among the higher social ranks; Augustine
condemns them as ad vanum honoremtuum:Serm. 9.10.15 (CCL, 41, 137): you feel
hurt when people throw stones at them.
34 See Civ. Dei, 19.16, cited in n. 22 above; Serm. 170.4 (PL, 38, 929): "the
inhabitants of a house (domus habitatores)are said to be the household (domus) . . .
since we do not call walls and the holding-places of bodies a household, but rather the
inhabitants themselves"; a domus is defined as a place of permanent habitation: "a
house (domus) is said to be that place where we reside permanently": En. Psalm.
26.ii.6 (CCL, 38, 157). As such its recognition was manifest: "Who does not recognize/
know the world about them? The world is the world, just as a house (domus)is a house
(domus); a house (domus) in its construction (fabrica), a house(hold) (domus) in its
inhabitants (habitatores)":Serm. 342.3 (PL, 39, 1503), reminiscent of Gertrude Stein.
35 M. Mitterauer and R. Sieder, The EuropeanFamily, trans. K. Oosterveen and
M. Horzinger (Chicago, 1982), pp. 18 f.
36 Confess. 3.7.13 (CCL, 27, 34); cf. Serm. 21.6-7 (Sirmond 20; CCL, 41, 281-2).
37 En. Psalm. 136.5 (CCL, 40, 1967); Serm. 152.4 (PL, 38, 821).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

15

conversion from traditionalbeliefs to Christianityor between different

Christian beliefs, a typical conflict Augustine notes is that between
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, both of whom are "in the same
house" (in una domo).38The mother-in-law/daughter-in-lawtension
was also present in Augustine's own family during his youth. Soon
after Monnica married Patricius, she encountered a mother-in-law
who was hostile to her. Meddlesome slave women were blamed for
the tension and dislike, but that seems more like a convenient
"explanation" for a problem that was inherent in many households.
Monnica bore up well in the travail, displaying toleranceand obsequiousness. The mother-in-law finally intervened and asked her son to
discipline the slave women who were disturbing the "family peace"
(pax domestica). Patricius then moved to restore family discipline
(familia disciplina)and the balance of relationships in the kin family
(the concordiasuorum):he whipped the slaves.39
But the household or domusnot only embraced close affinalrelatives
and domestic slaves; it could also include direct dependants other
than slaves. As in many agrarian societies, including those based
on an economic symbiosis of slave and peasant, the family also
encompassed the world of boarders and lodgers. Boarders were
itinerant or migrant labourers who attached themselves to the house
of their new master or the farm owner who commanded their work.
Since the migrant was on the move, by definition he lacked a home,
a habitation, and by default became a member of the household
where he stayed. As we have already seen, permanent residence
formed a substantial part of the definition of a household.40 Not
having his own domus, the boarder or inquilinuswas compelled to
38 En. Psalm. 44.11
(CCL, 38, 502): "The same situation sets the daughter against
her mother, and, even more, the daughter-in-law (nurus) against her mother-in-law
(socer). For sometimes in the same household (in una domo) a daughter-in-law and
mother-in-law are found, the one a heretic, the other a catholic".
39 Confess. 9.9.20 (CCL, 27, 145-6).
40 On residence, see nn. 22, 34 above. Since boardersare an almost wholly unstudied
aspect of Roman social relations, no secondary literatureis yet availableon the subject.
An investigation into the term as it is used in the later law codes has been made by P.
Rosafio, "Inquilinus", Opus, iii (1984), pp. 121-31, who points out that the inquilinus
was distinguished from the tied-farmer (colonus)by the fact that his identity had to be
traced by his kinship relations (his agnatio) rather than the place where he lived (his
origo). See En. Psalm 60.6 (CCL, 39, 768-9): inquiliniare connected to the domus;they
are not given mansioneswhich are only granted to permanent residents or cives.Inquilini
were only temporary dwellers; see En. Psalm. 38.21 (CCL, 38, 420-1), for an inquilinus
as a person on the move: "The place where I remain permanently is called my home
(domusmea); when I migrate I become an inquilinus. I am an inquilinusof my God
with whom I will remain, once I have received a house (domoaccepta)from him".

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live in that of another, and so became identified with his new house.41
It seems that these arrangements were not contractual in any legal
sense, but reposed on the letting of a house or part of it to the lodger
under tenuous conditions in which his master or dominuscould simply
expel him or order him to leave. The contract reposed more on the
traditional social foundation of hospitiumthan it did on the strictly
juridical basis of rent.42
In a vertical sense one must also suspect that elders (that is,
grandparents) were thought of as part of the household, although
Augustine never says so explicitly. Elders appear consistently in the
context of childhood education, and as such were closely allied to the
biological parents of the children.43 The child was subject to their
auctoritasas he was to that of his parents; both carefully follow his
upbringing and, in Augustine's case, laugh at the beatings he received
in school.44 Laterally the household contained not only the wife but
also the concubine. Although Augustine, as part of his Christian
teaching, inveighed untiringly in the harshest terms against having
both a wife and a concubine, clearly this idea was not shared by many
men, and certainly did not reflect their practice (nor that of Augustine
himself before his conversion).45 Augustine reports a conversation
(perhaps imagined) with one of his parishioners; he thunders against
the man's possession of both wife and concubine; the latter, he says,
is no better than a common prostitute. The man is confused by this
newfangled idea, and upset by the bishop's intrusion into his family
life. He angrily retorts to Augustine with the question, "Am I not
permitted to do what I want in my own household?".46
41 En. Psalm. 118.viii.1 (CCL, 40, 1684): "Inquilini do not have their own house
(domuspropria), but live in another's household; temporary residents (incolae) and
strangers (advenae), on the other hand, are treated as foreigners (adventitii)".
42 En. Psalm. 148.11 (CCL, 40, 2174): "You are an inquilinus,not the owner of a
house (possessordomus);that house has been rented, not given, to you. Even if you are
unwilling, you will have to move on, you did not receive the house on the condition
that a fixed time in it would be guaranteed to you. What does your master say? 'When
I decide, when I say, you go; you had better be ready to hit the road. I am expelling
you from my hospitality, but I'll at least give you a (parting) gift'. Here on earth you
are an inquilinus, but in Heaven you will be an owner (possessor)";cf. Tertullian, ad
Uxor. 2.4.1 (CCL, 1, 1295).
43 Confess. 1.6.8, 1.7.11 (CCL, 27, 4, 6).
44 Confess. 1.8.13, 1.9.15 (CCL, 27, 7-9).
45 For example, Serm. 132.4 (PL, 38, 734-7); 392.2 (PL, 39, 1710).
46 Serm. 224.3 (PL, 38, 1095): "If she [that is, your wife] has just one man, namely
yourself, why do you want two women? But you say 'My slave woman is my concubine.
Would you prefer that I violate another man's wife? Would you prefer that I rush to
the public prostitute? Or are you saying that I am not permitted to do what I want in
my own house (in domomea)?'. I say to you, 'It is not permitted. Men who do this go
to hell, and will burn in eternal fire.' ".

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

17

But household links do not seem to have ceased absolutely even

within these bounds. The enmeshing of the household into a broader
hierarchy of domination, a network extending outwards from the kincore through slaves and clients, and further outwards through friends
and neighbours, to the community, is a constant of Augustine's
world. In the aftermath of the brutal lynching of an imperial official
at Hippo by popular action, Augustine delivered a monitory sermon
to his people that provides insight into these social networks and the
place of the domus in them. Augustine begins with the problem of
how such unbridled popular power is to be disciplined and restrained.
It is not possible for individuals to do much, he admits; but each
man in respect of his own household (in domosua) is able to discipline
his sons, slaves, friends, neighbours, clients and children. In some
cases "persuasion" will be required, but those who are under the
direct power of the household head are to be dealt with severely.
Naturally, Augustine saw Christian ideology as having a role to play,
but it was made operationalby each household unit. It only functioned
if each household head restrained his slave and his son, and if the
severity of the father, the paternal uncle, the teacher, the good
neighbour and elders was able to tame (domaret)the youth.47 The
domus is thus set at the nexus of strands of relationships at once
extending into it (for example, over sons and slaves) and outwards
from it (for example, to friends and neighbours). In this sense the
house represented the core operative unit of the society. It was
through the domusthat Christianitypenetrated the society, and it was
the domus as a whole that later suffered punishment for serious
transgressions of Christian regulations.48 The familial polity of the
household was therefore the primal social unit, a miniature locus of
power in the whole of society.49
The cycle of punishment and social control emanating from the
father extended from him inwards into the house, and outwards to
those proximate to it; and it was exerted on him from outside, whence
he was expected to transmit it into his house. Does he see someone
going to the theatre or off to get drunk? If the man is a friend, he is
to be warned in an amicable way; if it is his wife, she is to be reined
in harshly. His slave woman? She is to be compelled with the whip.
Serm. 302.21.19 (PL, 38, 1392).
Ep. 191.2 (CSEL, 57, 164); cf. Ep. 250.1-2 (CSEL, 57, 593-6) for punishment.
49 Ep. 200.2
(CSEL, 57, 294), where Augustine remarks to Valerius, the comes
Africae, that his house is a core of power: "how much your house (domus tua) is a
refuge and solace to the holy, and a terror to unbelievers".
47

48

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Each man, says Augustine, is responsible in respect of his own

household (in domo sua) for his friend, for the boarder (inquilinus),
for the client and for those who are older and those who areyounger.50
Paternal authority is coercive, but within the bounds of the house it
is balanced by a counter-ideology of love. Each man in his own house
(in domosua) especially disciplines his wife and subjugates her when
she fights back, he domesticates his son (filiumtuumdomas) so that
he is obedient to him and, finally, he punishes his slaves. But in all
cases it is punishment and love.51 Paternal severity is supposed to be
counterbalanced by charity and love; both extend across a network
of relationships which linked those inside the family to those outside:
from father and husband to wife, concubine, children, brothers,
neighbours, relatives and friends.52
What emerges clearly from this matrix of positive and normative
statements in Augustine is that the household head, the father/
husband, is located in a pivotal position: he was at once the person
who linked the family to other families in the society, who felt and
transmitted external social pressures to his family, and the person
who was to maintain control over the members of his own family,
especially over his wife, his sons and his slaves. Both factorsconduced
to isolate the father. If there had existed genuine lines of agnatic
successors in the society, they would have mitigated the isolation
somewhat by diffusing these pressures vertically. Although there are
references to be found in Augustine to a three-generationaldepth in
families (avus, pater-filius, nepotes,pronepotes),these rarely suggest
that all three coexist; almost all are restricted to the pious wish and
hope for such familial continuity.53 Furthermore, elders seem to be
rather distant in actual family contexts remarkedupon by Augustine.
He never mentions any of them by name, and they seem only to have
had an effective existence for the early childhood of the son. Indeed
he contrasts his own father, whom he knew because he often saw
him, with his grandfather whom he never saw.54 Whereas it is true
Tract. 10 in Iohann. 9 (CCL, 36, 105-6).
For example, de Utilit. leiun. 4.5 (CCL, 46, 235).
52 Serm. 349.2
(PL, 39, 1530).
53 Locut. in Hept. 1.107 (CCL, 33, 391); Princip. Dialect. (PL, 32, 494); and, more
concretely, Annot. in Job, 39 (PL, 34, 887); En. Psalm. 127.2-3 (CCL, 40, 1869-70;
may you have sons and grandsons so that your domus might rejoice); En. Psalm.
48.i. 15 (CCL, 38, 563; continuity should not be sought at death in your monumentum,
but rather in sons, grandsons and great grandsons).
54 De Musica, 6.11.32 (PL, 32, 1130): "I think about my father whom I often saw
quite differently from my grandfatherwhom I never saw". It is significant that he uses
this example, in the context of discussing a complex philosophical problem, as a
general illustration which he believes most persons will readily understand.
50

51

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

19

that maiorescould provide a background of auctoritasand could take

over in lieu of parents, they only seem to be present at this stage of
the domestic cycle; they disappear completely from any subsequent
post-infant stage as viewed from the perspective of the child.s5
Of all relationships within the domus the most dominant was
clearly that between father and son, probably because the father-son
relationship was the critical link in the continuity of the physical
household. The father so organized his whole domusthat he might
have sons in order to be succeeded by them.56 In the first instance
this succession was connected to biological reproduction; the father
used his wife to procreate a son who would succeed him when he
died.57 The father looked to sons not only to provide for themselves,
but also to produce a third generation of the family. It was a matter
of some concern. In the near-claustrophobicatmosphereof the house,
secrecy and ignorance might cloud sexual knowledge. But there
were forums outside the home. In a revelatory incident, the young
Augustine went to the public baths at Thagaste with his father
Patricius; there his father saw evidence of pubescence in his son's
genitalia. He ran home in a veritable delirium to announce his son's
manhood to his wife: a sure sign of future nepotes.58But successionthat is, biological continuity - was inextricably bound up with a
hard economic reality. For the vast majority of families this was the
family farm. For a much smaller number in the towns themselves it
might be a workplace or a small shop owned by the father. As in
most so-called Third World countries today, sons were looked to not
only to assume the domestic economic base but also to provide a sort
of insurance for parents in their old age.59 This latter problem was a
very real one; domestic ideology stressed that, if there was familial
property, it was the first duty, above all others, for children to support
their parents before friends and other relatives.60 But the most careful
planning for biological succession could be struck down by sudden
misfortune.61
55

56

Confess.1.6.8, 1.7.11, 1.8.13, 1.9.15 (CCL, 27, 4-8).

