Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

404 14. the family in the late roman world
aspects of the family reflected in Augustine’s writings were in fact essentially
traditional. Significantly, the environment described (Numidia) was
one where ancient customs survived strongest. Literary evidence for other
areas sometimes suggests that there also existed less oppressive situations,
in which tenderness played a more prominent role. But even these families,
ruled more by affection and respect than by fear and intimidation, were
essentially traditional. In other words, these sources do not give us the
impression that Christianity had substantially modified the existential conditions
of women and children in late antiquity. 40 Where we do find the
display of new and subversive behaviour, among some of the more formidable
figures of this period (for instance, certain women of the eastern
and western aristocracies), theirs was not so much a struggle in support of
a new family model as a struggle against the very notion of the family. 41
But to explore the space separating the level of prescription (legal and
moral) from that of real life, we really need to consider evidence of a much
colder nature: those documents in which the specificity of the individual
dissolves into repetition and plurality. While the information from papyri
has been much scantier and less interesting than anticipated, 42 that from
funerary epigraphy has been sufficient to generate fundamental assessments.
And though the data are fragmentary and poorly distributed (both
geographically and socially), the results of recent methods of investigation
cannot be underestimated.
Analysis of the family relationships attested in the inscriptions from
western sources in the first three centuries of the empire has shown that in
a clear majority of cases (c. 80 per cent) Roman society was characterized
by the nuclear family – Roman society being a ‘peculiar nexus of urban
centres, whether village, town or city, and their rural territoria, that were
integrated into the political power structure of the Roman state’. 43 The
dominant relationship is that between husband and wife, whereas the
descending and ascending elements within the nuclear family are represented
more or less equally; siblings, on the other hand, hardly feature. 44
The same method, applied to western Christian epigraphy between the
fourth and the seventh century, shows certain changes in the family relationships,
though within a framework of substantial continuity. First of all,
the nuclear family is further strengthened, now becoming practically the
sole focus of family life and affectivity (c. 97 per cent of cases). Secondly,
we find a larger number of commemorations between spouses and (to an
40 Cameron (1993) 128ff. 41 Recently, Giardina (1994), with bibliography.
42 The lack of documents on divorce for this period is particularly significant: see Bagnall (1987),
who none the less claims there was a ‘significant continuity, in substance and phraseology, from the
time before Constantine to the late sixth century, through numerous changes in imperial laws’ (56); see
also Bagnall, Egypt 193f. For the patrimonial aspects, Beaucamp (1992b) 70ff. The private letters on
papyrus show no significant changes in family sentiment through Christian influence: Joxe (1959).
43 Shaw (1984) 489. 44 Saller and Shaw (1984).
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