Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

law and society 405
even greater extent) in the descending line between parents and children.
What is taking shape with increasing clarity, therefore, is the ‘parent-tochild
descending triad that is most typical of “modern” nuclear family
structure’. 45 Finally, the inscriptions record a widespread collapse of interest
in the memory of personal relationships. The sheer size of this phenomenon
suggests that it was the result of deliberate, ideological choice:
for in death even more than in life, the Christian devalues his earthly ties
in favour of the heavenly bond. The same tendency is confirmed in the
iconography, with a gradual disappearance of matrimonial scenes from
sarcophagi. 46
An examination of the inscriptions commemorating children who had
died before the age of ten has shown significant differences. The percentage
of such dedications reaches its highest levels in the cities of northern
Italy and, above all, in Rome and Ostia; the lowest levels are found in the
less urbanized regions. The tendency to commemorate children increases
in the Christian inscriptions: in the areas where it was already high in early
times, the percentage rise is less pronounced; elsewhere it is more substantial.
Commemorations of the elderly (in their seventh decade of life), on
the other hand, show an opposite trend: the highest percentages relate to
the rural, non-Christian populations, the lowest to the urban, Christian
areas. As regards the preference for male, as opposed to female, memorials,
comparison among the urban populations shows a gradual tendency
for the phenomenon to decline, if not disappear altogether. It has been
rightly observed that, as a whole, these inscriptions reflect the sensibilities
of the freedmen – that is, individuals who had no ascendant family tradition,
but none the less wished to emphasize their status as Roman citizens
who shared the stability of an affective and legal structure (the nuclear
family). With respect to these tendencies, which had already existed for
some time, Christianization seems to have had the effect of ideological
strengthening – hence as a factor of continuity and reinforcement, not of
novelty. 47
In the past it has been held that Christian funerary inscriptions give evidence
of a changed attitude to the correct marrying age for girls, raising it
from its former, pagan levels. There would have been two reasons for this:
as a means of championing virginity and to reduce the number of young
girls dying in childbirth. 48 As it happens, however, the inscriptions taken as
indicative of ‘Christian’ orientation (mainly from the city of Rome) were
merely demonstrating that the lives of hitherto concealed strata of the
population were beginning to be reflected in the documents. 49 And what
45 46 47 Shaw (1984). Frugoni (1977). Shaw (1991); cf. Zanker (1975).
48 Recently, Pietri (1979), on the basis of data collected and analysed by Carletti (1977).
49 Shaw (1987b) 41f.; for a reassessment of the data referring to the previous centuries, see Saller
(1994) ch. 2.
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