En. Psalm. 25.ii.18 (CCL, 38, 164); cf. Tertullian, ad Uxor. 1.5.1 (CCL, 1, 378).

57 En. Psalm. 127.2

(CCL,40, 1869;a wife is like a fertilevineyardin his domusshe will producesons who will standaboutthe householdtable"likeso manystrong
olive trees");127.15(CCL,40, 1878;the sons will succeedthe fatherand mayeven
live with him in old age);cf. Tract.12 in Iohann.5 (CCL,36, 122f.), thoughall the
sectionsfrom4 ff. are well worthreading.
58
Confess.2.3.6 (CCL, 27, 20); Patriciusthen got roaringdrunkin celebration.
59En. Psalm.70.ii.6 (CCL, 39, 965; with fearfulreferenceto the delinquentson,
and the problemof supportin old age, subsedium
senectutis).
60
Ep. 243.12(CSEL,57, 578-9);and,at somelength,Serm.276.1-2(PL, 39, 2264).
61 Serm.32.25
(CCL, 41, 409-10),quotingPsalms143.12:"'He has manysons,
manygrandsons:he is securefromthe misfortunesof death.'As if one disasteris not
able to destroymanythousandsof men".

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The web of economic and psychological relationships in which the

father and son were implicated is well illustrated by sentiments
expressed openly on other occasions, as in the evocative words of a
funerary inscription from Africa:62"To Sergius Sulpicius, who was
just beginning to leave behind his boyish years, and who, to the joy
of his father, was obedient to the better side. A loving son, Festus
by name, he was good by nature, the great hope of his father, endowed
with qualities of total respect (obsequium)and a beautiful honesty. He
loved his parents, and obeyed all their commands with wonderful
duty. If only his father could have enjoyed such filial piety a little
longer! Alas! It was a cruel and unmerited fate, a mournful thing for
all, that he perished while not yet having enjoyed his sixteenth year,
and ruined and bereaved his father, whose old age is now deprived
of its cane". All the appropriate behaviours and values are stressed:
the love, obedience, hard work, obsequium,honour and pietas of the
son who was "the great hope" of his father, and who was to be his
support, his "cane", in old age. In the final instance, it was the
economic connection that mattered. Succession was a strategy of
heirship such that father and son would not lose the property the
father had so carefully acquired and tended through a lifetime of hard
work.63 Just as in the words of this funerary epitaph, Augustine also
reports that all hope was placed in sons, everything was saved so that
it might be handed over to them. All actions were directed to this
end; even those acts which might lead to accusations of hoarding and
avarice on the part of the father could be defended under the rubric
of pietas.64The danger was that any type of property dispersal short
of a post mortemtransfer threatened the father's control both of his
own goods and of his family. Paternalheads of families were therefore
compelled to fall back on the device of hereditary succession, rather
than forgo control of much of their land in their own lifetime.65 In
62
Corp. Inscrip. Lat. VIII, 9519 (Caesarea, MauretaniaCaesariensis);only the first
nine lines are translated here.
63 Tract. 7 in Iohann. 7
(CCL, 36, 69-71; the father establishes the hereditasfor his
son; the scenario is linked, as in the instances cited below, to the father's powers of
punishment); cf. Liber de Medit. 3 (PL, 40, 903); Serm. 21.8 (Sirmond 20; CCL, 41,
284): "For what great end do you save your whole domus,if not for the little imploring
child whom you lift on to your horse? All that you have, the domusand everything in
the domus, and your fields and everything in them, you keep for him".
64En. Psalm. 131.19 (CCL, 40, 1921); cf. Serm. 9.20 (CCL, 41, 146-7); 32.25
(CCL, 41, 409-10); 60.3.3-4.4 (PL, 38, 403-4); 86.8.9 (PL, 38, 527); 90.10 (PL, 38,
566); 117.7 (PL, 38, 665), a frequent theme.
65 Serm. 156.15.17 (PL, 38, 858). Compare the situation well described and documented by P. Greven, Four Generations:Population, Land and Family in Colonial
Andover, Massachusetts(Ithaca, 1970), pp. 77-98, 137, 272 ff.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

21

Augustine's world, paternalheads of households were understandably

reluctant to relinquish control of properties in their own lifetime.
Augustine reports that most parents thought that their sons obeyed
them because of such economic constraints. Sometimes it was expedient for sons to be emancipated for a specific purpose, such as marriage
or holding of an office, in which case the parents gave the son a
share of the family property. But a parent might sometimes balk at
emancipation, saying "I will not give my son the property, for he
will no longer obey me then".66
The critical link between father and son(s) was a strongly bilateral
one: the father counted on sons to help continue the house and its
property, but the sons were almost wholly dependent on the father for
their future. This particular nexus of power, we are told repeatedly,
generated very high expectations and demands on the part of the
father. Indeed it produced an ideology of almost servile dependence
and obedience from the sons: "You are a slave, obey your master;
you are a son, obey your father" is a sentiment that is voiced again
and again.67 The paternal expectation of obedience of this extreme
type was matched, it seems, by a fear on the part of the sons, a fear
which is compared to that of slaves for their masters.68 This timor,
whether or not we would see it as predominantly psychological in
tone, had a genuine basis. The sons' sole hope for the future was in
their part of the inheritance, the family farm or their share of it.
There are many indications of two possible dangers facing them.
Sons could labour a lifetime and then because of some dispute or
misdemeanour find themselves disinherited or otherwise cut off from
family resources. That was an extreme case. The more usual one
seems to have been a mental tension; for the lack of other choices in
their world, sons had to obey and work hard, but with no certain
knowledge of the treatment they would receive in the end.69
For the majority of peasant sons the alternatives to the domestic
66 See Serm. 45.2
(CCL, 41, 517); Augustine disapproves of the latter attitude, but
nevertheless reports it.
67
En. Psalm. 18.2.6. (CCL, 38, 109); 32.ii.6 (CCL, 38, 252; from a good slave
comes a good son); 70.i.2 (CCL, 39, 941; the only exception allowed by Augustine to
obeying a father's order is when it conflicts with an order of God).
68 Serm. 297.2 (PL, 39,2314), where the two fears are
paralleled, then distinguished:
the slave's fear is of his master's torture, the son's is of his father's "love".
69 En. Psalm. 17.32
(CCL, 38, 99; sons hope for inheritance after long service);
60.7 (CCL, 39, 769-70; just as sons work to receive their parents' inheritance on their
death, so Christians labour to receive the divine inheritance from their "father");
32.ii.3-4 (CCL, 38, 248-9; where the dyad of punishment and inheritance reappears).

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economy were few indeed. In this world there were no surrogateand

economic opportunities to enable the children to form peer groups
with their own norms and powers. The world of the school, where
the magisterstood as a stern disciplinarian in place of the father, was
a stunted institution by comparison with the family, and open only
to the better off. 70 The sons of the middling and wealthy families in
the towns of the empire were exceptional in their ability to form
such peer groups, often as condiscipuli.Frequently these groups of
"aristocraticyouths" (iuventus)were able to assert their own networks
of power as Mohocks, terrorizing local townspeople with their violence. What else was there for them to do? Even for them, the
intense family networks that made up society foreclosed any genuine
economic role outside it. One of the few other alternativesenvisaged
by Augustine to the harsh treatment of sons by fathers was one
which, on occasion, led the former to prefer the expedient of selling
themselves into temporary forms of "slavery" ratherthan to continue
to face paternal maltreatment.71 But clearly this was a desperate
option. For the vast numbers of sons of the less well off, the only
substantial outside choice was the army. It did come to form a genuine
institutional alternative: offering an independent economic base to
the son, it threatenedhis father'spower (both his paternalpotestas,and
his economic control: consider the peculiumcastrense).The reaction of
the family to the threat of the army was correspondingly hostile.72
In the real world, therefore, it was the promise of receiving the
paternal hereditas that kept the son working for the father. But
sometimes the conditional and tentative nature of that promise fuelled
a division between father and son which Augustine reports as a
frequent occurrence among the inhabitants of his parish. It amounted
to what Augustine saw as a generalized "naturaldislike" between the
two.73 So the father had to discipline, to domesticate his sons. This
70

Serm. 70.2 (PL, 38, 444).

Tract. in Ep. Ioh. 7.8, with S. Denis, 7.3, 21.4, on sons responding to the
blandishments of mangonesor slave dealers; an unusual set of texts, on which see S.
Poque, Le langagesymboliquedans la predicationd'Augustind'Hippone:imagesheroiques,
2 vols. (Paris, 1984), ii, p. 129.
72 Compare Apuleius, Metamorphoses,2.18, 2.30 ff.; and Herodian, 7.43-5, with
Augustine's student days at Carthage, ConJess.2.3.8 ff.; relation of family to army,
see Tertullian, de Corona, 11.1 (CCL, 2, 1056).
73 En. Psalm. 44.11 (CCL, 38, 501-2); such conflicts often worked their way out in
the realm of religious preferences, as did the mother/daughter-fatherconflict, cf. Passio
SanctarumPerpetuaeet Felicitatis, 3, 5 and the mother-in-law/daughter-in-lawconflict,
though the father-son bond was not as susceptible to this division: cf. En. Psalm.
44.11 (CCL, 38, 502). On natural dislike, Augustine remarks in the first passage, "It
generally happens among humankind that the son is set against his father".
71

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

23

is remarked upon with great force and frequency in contexts that are
not purely ideological. It is put in crude and straightforwardterms:
sons must be domesticated, just as one domesticates one's cattle
(iumenta).74 Fathers therefore had to take pre-emptive action to
discipline and "to domesticate" their sons (a word that appears
frequently, as a cognate term with domus). That process began with
a training of the son from birth, a training which inculcated in him
a sense of shame such that he would blush to disobey. He would also
learn to fear his father as a severe judge; if he was contumacious, the
father should use verbal warnings and then the whip to inflict pain
and suffering, all in the interest of the eventual good behaviour of
the son.75 The uncertain threat presented by a potentially disobedient
son meant that the verbal penalties led to the corporal ones; the
resistance of the "insolent son" had to be disciplined with the whip.
The "good" son was one who was prepared under the lash for receipt
of his hereditas.Augustine states that the son should bear up under
the "correcting hand" without complaint, lest he be disinherited. He
does not say this without justification, for he also reports on parents
who customarily rejected their "bad" children; and the "paternal
whip" seems to have been a commonplace of everyday speech. That
emphatic connection is hardly a coincidence. It has been noted,
perspicaciously, that the whip is the near-universal symbol, and
instrument, of domination in all slave societies known to historical
research.76
The problems of discipline and domination, of the son and the
slave, and the instrument of the whip, all merge together in a
determination of the relationships of power within the late antique
family. To achieve this discipline within the family, therefore, one
finds constant allusion not only to the threat of disinheritance, but
also to the use of physical punishment: the recourse to whippings,
74
En. Psalm. 31.ii.23 (CCL, 38, 241); Serm. 55.4.4 (PL, 38, 376); cf. Ep. 133.2
(CSEL, 44, 82-3; beating with rods is the common method employed by parents and
schoolmasters, and by bishops in their courts), and 173.3 (CSEL, 44, 641-2; father's
punishment of the son connected to his correction in all respects, including that of
keeping him away from unacceptable religious beliefs).
75 Serm. 13.8.9 (CCL, 41, 182-3).
76 En. Psalm. 32.ii.3
(CCL, 38, 248-9; the "insulsus puer", and note the clear
implications of force in both the terms corrigensand manus);for the paternalwhip, see
Annot. in Job, 38 (CSEL, 28.2, 600-1); En. Psalm. 118.xxxi.3 (CCL, 40, 1771), Serm.
21.8 (CCL, 41, 283-4); on the rejection of "bad" children, Ep. ad Galat. 39 (PL, 35,
2132): parents are accustomedto disown them. For the role of the whip in slave
societies, see 0. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A ComparativeStudy (Cambridge,
Mass., 1982), pp. 3-4.

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PAST AND PRESENT

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especially for those "good" sons whom the father wished to have
succeed himself. This unity of discipline and punishment is consistently linked to the economic problem of inheritance, and, in the
circumstances of the time, to the factor of religious coercion.77 The
sons must put up with this abuse and punishment in hope of getting
their part of the estate.78These relations were certainly among those
which might lead to domestic strife and violence; but, as Augustine
observes, "we are sons; if we get our inheritance, there is peace".79
Nevertheless the regimen of threatand punishment was not invariably
successful: "We see fathers whip their rebellious sons, but sometimes
in despair they dismiss them to live where they might".80 It is simply
not possible, given this consistent linkage between the whip and
actual relations between fathers and sons, to soften the reality of the
potential harshness of the contact between the two, or to interpret
Augustine's statements as derivedfrom an imagery of God the Father,
a celestial paternal figure who inflicts terrible punishment only to
correct and in a spirit of love.81
But the "sometimes" in Augustine's observationabove is an important caution: it is very difficult to get a statistical sense of the
dimensions of these domestic problems. They rarely seem to have
reached the point of open and public confrontation requiring civic
adjudication. Sometimes external arbitration did have to be sought
in bitter quarrels between relatives, even between fathers and sons.
The father might complain about a bad son, the son about a harsh
father (the duruspater). In such adjudicated quarrels, however, the
son is never seen as equal to the father in honour, so outsiders tried
to preserve the economic balance in the household and therefore the
"respect" due from son to father.82Sometimes sons put up resistance
with impunity; sometimes, says Augustine, there is a "stupid" son
77
En. Psalm. 93.1 (CCL, 39, 300-1; linked to succession and inheritance); 93.17
(CCL, 39, 1317); 98.14 (CCL, 39, 1391-2); 102.20 (CCL, 40, 1469; in the context of
religious coercion); Serm. 21.8 (Sirmond 20; CCL, 41, 283-4); 94 (PL, 38, 580-1);
259.3 (PL, 38, 1199; father beats the son, cheats labourers of their due pay).
78En. Psalm. 142.17 (CCL, 40, 2031); cf. 102 (n. 77 above).
79 En. Psalm. 124.10 (CCL, 40, 1843).
80 En. Psalm. 93.17
(CCL, 39, 1318).
81 As does Poque, Langage symboliquedans la predicationd'Augustind'Hippone, i,
ch. 7, "La loi du pere", pp. 193-224; despite her one statement (p. 220) admitting
the hard reality, her constant tendency is to explain away the behaviour in terms of
imagery, finally to exculpate the author via Freudian Oedipal complexes and castration
fears, linguistic "structuration", and Ricoeurian guesswork (pp. 222-3).
82 Tract. 30 in Iohann. 8 (CCL, 36, 293); here, as throughout, I operate with the
interpretationof "honour" outlined by J. Davis, People of theMediterranean:An Essay
in ComparativeSocial Anthropology(London, 1977), pp. 89-100.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

25

who tests his father's "affection" and still manages to acquire his
hereditas.83In most families, though, the tacit threats and economic
constraints were sufficient control; open father-son quarrelswere not
so extreme as to disrupt the family permanently. Most parents did
not complain about the "wickedness" (improbitas)of their sons; there
were cases, but they were rare.84That is to say, the usual bonds of
power held; poor sons of poor farmers laboured and suffered, motivated not so much by profit (merces), says Augustine, as by pietas.
Obsequium,as noted in the funeraryepitaph quoted above, was indeed
the key sentiment and practice. The children of the better off tended
to show it because of economic enticements. But, rich or poor, sons
could not be certain; the parents could retaliate by disposing of their
wealth to others or by actually disowning their "bad" children.85
All these factors tended to isolate fathers from sons. The latter,
however, were not alone. The children and the mother seem to have
stood as a group apart from the father, united in common love and
fear. The dyad of punishment and love is repeatedly emphasized
whenever father-son relationships are observed.86 Set against this
backdrop, Augustine's relations with his father Patricius, distant,
formal and somewhat fearful, and his concomitant attachment to his
mother, brother and sister, do not seem so unusual. And his situation
was clearly one that allowed a degree of relief from household domination that was not available to most other sons.87 That is to say,
most sons had no future other than the family inheritance, with all
that implied for family relationships. The economic nexus of relations
between fathers and sons hints at another source of conflict: access
to the hereditaswas also very much a fraternalconcern. The optimum
solution was to have only one son who would succeed, but that could
hardly be planned, and more than one son meant division of the
inheritance, the threat of diminution of the paternal property and
potential trouble between brothers.88More than one son also meant
83

Liberde Medit.3 (PL, 40, 903).

Serm. 9.4 (CCL, 41, 114); for threatened punishment that stopped short of actual
blows, see En. Psalm. 73.8 (CCL, 39, 1010) and 148.11 (CCL, 40, 2274).
85
Serm. 45.2 (PL, 38, 263-4).
86 En. Psalm. 118.v.2 (CCL, 40, 1677); 118.xxxi.3 (CCL, 40,
1771); Serm. 82.ii.23 (PL, 38, 506-7).
87
Confess. 2.3.5, 6.7.11 (CCL, 27, 19-20, 80-1); cf. n. 11 above on Patricius'
expenditures for Augustine's formal education outside Thagaste, and of how few other
fathers in the district could afford this.
88 See n. 194 below, and En. Psalm. 49.2 (CCL, 38, 576; divided hereditas
among
several sons and the threat of its diminution); Serm. 87.11.13-12.14 (PL, 38, 529);
88.17.18 (PL, 38, 549; should only be one heir); Serm. ad Caes. 5 (PL, 43, 694;
diminishes the estate). As Tertullian remarks in noting the metathesis of the kinship
84

(cont. on p. 26)

26

PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

differential treatment. Augustine sees the matter from the perspective

of the "good" son: "Wherever I go, if I so much as make a move
without the express order of my father, I meet with the whip. My
brother, on the other hand, does whatever he wishes". Augustine's
advice to the "good" son? "Rejoice under the whip; the hereditasis
being prepared for you".89
The impius son is one who awaits his father's death. The pius son
hopes the father will live on, even though at death's door. Likewise,
advises Augustine, I must not hope for the premature death of my
brother with whom I must share the inheritance, even though while
he lives my share is smaller, and while the land remains in multiple
ownership part of it cannot be alienated.90He also notes the practical
problems involved in dividing agriculturalestates that included cash,
slaves, trees, fields and the family home. It is better that such estates
be left undivided. Sometimes, Augustine says, the father tries to
subdivide his property while still alive, but often the result is a series
of court cases between brotherswho battle to vindicate their respective
shares of the hereditas. The old man, in anguish, cries out, "What
on earth are you doing? I am still alive. In a little while I expect my
death - and you are carving up my domus!".91A way around the
impasse, one that might have been a common solution, was to leave
the hereditasintact and to have the sons work and share it together.
The frereche,therefore, was part of the social network that considerably affected family composition.92 It seems that the elder brother
did have seniority in such arrangementsand, if the frerechewas to be
dissolved, he took the place of the father in dividing the estate; the
interests of the younger brothers were protected by the device of
letting them select which of the divided parts they wanted for themselves.93We cannot tell how frequent this practicewas; the impression
gained from reading Augustine is that it was a possible option that
was available to sons, but that it was not a very common practice. As
(n. 88 cont.)

term "brother" to Christian usage for a co-religionist, the Christian bond is stronger
than it is among pagans where family property tends to tear brothers apart; see Apol.
39.10 (CCL, 1, 151).
89 En. Psalm. 93.17 (CCL, 39, 1318).
90Serm. 87.12.15 (PL, 38, 539); cf. de Utilit. leiun. 10.12 (CCL, 46, 240).
91 De Utilit. leiun. 11.13
(CCL, 46, 241); Serm. Morin, 623, 17 f., pax is our
hereditas:we will call out the mensoresto divide our respective parts; there will be not
lites between brothers; cf. Serm. 335 (PL, 39, 1570-4; a quarrel between sons over an
hereditas).
92 See, extensively, Serm. 357.1-2 (PL, 39, 1582); cf. 356.3-5 (PL, 39, 1575-6).
93 Serm. 356.3 (PL, 39, 1576).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

27

with all literary impressions, however, the obvious caution is that

statistical reality may have been quite different.94
Father and son relationships finally converged at the father's death
and the transfer of the hereditas. If there was any ritualistic context
in which familial relationships were paramount and were expressed
in a public act, it was that of death. No one can achieve their own
burial while alive; the removal of the body and its final disposal is,
of necessity, a familial or communal duty. Burial and commemoration
were therefore acts where the network of family relationships was
compelled to action and made manifest. It is hardly surprising, then,
that the primary duties of burial and commemoration of the father
should focus on the son as heir or, in the tragic circumstance that a
son predeceased his father, on the reverse of this relationship. Death
and burial were therefore the point at which the most important
actions focused on the core of the nuclear family. The family was the
agent responsible for all final rites for the deceased. In burials of the
more wealthy all the paraphernaliaare added: the deceased lay on a
couch of ivory, surrounded by the "inner" nuclear family, thefamilia
suorum.95When the old man dies he is escorted to the tomb by his
sons and grandsons.96 A crowd of outsiders might attend, but the
mourning familia was at the centre of the cortege, at the centre of the
whole spectacle.97The best death, of course, was that integratedwith
the household itself: "to die in his own house and in his own
bed".98 The sepulchrumand its memoriabecame the new domusof the
deceased.99 According to Augustine, the parents, the son and friends
had the duty to maintain the memory of the deceased, including the
setting up of the monumentumand its memoria. If parents were not
alive, then the duty descended to filii aut quicumquecognati vel
amici.100 In the final instance, the son, as his father's heir and
continuator, was the important person at the graveside.101But after
94 See P. Laslett, "Family and Household as Work
Group and Kin Group: Areas
of Traditional Europe Compared", in R. Wall et al. (eds.), Family Forms in Historic
Europe (Cambridge, 1983), p. 533, noting that frereches,in any event, would usually
never constitute more than 8-9 per cent of all households.
95 En. Psalm. 33.ii.14 (CCL, 38, 291).
96 En. Psalm. 127.2 (CCL, 40, 1569).
97 En. Psalm. 33.ii.25
(CCL, 38, 298); cf. Serm. 102.2.3-3.4 (PL, 38,612; a rich
man is followed by male and female slaves and clients, as well as being mourned by
the familia suorum),and 172.2.2-3 (PL, 38, 936-7).
98 En. Psalm. 33.ii.25 (see n. 97
above).
99 En. Psalm. 48.i.15 (CCL, 38, 563).
100 De Cur. Mort. 4.6
(PL, 40, 596).
101*De Consol. Mort. 2.5 (PL, 40, 1166); de Cur. Mort. 5 f.
(PL, 40, 598 f.).

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PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

that point, the memory was constantly renewed by the immediate

relations of the deceased who celebrated annual feasts at the graveside
known, significantly, as parentalia.102
If sons stood in a servile relationship to the father, the position of
wives does not seem to have been much different. In theory, the
husband's control over his wife's activity was near total: wives were
not permitted so much as to dispense alms or to change their clothes
without their husband's permission.103 Of course, one can be wholly
dismissive of the constant reiterationof this idea (that the relationship
between husband and wife is, or should be, one of servile dependence)
as so much prescriptive advice. But clearly it was not. Master-slavetype relationships are ones that are reported of actual behaviour.104
If we give no more than a basic credence to Augustine's account of
his family, then his own mother publicly defended the conception of
the wife as a slave to her husband. The fact that Monnica had to
chide her peers on the matter, however, clearly suggests that there
was real resistance to, and rejection of, the idea by at least some
wives. But the actual treatment of the women to whom she was
speaking argues for the reality of a rather harsh domination.
The wife appears to have been on the front line of possible conflict
between the father and the rest of the internal household, and so bore
the brunt of the discipline enforced by the father. He was the enforcer,
and there was no doubt in male minds as to who should triumph in
domestic conflict. If the husband won and the wife was subdued to
his dominium,there reigned a pax recta in the household; if not and
the wife dominated, a pax perversa. What is implicit in these and
other such observations is the assumption of pervasive domestic
conflict. No idea of a genuine sharing emerges; one side or the other
102 In
general, see W. Eisenhut, "Parentalia", RE Supplbd., xii (1970), cols. 97982; for Africa, see Saxer, Vie liturgiqueet quotidiennea Carthage,pp. 298-300; and his
Morts, martyrs,reliquesen Afrique chretienneaux premierssiecles(Paris, 1980), pp. 4752, for information from Tertullian; for Augustine, see the evidence outlined by van
der Meer, Augustinethe Bishop, pp. 498 ff.
103 For
example, Ep. 262.4-9 (CSEL, 57, 624-8).
104 See the extended discussion in ContraFaust. 22.30 f. (CSEL, 25.1, 624
f.); de
Bono Coniug. 6.6 (CSEL, 41, 194-5); de Coniug. Adult. 2.8.7 f. (CSEL, 41, 388 f.);
ad Gen. ad Litt. 11.37.50 (PL, 34, 450; Eve's culpa means that men have dominiumof
women); Quaest. in Hept. 1, qu. 153 (CCL, 33, 59; an extended discussion of the
origins and terminology of chattel slavery, then: "It is the natural order of things for
mankind that women should serve men, and children their parents, because this is
justice itself, that the weaker reason (ratio) should serve the stronger"); Serm. 332.4.4
(PL, 38, 1465): "You are the master, she is the slave", those are the terms of the
tabellae matrimoniales;392.4 (PL, 39, 1711), and a host of other statements to this
effect.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

29

must be dominant.105As with father-son relationships, the conjugal

relationship is riven with an ideological dyad of love and fear.106
The hostilities that could generate such fear were all too real. The
household was a place of closed sexual confrontation, and since
hubands/fathers were literally masters in domibussuis, the conflict
was unequal. The propensity was to keep the conflict boxed in the
domus. That disposition constrained husbands and other males to
deal with (supposed) sexual offences within the four walls of the
house itself.107 When a step was taken outside the house in such
matters, Augustine noted a clear discrepancy in treatment: wives
were brought into the forum and paraded publicly for their misdemeanours, but when had anyone ever seen the same happening to
men?108The reasons clearly lie in the distribution of power within
the household itself.
Christian ideology fought on the side of one dimension of a traditional moral system that held that the husband should be faithful
to his wife in lecto. But it is abundantly clear that popular practice
did not indulge this rigorist demand; rather, the ideal was isolated in
a separate sphere of pure moral action. Many men regarded sexual
freedoms exercised by them outside their household in a light-hearted
One was
way; they were simply customary practice (consuetudo).109
accustomedto hear of wives who had been caught with (household?)
slaves being led into the forum for public shame and trial, but one
had never once heard of any man being put through the same public
ritual when he was discovered with a slave woman. 110As noted above
in connection with concubinage and household ancillae, it was the
huband's prerogative to have sexual access to females other than his
wife in his own household. This sexual power which men exercised
105 En. Psalm. 143.6
(CCL, 40, 2077), where the ideas of love, domination and
punishment are conjoined; your wife is "your darling (cara), your partner (coniunx),
your household slave (famula)". These were both traditional ideas and ones given
ideological form in Pauline docrine; but that does not derogate from the argument
here.
106 De Continentia, 9.23 (CSEL, 41, 168-70); de Morib. Cath. 1.30.63 (PL, 32,
1336): wife must obey the husband; the affection of the husband is counterbalanced
by the timormuliebris;Ep. 262.7-8 (CSEL, 57, 268); Serm. 37.6(7) (CCL, 41, 453-4).
107 As Augustine, Ep. 78.6 (CSEL, 34.2, 340-1), notes, men do not rush to throw
their wives out of their houses or to bring accusations against their mothers when
adultery is discovered.
108 Serm. 82.11
(PL, 38, 511); Serm. 153.5.5 (PL, 38, 828), cf. n. 111 below.
109Serm. 9.3-4 (CCL, 41, 111-13); 21.5 (Sirmond 20; CCL, 41,
281).
110 Serm. 9.4
(CCL, 41, 114-15). Augustine, to his credit, rails against this double
standard, calling it not divine law, but human perversity; but it is clear that the custom
was well entrenched.

30

PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

as part of their household domination was probably derived in part

from their absolute control of their property, especially of slaves,
where sexual access was one of the essences of the master-slave
relationship."' By extension, the same power of sexual access was
potentially exercised throughout the whole household. Men could be
"adulterers" in their own house because such actions were "in
secret", that is to say, within the walls of the house where external
society and the state did not directly intrude. Sometimes a few brave
wives had the audacity to take such problems outside the home,
to broach them with Augustine in the confidence of his episcopal
secretarium; and that is where the matter remained, in secret.112In
these matters there was always an element of madness (furor). But
the family was the judge of that as well, and the household the place
of its containment.113 And, constantly, fear. In discussing the sexual
peccadilloes of the wife, Augustine only sees the possibility of two
reactions for wives: the bad fear (of being caught) and the good fear
(of not doing it); but all relationships are located along that single
spectrum.114

The problem is that wives, that is to say, married women, were

the object of sexual hunting by married and unmarried men, for
obvious reasons.115The pressures on them in particular, therefore,
were real not imaginary. When Monnica warned her young son who
was breaking into puberty against sexual activity with women, it was
not with young girls, ancillae, concubines or prostitutes, but with
marriedwomen.16 Wives therefore had to be treated as a species of
domestic property. They were to be guarded to see that they did not
err; just as elders and slave nurses stood in locoparentumto children,
111See, for example, Serm. 153.5.6 (PL, 38, 828), and 224.3 (PL, 38, 1094-5).
Such behaviour towards slave women of the household, in the face of the wife, was a
type that was related to the image of machismo cultivated by other acts that gained a
man a reputation for being a real man (for example, drinking and being able to survive
any amount of wine). The whole area remains a terribly understudied subject; see the
indications in M. I. Finley, AncientSlavery and ModernIdeology(London, 1980), pp.
95-6; a major survey, Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, has some relevant comments
passim; cf. J. Kolendo, "L'esclavage et la vie sexuelle des hommes libres a Rome",
Index, x (1981), pp. 288-97.
112 Serm. 82.11
(PL, 38, 511).
113 Serm. 21.4 (Sirmond 20; CCL, 41, 280) on dementiaand the judgements of omnes
in domo tua.
114 Frag. 2, Serm. 9.10 (PL, Ep. 8; PL, 38, 71); In Ep. Iohann. ad Parth., 9.6 (PL,
35, 2019).
115
See, for example, Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 343 ff.; it is an attitude
that informs assumptions of sexual behaviour in similar situations as, for example,
throughout Apuleius' Metamorphoses.
116
Confess. 2.3.7. (CCL, 27, 20).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

31

so at times neighbours and friends were called upon to maintain

surveillance over wives in their husbands' absence.117 All these
factors: the fear, the closed nature of the house, the setting of mother
and children apartfrom the father, the sexual freedom of the husband
(whether exercised or not) and others, set the scene for violence.
The enclosed household, and pressures on the father, meant that
violence connected with his natural role as disciplinarian spilled
over internally, and the wife was the first object in its path. Her
misdemeanours might be minor, even imagined, but still deserving
of punishment. They were corrected, not just by voice, but by blows:
for as little as talking back petulantly or for looking "immoderately"
out of the window of the house.118 The most graphic testimony is
that of Augustine's own mother Monnica: her relationships with
Augustine and her other children on the one hand, and with her
husband Patricius on the other. The anger (ira) of the husband was
as commonplace as his sexual liberties taken inside and outside the
household.119His anger was sudden, unprovoked and unpredictable.
It is right, says Augustine, that his mother bore up stoically under
the quarrels and beatings. One must suspect that these domestic
episodes of violence, as well as those outside the home, were linked
at times with the pervasive problem of excessive drinking.120If the
hopes that the problems of drunkenness could be confined within the
household were met, however, the effects on domestic violence would
only be heightened.121 But Monnica was hardly alone. Many women
of the town met in conversation with each other, bearing the bruises
and marks of beatings that had disfigured their faces. They com117 Tract. 13 in Iohann. 11 (CCL, 36, 136); cf. the case in Apuleius, Metamorphoses,
9.17 f. where the husband uses a trusted slave.
118
Ep. 246.2 (CSEL, 57, 584), since it was behaviour associated with prostitutes;
for just such a woman as a type, see Tract. 13 in Iohann. 11 (CCL, 36, 136).
119He was no different from other husbands in this respect: Confess.9.9.19, see n.
122 below.
120 It is, as always, a mode of behaviour whose extent and effects are most difficult
for the historian to measure. See W. B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicideand Rebellionin
Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979), esp. pp. 68 f. Some of the references in
Augustine, for example, Serm. 17.3 (CCL, 41, 238-9); 153.6 (PL, 38, 828); 225.1
(PL, 38, 1098); 252.4 (PL, 38, 1174); Ep. 22.1.3-22.1.6 (CSEL, 34.2, 56-9); 35.2
(CSEL, 34.2, 29); 36.3, 15 (CSEL, 34.2, 33, 44); 93.49 (CSEL, 34.2, 493); 189.7
(CSEL, 57, 135-6); 199.37 (CSEL, 57, 276) and others, give good reason for believing
that the problem was not just a figment of the bishop's sermonizing; see Hamman,
Vie quotidienneen Afriquedu Nord, pp. 78-9; van der Meer, Augustinethe Bishop, pp.
131, 137, 513-27. For Augustine's own family, on his father Patricius, see n. 58 above;
on his mother Monnica, see the vignettes in Confess. 8.9.7 and 9.8.18.
121
Ep. 29.5 (CSEL, 34.1, 116-17): "we can only hope that the kingdom of
drunkenness might be confined to the household domain (saltus domesticus)".

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PAST AND PRESENT

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plained openly and bitterly about the treatment they received from
their men.122 For the village of Thagaste, at least, Augustine wishes
to leave us with the impression that such maltreatmentwas a common
occurrence.
We can see that many women did object; but there must have been
as many or more who, like Monnica, accepted such treatmentas part
of the traditional bundle of duties that went with marriage. At least,
this is what Augustine claims were his mother's actual counterarguments to the "rebellious" women when she heard them. She
warned that they ought to pay attention to the contractualconditions
under which they entered marriage: the tabellae matrimonialesthey
had signed. These were the tools by which they had voluntarily been
made slaves (ancillaefactae), so they ought not to show uppityness to
their masters (superbireadversusdominosnon oportere)123That returns
us full circle to the argument at the beginning of this section: domestic
violence and fear between husbands and wives was counterbalanced
by an ideology of love and respect (that is, servile dependence) that
was accepted in practice by many men and women. Indeed the two
do not appear to be irreconcilable opposites at all, but rather natural
extensions, the one of the other.
In making these statements I do not wish to suggest that all conjugal
relationships were inevitably brutal, or all wives totally dominated.
Clearly there were wives who controlled property of their own.
Augustine does mention them, but at the same time notes the general
condemnation, or at least disapproval, of their behaviour (an attitude
he himself shared). This was especially true of those women who
disposed of their own funds.124 Such women, who ran their own
houses, clearly ran the risk of becoming women with a bad reputation
(mulieresmalaefamae) simply because they had to confront men in
situations that exposed them to accusations of having transgressed
normal modes of contact between men and women.125 There were
122Confess. 9.9.19 (CCL, 27, 145). These are hardly unusual sentiments, even for
households of an earlier period. Expressions included in the epitaphs of lower-order
populations of the Latin west commonly include stereotypical phrases that husbands

livedwith theirwivessine/ ullo-a/ quaerella,discordia,

iniuria,animilaesione,crimine,

stomacho,iracundia, bile, maledictu, and so on. Though conventional, these negative

sentiments would hardly be worth repeating in a formulaic fashion if assumptions
about real conditions to the opposite were not equally pervasive.
123
124

Confess.9.9.19.

Ep. 262.4-8 (CSEL, 57, 624-8), the case of a woman who distributed some of
her own property to the poor in the face of her husband's objections, and a son who
should have received it.
125
See Ep. 65 (CSEL, 34.2, 232-4) for a good example.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

33

also some women who seemed to have had control over the pursestrings of the household while their husbands were still alive; Augustine disapproves, but such women existed.126 In fact in his own
family, following the death of his father Patricius when Augustine
was sixteen years old, his mother (who was thirty-nine at the time)
seems to have assumed defacto control of the paternalestate, in spite
of the existence of sons, and to have issued allowances out of the
patrimony to Augustine.127 Indeed it was only after his mother's
death at the age of fifty-five in the spring of 387 and his return to
Africa in late 388, that Augustine seems to have come into full control
of his share of the paternal house and lands.128 There are other cases.
Augustine mentions a widow of a noble family who, even though she
had surviving sons and grandsons, had control of her own finances
and, apparently, those of the family in general. As a materfamilias
she managed household expenditures and was restricted in making
them only in so far as she perceived her prior obligations to her
family. 129

The critical act which largely determined the shape of the conjugal
family, and therefore of relationships of wives to husbands, was that
of marriage. In the traditional system of the Roman upper classes,
marriage was a transfer of women between two existing families or
houses. The woman entered an already formed family; the marriage
did not create a new one.130 The function of marriage in family
formation among the lower orders is almost wholly unstudied, but
one must suspect that it had greater significance than among the
upper echelons of Roman society. Then again, differences in the
development of the ritual and form accompanying marriagefrom the
early to the later empire are very difficult to measure, given the fact
that so little is known of marriage ceremonial in the earlier period.
Of the basic rituals that were part of later betrothal and marriage(the
signing of contracts, the ring, the kiss, the handshake and others),
126

De Serm. Dom. in Monte, 2.2.7 (CCL, 35, 97-8).

Confess. 3.4.7 (CCL, 27, 30), unless the funds (maternaemercedes)were some
that Monnica controlled independently of Patricius.
128 Possidius, Vita
Aug. 3 (PL, 32, 36); for the chronology, see ContraLitt. Petil.
3.25.30 (PL, 43, 362).
129Ep. 130.2.5-3.8 (CSEL, 44, 45-50).
130 For
important nuances in the development of this system, see Saller "Familia,
Domus and the Roman Conception of Family", pp. 338 f.; jurists came to a grudging
admission of the existence of separate households not restricted by the power of a
surviving paterfamilias. For some of the legal changes that began to give recognition
to the isolated family group in the later empire, see L. Anne, Les rites desfiancailleset
la donationpour cause de mariagesous le Bas-Empire (Louvain, 1941), pp. 439-49.
127

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PAST AND PRESENT

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all were part of the ceremonial in the earlierperiod, with the exception
of the ecclesiastical benediction, which was a rather late and slowdeveloping addition. 131Even in the lower reaches of regional upper
classes that had become Christian, the formalities of marriagedo not
seem to have changed much, to judge from Augustine's testimony.
Basically marriages were arranged by the parents. In lieu of his
father, who had died some fourteen years earlier, Augustine's mother
Monnica arranged his marriage (in 385). The same had been true a
generation earlier in her own marriage. Her parents had assigned her
to Patricius when she had been plenisannisnubilisfacta,a conventional
phrase used to indicate that she was at least of minimum legal age,
twelve in the case of girls. 132 Augustine was later criticalof his parents
for marrying "too late".133But we do not know how old that was in
either case. Monnica gave birth to Augustine when she was twentytwo, but he is not known to have been the first child.134Perhaps she
was married as late as her mid to late teens. A generation later
Augustine himself was more typical of traditionalRoman upper-class
patterns of marriage. He was about thirty years old when he was
engaged to his bride-to-be, who was then about ten years old. When
they were set to marry a year or two later, he was thirty-two and she
was twelve.'35 We have no explicit testimony from any of our witnesses about the common age-at-marriageamong the plebeian populace. There is only the constant assumption that such marriageswere
also arranged by the parents, and that the subsequent husband-wife
relationship was marked by a servile domination that would be
consistent with a significant age differential between the two parties.
Such arrangedmarriagesfell neatly within the frameworkof property relationships that dominated the late Roman family. The parties
concerned proceeded through a series of written agreements that
established the contractual conditions of the marriage. First, there
were the "engagement tablets" (tabellaesponsaliciae)or written docu131
Anne, Rites des fiancailles et la donationpour cause de mariage, pp. 5-58 (ring),
59-73 (kiss), 137-238 (the benediction); of course, there was also the movement of the
marriagerituals and ceremonies to the site of the church, see K. Ritzer, Formen,Riten
und Religioses Brauchtum der Eheschliessungin den ChristlichenKirchen des ersten
Jahrtausends(Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, Heft 38, Munster,
1962).
132 The minimum ages of twelve for girls and fourteen for boys were accepted by
Christians: cf. Tertullian, de Virg. Veland. 11.6 (CCL, 2, 1221); for Monnica, see
Confess. 9.9.19 (see n. 122 above); for the conventional phrase, cf. Vergil, Aen. 7.63.
133
Confess. 2.3.7 (CCL, 27, 20-1).
134
Confess. 9.11.28 (CCL, 27, 149-50).
135
Confess. 6.12.22-13.23 (CCL, 27, 88-9).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

35

ments that set the agreement, the pacta sponsalicia,to engage the pair
to be married.136These were followed by the tabellae dotaleswhich
specified the arrangements for dealing with the property brought to
the marriage by the girl.137Finally, the marriageitself was sealed by
the terms of a second set of written documents, the tabellaenuptiales/
matrimoniales,which outlined the agreements forming the substance
of the marriagecontract (pactummatrimoniale).138 We cannot presume
that all these agreements were present in every marriage;abridgement
and omission were quite possible. The overriding consideration for
our analysis here is the continuing civil and contractual nature of
marriage which appears to have remained the norm. The signed
agreements were at the heart of the ceremony of marriage, even its
Christianversion. Of course, the church absorbed the contractwithin
its institutional apparatuses: the bishop helped draft the agreements,
read them aloud to the parties concerned and co-signed them.139In
all this operation there remained a critical element of property and
its exchange, including the girl herself. The language of purchase
was often used of the acquisition of the bride. There might be a long
delay in the engagement so that the prospective groom would not
think that he was getting the girl "cheap".140The tabellaematrimoniales were spoken of as the means of her purchase (instrumentaemptionis
suae), and Monnica herself emphasized them as the instrumentaby
which women were made ancillae to their new masters; indeed there
136
Tertullian, de Virg. Veland. 12.1 (CCL, 2, 1221); cf. de Or. 22.10 (CCL, 1,
271); also referred to as tabulae/sponsalicium.
137 Tertullian, de Pudicit. 1.20 (CCL, 2, 1283); de Monogam. 11.2 (CCL, 2, 1244).
138 Tertullian, de Idol. 16.1 f. (CCL, 2, 1117); ad Uxor. 2.3.1 (CCL, 1, 387); for
the pactum, see Serm. 51.13.22 (PL, 38, 345); 278.9.9 (PL, 38, 1272). Such pacts
continued to be at the centre of the arranged marriage until the early modern period
in Europe: see R. Wheaton, "Recent Trends in the Historical Study of the French
Family", in R. Wheaton and T. K. Hareven (eds.), Sexuality in French History
(Philadelphia, 1980), p. 10.
139 Serm. 51.13.22
(PL, 38, 345); 132.2.2 (PL, 38, 735; emphasizing that the
woman was the imbecilliorsexus); 293 (PL, 38, 1332); 332.4 (PL, 38, 1463), "You are
the master, she is the slave. God made each one that way. Sarah, the scripture says,
was totally obedient to Abraham, calling him master (1 Petr. 3.6). It's true. The bishop
writes on those tablets: your wives are your slaves, you are the masters of your wives".
Augustine then quotes Paul to the effect that "The wife does not have power/ownership
(potestas)over her own body, but her husband does", explaining: "Because I am the
master (dominus)". For the ideology of female "weakness" in the period, see J.
Beaucamp, "Le vocabulaire de la faiblesse feminine dans les textes juridiques romains
du IIIe au VIe siecle", Rev. Hist. Droit, liv (1976), pp. 485-508, whose ideas, however,
must be considerably nuanced by a reading of S. Dixon, "InfirmitasSexus: Womanly
Weakness in Roman Law", Tijdschr.v. Rechtsgeschiedenis,lii (1984), pp. 343-71, at
pp. 356 ff.
140
Confess. 8.3.7 (CCL, 27, 117), also mentioning the pacta sponsalicia.

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PAST AND PRESENT

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may actually have been some such phraseology used, or implied, in

the tablets themselves.141That is not all that was in them, of course,
nor all there was to the conception of marriage. Also included was a
clause dear to the heart of the Christian bishop which he was careful
causa.142But
to read out: that marriage was liberorumprocreandorum
even this purpose must be seen within the social context of sex and
marriage.
Sexual access and therefore behaviour was to a considerable degree
regulated by the lines of propriety that traversed the society. The
relations established by ages-at-marriage of men and women, the
access to slave women of the household, the recourse to prostitutes
by the unmarried youth, the careful hoarding of marriedwomen, the
relations between husband and wife, the need for male heirs, and the
consequent dualistic relationships fraught with love and hate are all
parts of the same piece. Sex was therefore a property-dominatedact,
one whose values were polarized by those proprietorial forces that
surrounded it, that of slavery overshadowing all others. In this respect
the sexuality of the family of Augustine's day was part of a long-term
antique mode, of a strongly dualistic nature, which emphasized
restraint, purification, self-control - in a word, asceticism - at
one end of the spectrum; and liberal access, indulgence and frank
enjoyment, not necessarily tied to any particularsexual object, at the
other. Both ideals, though usually the former, were reflected in the
prevailing imperial ideologies, from the "vulgar Stoicism" of the
principate to the Christianity of the later empire. As a mass popular
ideology, however, Christianity was to have the more profound
impact on behaviour, no matter which side it chose. Augustine's own
views on sexuality ranged from the ascetic to the integrativeparadigms
in the course of his lifetime.143
It is hardly surprising, then, that the institution of marriage was
inextricably bound up with a vocabulary of property, words which
141 See n. 139
above, and Serm. 37.7 (CCL, 41, 454; "She considers the matrimonial
tablets to be the instruments of her purchase"); cf. Confess. 9.9.19 (CCL, 27, 145).
142 Serm. 9.18
(CCL, 41, 143; a clause written on the tablets); 51.13.22 (PL, 38,
345), read aloud by the bishop so that the parents might become genuine parents-inlaw (soceri)and not pimps (lenones);278.9.9 (PL, 38, 1272). To illustrate some of the
variation and overlap in these practices, see the TablettesAlbertini(n. 148 below) where
this clause appears at the head of the tabella sponsalicia.
143
Sexuality is here used in the precise sense in which Foucault defined it as a
problem separate from sexual behaviour: see his Histoire de la sexualite, iii: le soucide
soi (Paris, 1984) for the Roman period. The subject of Augustine's consciously
expressed views on the subject is a complex one that deserves a fuller treatment not
possible here; for a beginning, see P. Brown, Augustineand Sexuality (Berkeley, 1983).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

37

were not just coincidental metaphors.144Indeed the transfer of the

girl to her new family was sealed by a series of gift and property
exchanges that went in both directions. Just as with the series of
written pacts, these exchanges are not always clearly separated or
necessarily distinguished by the givers and receivers. The property
stemming from the groom's side included the so-called arrhaesponsaliciae and the "gifts before marriage" (donationesante nuptias). References to both, in allegorical terms or otherwise, are frequent enough
in Augustine to indicate that they were a normal part of the marriage
pattern even among families of moderate means.145The arrhaeseem
to have consisted of a portion of the groom's material wealth; Augustine mentions gold, silver, costly gems, horses, slaves, farms and
estates in the composition of such gifts.146 The arrhaeand donationes
stemming from the man's side seem to have been substantial enough
to merit Augustine's disapproval of their size, with special concern
for the attraction such prizes had for the prospective bride and her
family.147The woman brought her dowry (dos) to the marriage. As
with the arrha,it is difficult to assess its importancein purely financial
terms; it was important enough for pacta dotalia and tabellaedotales
to be considered a normal part of most marriage agreements.148
Augustine could condemn dowry, as well as the matrimonial gifts
and property coming from the groom's side, as corrupting motives
for marriage and "love".149 By the early fifth century emperors were
144
E. Albertario, "Di alcuni referimenti al matrimonio e al possesso in Sant'Agostino", S. Agostino: pubblicazionecommemorativadel XV centenariodella sua morte,
supplement to Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica,xxiii (1931), pp. 367-76.
145 En. Psalm. 55.17 (CCL, 39, 690-1); 84.2 (CCL, 39, 1162); *Serm. 11.3 (PL,
39, 1761); *90.2 (PL, 39, 1918); 372.2 (PL, 39, 1662).
146 Tract. 8 in Iohann. 2.4 (CCL, 36, 83-4). For arrhaein general, see Serm. 71 (PL,
38, 458); 156.15.16 (PL, 38, 858); 378 (PL, 39, 1673); this is not the place to enter
into an extended discussion of the debate, from Mitteis to Koschaker, over the origins
and development of the arrhae. One may note with interest, however, the apparent
adoption of a Semitic term to designate the exchange; see the survey and arguments
in Anne, Rites des fiancailles et la donationpour cause de manrage,pp. 87-135.
147 Contra Faust. 15.1 (CSEL, 25.1, 415-18); En. Psalm. 55.17 (CCL, 39, 690);
Serm. 183.7.11 (PL, 38, 991); Tract. 8 in Iohann 2.4 (see n. 146 above).
148 See n. 139 above; and En. Psalm. 55.17 (see n. 145) and Serm. 137.8.9 (PL, 38,
759). For a good example from the later empire, see C. Courtois et al., Tablettes
Albertini:actesprives de l'epoquevandale,fin du Ve siecle(Paris, 1952), table I. la (215),
a tabelladotisdated to 17 Sept. 493. A more remote rural community would be difficult
to imagine, and yet the dowry of Germania Ianuarilla is carefully listed, along with
the values of individual items in it.
149 De Bono
Coniug. 15.17 (CSEL, 41, 209-10); see too Tertullian, ad Uxor. 1.4.7
(CCL, 1, 378), with a list of items that could be included. Of course there were
marriages of the poor who could afford none of these gifts, dowry or otherwise: cf.
Jerome, Ep. 69.5; as J. Gaudemet, L'eglise dans l'empireromain, IV-Ve siecles(Paris,

(cont. on p. 38)

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PAST AND PRESENT

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putting into formal legislation a requirement that the mutual property

and gift exchange represented by dowry and indirect dowry should
be equal in value.150
The choice of marital partners made by the parents also seems to
have been dominated mainly by material considerations, including
those of honour and status. 15 Clearly it was hoped that the property
exchange would at least maintain the social standing of the new
family, perhaps even add to its status. The prevailing sentiment was
that one should marry an equal in property and thereby preserve
family honour. The bride would bring her dos, but she also hoped
that the man she married would be at least as well-off in terms of his
landed property.152 In a series of letters to a father who was seeking
to arrange a marriage, Augustine emphasized the absolute power
given to fathers to make such arrangementsin respect of their childdaughters; in making the match the father naturally hoped to
acquire "all that is good" for himself and his domus.153But kin and
community endogamy do not seem to have counted as conspicuous
items to be considered in the process of match-making (excluding,
of course, upper-class families linked to imperial households). The
law codes of the period maintained instances of cousin marriageas a
possible requirement in testamentary depositions made, obviously,
by wealthier families.154 But attested examples of parallel or cross1958), p. 539, notes, such de facto marriages, formally labelled "concubinage", were
a class phenomenon: they were the marriages of the poor; cf. B. Rawson, "Roman
Concubinage and Other de facto Marriages", Trans. and Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc.,
civ (1974), pp. 280-305, though there was a dominant practice of concubinage that
consisted of partnership for sex, not marriage, that definedthe cases Rawson analyses
of persons who desired to have a genuine marriagebut could not (for reasons of status
conflict); see now S. Treggiari, "Concubinae",Papers Brit. School Rome, xlix (1982),
pp. 59-81.
150 Nov. Valent. 35.9 (A.D. 435/7) and Nov. Maj. 6.9 (A.D. 457/8) where the emperor
connects the purpose of this property to the support of the children to be produced
by the marriage.
151 Tertullian, ad Uxor. 1.4.6 (CCL, 1, 378): the "earthly" desire to marry is
motivated by material causes, "to become master in another family (alienafamilia), to
brood over another's wealth".
152 Tertullian, ad Uxor. 2.8.3-5 (CCL, 1, 392-3), where Tertullian says that Christian
women ought to be willing to marry "down" on the social scale; clearly many did not
share this view.
153 Ep. 253-5 (CSEL, 57, 600-3); if the
girl is mature, however, she obtains some
say, at least theoretically, and in lieu of a mother is to have the protection of her
maternal aunt, matertera.
154 Dig. 38.7.23-4 and CJ 6.25.2.pr. (Marcellus, Papinianus and Caracallarespectively); cf. A. C. Bush, "Roman CollateralKinship Terminology" (State Univ. of New
York, Buffalo, Ph.D. thesis, 1970), pp. 184 ff., who, I think, misinterprets the
significance of this evidence.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

39

cousin marriage in social classes below the propertied elite in the

period contemporary with Augustine (and earlier) seem to be limited
mainly to eastern Mediterranean social contexts.155
But the only time Tertullian places the domus in an extended
network of kinship culminating in a larger ethnic group is in his
quotations from, and direct comments on, biblical texts, especially
those relating to Hebraic social structure of the Old Testament
period.156 And Augustine alludes just once to the late fourth-century
incest regulations legislated by Christian emperors that established
greater degrees of kin prohibition in marriage, only to mention that
in any event cousin marriages were rather rare among the common
people.157 Which makes very clear a more general proposition: that
Augustine's conception of his own society's web of kinship and
personal relationships was not one that assumed any sort of endogamy
or other kinship dominance of this type that affected the make-up of
the family. Clearly his society did not share the sort of closely
overlapping networks of kinship, extended households, agnatic lineages and endogamous marriage patterns that seem to have been
typical of some eastern Mediterranean societies of the period.158
Whenever such a social structure was encountered by Augustine's
parishioners in their biblical texts, he had to explain to them, sometimes at great and painful length, a system which was clearly so at
variance with their own that they did not even understand its basic
elements.159
155 See E.
Patlagean, Pauvrete economiqueet pauvretesociale a Byzance, 4e-7e siecles
(Paris, 1977), pp. 113-28, for contemporary family structures in the east.
156 References are too numerous to detail here: see G.
Claesson, Index Tertullianus,
3 vols. (Paris, 1974-5), s.w.; the passage where the elements are most consciously
linked is Adv. Marc. 4.36.18 (CCL, 1, 450) where the Jewish ethnic group is seen as
subdivided into interlocking gentes,populi andfamiliae in a manner highly reminiscent
of the social structure reflected in the Tabula Banasitana of Tertullian's Africa.
157 Civ.
Dei, 15.16.2 (CSEL, 40.2, 94).
158 B. D. Shaw and R. P.
Saller, "Close-Kin Marriage in Roman Society?", Man,
new ser., xix (1984), pp. 432-44, for a more detailed critique of the propositions
advanced by J. Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe
(Cambridge, 1983).
159See, for example, Migne, PL, 46, s.v. "pluralitasuxorum" for a host of relevant
texts; and the long and fundamental discussion in ContraFaust. 22.35 (CSEL, 25.1,
630); for other exemplary texts (some among many), see Locut. in Hept. 1.43 (CCL,
33, 385); Quaest. 17 in Matth. 17 (PL, 35, 1374); Tract. 10 in Iohann. 2 (CCL, 36,
101); and Tract. 28 in Iohann. 3 (CCL, 36, 278), which is typical of the problem: "For
it was the custom of the scriptures to call blood relations of any degree and close
relatives (quoslibetconsanguineiet cognationispropinqui)'brothers' (fratres), which is
both outside our normal usage of the term and not according to the manner in which
we usually speak. For who on earth calls his uncle (avunculus)or his nephew (filius
sororis)'brothers' (fratres)?".

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From the conjugal family and its formation, we move naturally to

the subject of children. Of all secondary relations within the family
these are clearly among the most problematical. Children far outrank
women as the invisible people of this world; the chances of knowing
anything substantial about their part in the family is impeded by a
massive deficit in the evidence. Fathers might regard procreation of
sons as of paramount importance, but their relations with their
children in general tended to be mediated through the mother.
Attitudes towardschildren are furthervery difficult to discern through
the barrage of hyperbolic ideology thrown up in justification of
marriage and sexual intercourse. These acts were intended for the
procreation of children alone, a stance which made the assumption
of children as an unmitigated "good thing". But to say that real
families did not always see them in this light is a considerable
understatement. The conclusion does not emerge just from the
extreme expression of the problem: the fact that some parents were
compelled, usually by poverty or fear of it, to kill, expose or sell
unwanted progeny. It has a much wider sweep than that.
But first there is a conceptual problem. The stages of life accepted
by Augustine are not clearly marked, as they were not for any of his
peers, although a regular progression was recognized: infans, puer,
adulescensiuventus, then old age and death.160 The dividing lines
between the stages were hardly ours: Augustine himself crossed the
frontier between "adolescence" and "youth" at the age of thirty.161
Adolescence could in fact last into the late thirties or early forties,
depending on the pragmatic circumstances that linked the son to his
father. Legally the state of infans was set at seven years (that is, six
years old in our computation), but in practice its termination seems
to have been linked to weaning from breast-feeding.162 Consequently
the age of "boyhood" lasted over a whole period between the first
year and the mid to late teens, a period when the boy was considered
160 En. Psalm. 127.15
(CCL, 40, 1878). See E. Lamirande, "Les ages de l'homme
d'apres Saint Ambroise de Milan", in Melanges offertsen hommageau R. P. Etienne
Gareau (Ottawa, 1982), p. 227-33, with comments on E. Eyben, "Die Einteilung des
menschlichen Lebens im romischen Altertum", RheinischesMuseum der Philologie,
cxvi (1973), pp. 150-90; cf. E. Eyben, "Roman Notes on the Course of Life", Ancient
Soc., iv (1973), pp. 213-38; Eyben's extended essay, "Was the Roman 'Youth' an
'Adult' Socially?", Antiquite Classique, 1 (1981), pp. 328-50, is no reply to the
fundamental objections made by H. W. Pleket, "Licht uit Leuven over de romeinse
Jeugd?", Lampas, xii (1979), pp. 173-92.
161
Confess. 7.1.1 (CCL, 27, 92).
162
H. G. Knothe, "Zur 7-Jahresgrenzeder 'Infantia'im antiken romischen Recht",
Studia et DocumentaHistoriae et luris, xlviii (1982), pp. 239-56.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

41

to be in preparation for quasi-adulthood (as the term adulescens,

"becoming an adult", itself suggests). The stage of "youth" could be
lengthened and delayed into the thirties and forties primarilybecause
of the real economic domination that many fathers continued to hold
over their sons. Attitudes towards children were therefore commensurately skewed towards different developmental patterns from our
own.
Then again, from the perspective of infant children the core family
looked very different from how it did to most adults through their
part of the domestic cycle. The important figures that dominated the
world of the child were the mother, siblings and elders. As important,
if not more so, in this list, however, was the slave nurse, such as
those in Patricius' household who gave the infant Augustine milk.163
Ever-present from birth, slave nurses were always included as an
integral part of the parent-child group. Their relationship to the male
children was particularlyclose, since Augustine indicates that in some
cases the nurse slept with the child in a place separate from the rest
of the adults (sometimes with the disastrous result of suffocation of
the infant).164 Obviously the nurses were present in order to lighten
the heavy burdens of raising children; the main difficulty they alleviated, as is clear from their name (nutrix, nutrices),was the breastfeeding of infants.165Mothers would sometimes assume the burden
for a few months after birth, but soon, in order forcibly to wean the
infant, they would smear bitter-tasting substances on their nipples in
order to put the infant off further suckling.166The process of weaning
from the mother's/nurse's breasts also marked a further stage in the
child's life. While attached to the mother, the child was seen as
163

Confess. 1.6.7, 11 (CCL, 27, 4, 6).

Ep. 194.7.32 (CSEL, 57, 201-2).
165 In this
respect women were likened to cows; the task would be less onerous if
only infants were not so demanding: In Ep. Iohann. ad Parth. 9.1 (PL, 35, 2043);
see, further, En. Psalm. 54.24 (CCL, 39, 674); 130.9 (CCL, 40, 1905-6); 130.13 (CCL,
40, 908-9; infant fed away from the family table, weaning); 39.28 (CCL, 38, 445). For
some of the evidence from antiquity, see K. R. Bradley, "Sexual Regulations in WetNursing Contracts from Roman Egypt", Klio, lxii (1980), pp. 321-5, and the literature
cited there; for the later empire in the east, see J. Beaucamp, "L'allaitment: mere ou
nourrice?",JahrbuchderOsterreichenByzantinistik,xxii (1982), pp. 549-58; for modern
comparative materials, see G. D. Sussman, "The End of the Wet-Nursing Business
in France, 1874-1914", in Wheaton and Hareven (eds.), Family and Sexualityin French
History, pp. 224-52, with references to his earlier work on the subject.
166 En. Psalm. 30.ii. 12 (CCL, 38, 210);
Augustine reports the sense of shock shown
by the infant, the mammothreptus,on first being repelled by the offensive paste; nurses
also used the technique to wean the infant and to drive it ad mensam;cf. Serm. 311.14
(PL, 38, 1419).
164

42

PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

dependent and weak (infirmus),still a "mummy's boy" (filiusmatris).

When he graduated he became a filius patris.167The conscious attitudes to breast-feeding by mothers and wet-nurses seem ambiguous,
perhaps confused, in Augustine's reportage. On the one hand, he
placed a high premium on the willingness of mothers to feed their
own children; he saw the unwillingness of those who disliked the
duty as symptomatic of a negative attitude to children that led to the
ruin of households (ruinosaest domus).168 Yet the implication of some
of these same passages is that mothers shunt infants off the breast in
order that they might be able to give birth more frequently.'69 And
nourishment was seen as the central role of the mother, as much as
domination was that of the father.170
The net result for family formation was that, for families of at least
middling resources, the slave nurse was an integral part of the family.
Like other surrogate members of the domusoutside its kin-core, the
nurse could be placed in full charge of the children in lieu of the
parents.171 And she formed another link between one generation and
the next. A good example comes from Augustine's own family. A
slave nurse in Augustine's home at Thagaste had carried Monnica's
father on her back when he was an infant. When he grew up and
married, and Monnica was born, this same slave woman carried
Monnica around as a child. Finally, she had come, as a slave, with
Monnica into Patricius' household.172 It was customary for infants
and young children to be carriedaround "piggy-back" by the younger
girls of the family or by the old slave nurses who acted as bearers
(gerulae).173 As with elders, slave nurses assumed full educative and
disciplinary functions over children in loco parentumin a period of
the latter's absence.174

All these observations are not made in order to diminish our

evaluation of parental love for their surviving children. Paternal
tensions with sons were more a matter of adolescence. Earlieron, the
main hope of parents for their first newly born children was that they
167 En. Psalm. 49.27 (CCL, 38, 595).
68
169

Serm. 311.14 (PL, 38, 1419).

See, for example,En. Psalm.49.27, n. 167 above.

En. Psalm. 26.ii.18 (CCL, 38, 164).

171
Ep. 98.4 (CSEL, 34.2, 524-5).
172
Confess. 9.8.17 (CCL, 27, 143).
170

173
Tertullian,Adv.Marc.3.13.2 = Adv.Iud. 9.5 (a doublet)(CCL,1, 524;CCL,
to
2, 1366);cf. de Anim. 19.8 (CCL,2, 811); the old womenuse rattles(crepitacilla)
keep the infantsentertained.
174
Confess.9.8.18 (CCL, 27, 144).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

43

would survive.175 So attitudes towards surviving infants seem to have

been concomitantly generous. In a report reminiscent of a similar
modern-day scene, Augustine can describe a father who is a thundering orator, a man who is able to shake the forum with his formidable
oratorical skills. Yet when he goes home and speaks to his baby
son, he sets aside his formal Latin and descends to "baby talk".176
Tertullian is the only one of our witnesses who is forthright enough
to speak of the "inconvenience" of raising children (importunitas
liberorum)as a terrible obstacle: "Custom forces children upon men,
otherwise in their right mind they would not endure the difficulties".177 But one senses in Tertullian a rather mean disposition, one
whose uncompromising character would eagerly grasp at a way
out of such importunities offered by an impending millennium.
Nevertheless he may well express, albeit in harshterms, an underlying
sentiment, though one less attached to theological justificationsthan
he would have it. One does find a constant association between the
difficulties of marriage and the problems of raising children.178
Attitudes seem to be linked more closely to the economic basis of
the household: the stratagemsfor succession, avoidance of dissipation
of the paternal estate, the need for economic support in old age, and
the ways in which wealth itself affected the ideological conception of
the family. The acquisition of more wealth was a process, and a fact,
which had its own rationality. As it increased it made, pari passu, the
difficulties and frustrations, if not agonies, of producing children
seem a non-rational activity, in spite of the fact that slave nurses were
more readily obtainable by persons in this same social class. The
result was that, one way or another, fewer children were raised by
wealthier families. "Fertility is a bother to wealthy people". Indeed.
"They fear lest they, who have given birth to many children will
themselves be left paupers". The solution to the problem Augustine
alludes to most frequently is simply disposing of unwanted children:
exposing or throwing out the newly born so that others, who do not
have children, might pick them up.179 Where was the limit? For
175

En. Psalm. 127.3, 5 (CCL, 40, 1870, 1878); cf. Ep. 130.11.11 (CSEL, 44, 52-

4).
176
Tract. 7 in Iohann. 23 (CCL, 36, 80-1); cf. En. Psalm. 26.18-19 (CCL, 38, 1645); Ep. 89.2 (CSEL, 34.2, 419-20).
177
Tertullian, Exh. Cast. 12.5 (CCL, 2, 1032-3); ad Uxor. 1.5.1 (CCL, 1, 378).
178
See, for example, de Coniug. Adult. 2.12.12 (CSEL, 41, 395); de Bono Coniug.
6.6, 6.18 (CSEL, 41, 194-5, 210-11); Contra Faust. 22.30 (CSEL, 25.1, 624); En.
Psalm. 70.i.17 (CCL, 39, 955); de Nupt. et Concup. 1.4.5, 1.15.17 (CSEL, 42, 215,
229).
179 En. Psalm. 137.8 (CCL, 40, 1983); cf. Ep. 98.6 (CSEL,
34.2, 527-8); 194.32
(CSEL. 57. 201-2).

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PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

some of the families with whom Augustine had acquaintance(perhaps

his subdecurial peers more than others) the number was thought to
be three; then the parents began to fear of having more children lest
they impoverish the family. The pressing worry was, as always, the
division of a limited hereditas.180
How was the problem of excess children to be dealt with? There
were methods of fertility control which must have been widely known
and practised. There is a hint of the knowledge of the effects of
prolonged breast-feeding of infants on birth intervals.'18 But it did
not constitute a method by which fertility could suddenly and dramatically be reduced in the way required by the economic circumstances and perceptions outlined above; it was more in the nature of
a long-term general effect on fertility, one of dubious value in the
deliberate curbing of excess births when one considers the real
possibilities of regular sexual activity.182 Nor, in any event, was
normal sexual behaviour conducive to such solutions. The sexual
marauding of married women by men, alluded to above, though
provoked by fear of pregnancy, was done to disguise possible results,
not to prevent them. "Drunken" and "excessive" husbands do not
even spare their pregnant wives, reports Augustine; but then, by his
own admission, the drunken and the excessive were legion in the
local community.183 Christian ideology hypostatized the lower-class
mores of conjugal sexual love which held that intercourse was for the
procreation of children only.184 A veritable avalanche of normative
Christian declarationsmade this the regularegularumof normal sexual
behaviour. Alas, the very persons who issued the prescriptions were
all too well aware of how few accepted them. 85 Moreover Augustine
180 Serm. 57.2.2 (PL, 38, 387); cf. de Nupt. et Concup. 1.15.17 (see n. 178 above).
181

See nn. 168-9 above; cf. M. W. Flinn, TheEuropeanDemographicSystem, 15001820 (London, 1981), pp. 39-43; for an outline of effects, especially in the so-called
Third World countries of the present day, see R. V. Short, "BreastFeeding", Scientific
American, ccl (Apr. 1984), pp. 35-41.
182 See, for example, the cases remarked upon in some epigraphical notices: ten
children in eleven years of marriage: G. B. de Rossi, InscriptionesChristianaeUrbis
Romae, iii (Rome, 1956), no. 9248.
183 See van der
Meer, Augustine the Bishop, pp. 513-27, and the many references
cited there; see, for example, Ep. 22 (CSEL, 34.1, 54 f.) at length.
184 The citations from
Augustine, including de Bono Coniug. 17.19 (CSEL, 41,
212); Contra Faust. 15.7, 30.6 (CSEL, 25.1, 429, 755); Mor. Man. 2.18.65 (PL, 32,
1373); and de Nupt. et Concup. 1.10.11 (CSEL, 42, 223), seem to provide most of the
standard repertoire; they were, however, traditional values: see E. Eyben, "Family
Planning in Graeco-Roman Antiquity", AncientSoc., xi-xiii (1980-1), pp. 5-82, at p.
19.
185 "Never, in friendly conversation have I heard anyone who is or who has been
married say that he never had intercourse with his wife except when hoping for
conception": de Bono Coniug. 13.15 (CSEL, 41, 208).

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

45

speaks of the situation as common where men have sex with their
wives with the intent of avoiding conception.186
The means, whatever they were, could be effective. As mentioned
above, Augustine himself kept a concubine for the purposes of sexual
enjoyment for a period of at least fourteen years. That liaison was
struck, significantly, when Augustine was about the age of sixteen;
precisely, that is to say, in the immediate aftermath of his father's
death. This formal concubinage, which bridged the period between
his father's decease and the end of Augustine's "adolescence" (in
Roman terms) was then itself brought into question by the prospect
of a Christianmarriage. When Augustine was engaged to marry his
ten-year-old bride, he therefore rid himself of the concubine by rudely
dismissing her back to Africa. But Augustine found himself unable
to bear the strain of the lack of sexual contact with a woman for the
less than two years he had to wait until his child-bride came of legal
age. He therefore took another concubine for the purposes of sex.
What is more, he kept this second woman on until he was to marry
his prospective child-bride.187 Yet there was only one surviving child
produced in this whole period.188 How? Augustine himself seems to
speak with the voice of experience in another context: to use a certain
part of a woman "against nature" is "execrable" if she is a prostitute
(or, one might add, a concubine), even "more execrable" in the case
of a wife. 89No doubt. But Augustine apparentlyfound the execrable
quite acceptable for close to two decades. "Methods" like these only
added pressure on the wives, slave women and concubines that were
part of the male sexual domination in the household. Even so, they
were never part of any prevailing mentality of birth control.
To understand this statement, we must try to see reproduction as
a function of all the factors affecting the household as a proprietorial
concern. Given these, there was no need to draw any clear conceptual
distinction between contraception, abortion and control of sub186

De Coniug. Adult. 2.12.12 (CSEL, 41, 396), and n. 184 above.

Confess. 6.15.25 (CCL, 27, 90).
188 The
son, Adeodatus, is referred to as "almost fourteen years old" (annorumferme
quindecim)in A.D. 387: Confess. 9.6.14 (CSEL, 33, 207). Augustine therefore must
have formed the liaison with the concubine around A.D. 370/1 when he was sixteen to
seventeen years old.
189 De Bono Coniug. 11.12 (CSEL, 41, 203-4) where the obvious methods concerned
are oral or anal intercourse, and not coitus interruptus, the alternativemost frequently
discussed in modern scholarly analysis; cf. Serm. 10.5 (CCL, 41, 157; abortive potions
used by meretrices);Contra Faust. 22.80 (CSEL, 25.1, 683; prostitutes work not to
become pregnant); Contra Secund. 21 (CSEL, 25.2, 938-9; the same).
187

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PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

sequent births.190 Since the gross question facing families was how
many surviving children they could cope with and, once that threshold
was reached, how excess children could be disposed of, the prevailing
mentality was less one of birth control than of "family control". Given
that mentality, and reality, fertility control for most families limited
itself to the practical solutions of killing, sale or exposure of excess
surviving children.191 But these motives for ridding oneself of children must also be clearly separated from others, which might indeed
have been even more compelling. One of the more crudely pragmatic
motives was the simple profit to be made by parents who were in dire
need of funds.192 The other, more exalted, was the preservation of
one's honour. Augustine specifically remarks on the tremendous
sense of public shame that fell on a girl who bore a child out of
"legitimate" union; cruel fear of that shame, he says, compelled the
mother to expose the infant.193 But in the main the problem does
seem to have been one of family limitation; Augustine mentions those
who do not have children picking up the exposed and raising them
as their own, but that is all. The most obvious stratagem for making
good this deficit, that of adoption, seems strangely absent in Augustine's positive observations about his world, especially in terms of
190K. Hopkins, "Contraception in the Roman Empire", Comp.Studies in Soc. and
Hist., viii (1965), pp. 124-51, is the most thorough and convincing analysis.
191Tertullian, Apol. 9.7-8 (CCL, 1, 102-3); Ad Nat. 1.15.3-4 (CCL, 1, 33; no laws
are more frequently broken and with more impunity than those againstchild exposure);
in popular parlance such children were called "sons of the earth" (filii terrae), see
Apol. 10.10 (CCL, 1, 107). Cf. Min. Fel. Oct. 30.2 (CSEL, 2, 43); Aug. Ep. 98.6
(PL, 33, 362); *Ep. 22-4 (CSEL, 88, 113-27; the "Divjak letters") which attest the
problem of the exposure and sale of children by poor parents in the Hippo region to
slavers as a widespread and long-standing problem; as we can see from these same
letters, although he disapproved on moral grounds, Augustine did nothing effective
to stop the trade. Imperial laws from Caracallaonwards seem to have had little effect;
see C. Lepelley, "La crise de 1'Afrique romaine au debut du Ve siecle, d'apres les
lettres nouvellement decouvertes de Saint Augustine", ComptesrendusAcad. Inscript.
(1981), pp. 445-63, at pp. 455-7. For a general survey of the practiceand its continuity
from late antiquity into the early medieval period, see J. E. Boswell, "Expositioand
Oblatio:The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family", Amer.
Hist. Rev., lxxxix (1984), pp. 10-33.
192 The behaviour was linked not only to economic necessity, but also to the whole
spectrum of hire/rent and sale of children and their labour: see M. Humbert, "Enfants
a louer ou a vendre: Augustin et l'autorite parentale (Ep. 10* et 24*)", in Les lettres
de Saint Augustin decouvertespar Johannes Divjak (Paris, 1983), pp. 190-204.
193
Ep. 194.32 (CSEL, 57, 201-2): "The infant born in unholy sexual union
(stuprum)is exposed because of the cruel fear of its mother, in the hope that it will be
picked up because of the holy pity of others"; the moral circumstances were ones
rooted in traditional mores, but Christianity served in part to strengthen the prejudice
and worsen the situation: see K. Wrightson, "Infanticide in European History",
CriminalJustice Hist., iii (1982), pp. 1-20, esp. pp. 5 ff.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

47

quantity of references. Almost all Augustine's references to adoption

are of a purely metaphoric nature. In one rather significant passage,
however, he does explicitly state that many men who have reached
old age without a son turn to the mechanism of adoption to provide
an heir. The whole passage in question is rather important since it
specifically attests adoption as a strategy of heirship, but one that was
primarily used as a last resort when the childless male head of the
family reached old age. Augustine states that if a man has no sons
when he reaches old age, he has recourse to adoption; but if he has
only one son he is especially happy and fortunate since it means that
his naturalson will possess everything alone and will not have to divide
the inheritance with anyone.194 No doubt such formal adoptions (that
is, other than the simple acquisition of abandoned infants) were a not
infrequent part of family formation in Augustine's world, but it is
perhaps noteworthy that references to real cases by Augustine are so
rare.
What do these Augustinian experiences, observations and advice
on the family, sex and marriage in late antiquity signify? Above all,
I think, it is that the conception and practice of the family were
integrally linked to the other dominant social relations in society with
ties that were different in kind and strength from those that bind
families to society in our day. The single overwhelming idea imparted
by Augustine about his family, an idea which derived from his own
experience, and which certainly applied to the households of his peers
and a fortiori to most households of the time, is that the family was
the unit of social and economic production and reproduction. Slaves,
nurses, boarders and others were organized through this unit. Family
relationships were largely determined by the simple need for the
maintenance and transmission of the property required to continue
an economic existence. At the same time, however, these other ties
(of property, of social relations, of political power) were not ones that
194 Tract. 2 in Iohann. 2.1.13
(CCL, 36, 17-18): "He was born a sole child, and
does not want to remain alone. Many men who do not have children (sons) of their
own, when they have reached old age, adopt one; and by their own volition do what
nature was not able to do for them: they create offspring. If, moreover, someone has
only one son, he is all the more joyous, because that son alone will become owner of
everything, and will not have anyone else with whom he will have to divide the
inheritance, and become poorer for the fact", and the rest of this passage in the same
vein; cf. de Consens. Evang. 3.5 (PL, 34, 1073); Serm. 51.16 (PL, 38, 348); 61.16
(PL, 38, 348); *de Unit. Trin. 6 (PL, 42, 1161; the distinction between natural and
adopted sons, but in a purely metaphorical context); cf. Biondo Biondi, II diritto
romanocristiano,iii: lafamiglia, rapportipatnmoniali, dirittopublico(Milan, 1954), pp.
59-68.

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PAST AND PRESENT

NUMBER 115

encouraged the growth of families into extended or complex types.

They did, however, encapsulate and systematically enclose the kincore of the conjugal family and children in a web of social obligations
that dominated it. Within this network and within the household, it
is true, primary obligations focused on the nuclear and conjugal
family. Power was perceived as running through these relationships
to the wider society in a way that allowed no absolute disjunction
between them of the type found in our society. Patronagewas one of
the most important of these resource networks that ran alongside
kinship, friendship and neighbourliness.195 But if the clients were
seen as veritable "parts" of their patron's "body", then there was no
impediment to his domination being as great as that of an owner or
a father.196 How indeed could relations be conceived except through
the vocabulary that was used to express them? The very same word,
lord (dominus),was deployed indiscriminately for the four dominant
relations that ran through the society: those of God, property owner
(often linked to that of slave master), patron and father.197Likewise,
dominuswas integrally linked to domus (household) and to a whole
host of terms signifying power, repression and control - in short,
domination: domare (to domesticate, to tame), dominatio (domination), dominium(control, ownership) and many others. These were
the words that people spoke, and the relationships they expressed
were part of a consistent set that emphasized those wider social
networks at the expense of isolated nuclear-familyattachments. They
were part of a whole hierarchy of duties that were tied to the
distribution of material resources in the society. Augustine lists them
in a series of concentric obligations extending outwards from ego
and his interests: parentes,fratres, coniunx, liberi, propinqui,affines,
familiares, civitas and then ego's property, with the "I" and his
"property" confining the set. Between the city and personal property
195
196

Serm. 130.5 (PL, 38, 728).

*Ep. 10.4-9(CSEL, 88, 48-51).

197 These common denominators of

power, personal relationships and ideology are
hardly unusual for this type of society, see Greven, Four Generations;and the following
observations by R. Isaac, The Transformation
of Virginia,1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982),
p. 346: "The reference to Nassau's father reminds us forcibly of the constrictive
closeness of this world of ongoing generational face-to-face interaction. Therein
we see clearly the social context of the comprehensive metaphor of fatherhood,
encompassing as it did all order and rebellion, crime and punishment, suffering and
relief. The close intimacy of extended household relationships was projected onto the
cosmic order by the metaphor of the Father-Creator".The matter of the vocabulary
of domination was already noted some years ago by M. Bang, "Uber den Gebrauchder
Anrede Domine im gemeinden Leben", appendix ix in L. Friedlander, Sittengeschichte

Roms,10thedn. (Leipzig, 1922),pp. 82-8.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

49

stood a pair of balanced quasi-material properties no less integral to

the list: honores and gloria popularis, to be acquired in dialectical
action and therefore placed in order before those things that fell
within the uncontested dominiumof the person concerned.'98
We may summarize as follows. Given the dominant patterns of
relationships that determined the make-up and place of the family in
Roman society, at least in the lower middling to upper classes, no
person from these social groups who heard the wordsfamilia or domus
would ever have taken them to mean what "family" does to us. To
him or her the words necessarily implied the whole network of
relationships of the household, including slaves, nurses, concubines,
boarders and others, that formed it. The nuclear-family unit was, so
to speak, nested within this conception, like the innermost unit of a
series of Chinese boxes. But these other relationships into which it
was integrally knit obscured a clear definition of the nuclear family
as a dominant social unit. The nuclear family did exist, and primary
obligations were indeed focused on it, but there was no vocabulary
to express its separate existence; instead speakers had to resort to
circumlocutions like "yours", "his", "the wife and kids" (sui, tui,
uxor et liberi) since familia and domusmeant other things entirely.199
In all of this, the systematic linkage with forms of property including,
above all, slaves seems the paramount determinant force in shaping
the Roman family.
There are, however, two cautionary points. The first is that what
198 De Libr. Arbit. 1.15.32
(CCL, 29, 233), "The city/state itself, which is usually
held to be in the place of a parent; the honours and the praise, and those things which
are called popular glory, and in final place money, under which heading are contained
all those things of which we are masters/owners by law and over which we seem to
have the power of buying and selling". Note two things: the substantiationof "honour"
as a quasi-material thing (see n. 82 above), and how public/official honour is balanced
with public/popular honour, and how both are tied into the civitas acting in loco
parentis.
199See, for example, nn. 95, 97; Ep. 130.2.5-6 (CSEL, 44, 45-7); and defide rerum
quae non videntur, 2.4 (PL, 40, 173), an extended discussion of how amicitia knits
together different kinship relationships, in which, of all the different relationships
named by Augustine (including gener, socer, cognates and affines) the sui clearly
represent the core parent-child(ren) nexus. There are many other examples. In this
attitude, Augustine reflects a traditional Roman view, as can be seen from the
tombstones of the principate where the sui are the nuclear family as opposed to the
freed slaves, other dependants and relatives. This default in vocabulary continued to
mark many early modern European societies: see Wheaton, "Recent Trends in the
Historical Study of the French Family", pp. 6 f., referring to Mousnier and Flandrin,
with a demographic explanation. Demographic factors no doubt played a part in the
phenomenon, but I remain convinced that the broader social forces outlined in this
article were the principal cause, at least for the Roman family.

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PAST AND PRESENT

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we can see is a class phenomenon. The question then arises: how

many households were there in Roman society that were, so to speak,
stripped to the core, that were not integrally linked with slaves,
dependants, concubines, boarders, and so on, so that for the persons
in them the use of familia and domuswould conjure up little more
than what they had? Secondly, we should not be misled by our main
conclusions here into devaluing the importance of the nuclear family.
Clearly it was the formative base of the larger family. Ownership was
paramount, and it was a power that ran through persons of free
status, through the father, his sons, his wife and daughters. They
defined the existence of the larger family, not the host of dependants.
If the primary owners were obliterated, the family ceased to exist.200
But in the Roman world catastrophes that suddenly and completely
ended families were perhaps rare; the two parts of the family thus
remained in an integral and dialectical relationship that defined its
conception.
This observation should not mislead us to opt for the opposite end
of the spectrum, as it were, and to embrace the conception of the
elite Roman family as a true extended family or agnatic lineage. This
it was not. Recourse to such categories only reflects trends which
were once dominant in family studies when the field was trapped by
a threefold classificatorysystem: the extended family, the stem family
and the nuclear family. One of the results of the veritable revolution
in family studies in the last two decades has been the final abandonment of these simplicities in favour of a more complex typology of
the family.201The Roman family does not fit very well into any of
the earlier simple categories. In practice and in vocabulary it was
neither a true nuclear family nor an extended-kin family, much less
an agnatic lineage. For the middling ranks of Roman society, at least,
the family was a more complex aggregate that included assemblages
of persons attached in an integral way to a discernible nuclear core.
This structure could change only when the economic forces that
delineated it themselves changed, so that slaves (including nurses and
concubines), clientelistic dependants, migrant agriculturallabourers
and other additions could be systematically stripped from the kincore of the family. Economic independence for sons, and daughters,
the development of peer groups for the children, and similar changes
also transformedrelationshipswithin the kin-core itself. Nevertheless
200 Compare the example of the behaviour of the dependants upon the death of a
dominusand domina in Apuleius, Metamorphoses,8.1 ff.
201
Laslett, "Family and Household as Work Group and Kin Group", pp. 513-63.

THE FAMILY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

51

this Roman family was clearly a distinctive social unit that deserves
inclusion in the type of urban-centred household in the west which
forms the dividing line between the simpler types of society that have
traditionallybeen the domain of the ethnologist and the more complex
types that have been the territory of the historian.202But, more than
this, it also seems to have been of a distinctive type that stands directly
in the main line of the development of family life in the west, as
opposed to the family types found in the eastern Mediterranean in
antiquity which were part of a different world of sentiment, dependence and behaviour.
Universityof Lethbridge,Alberta

Brent D. Shaw

202
C. Levi-Strauss, "Histoire et ethnologie", Annales E.S.C., xxxvi (1983), pp.
1217-31.