BMCR 2009.01.38, Michele George, The Roman Family

Michele George (ed.), The Roman Family in the Empire. Rome, Italy, and
Beyond.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2005.  Pp. 384.  ISBN
0-19-926841-X.  $125.00.

Reviewed by Aglaia McClintock, Universita\ degli Studi del Sannio
([email protected])
Word count:  1603 words
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Table of Contents
(http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip057/2005002931.html)

"The Roman Family in the Empire" is a collection of essays edited by
Michele George set in the wake of the Australian conferences, begun by
Beryl Rawson in 1981, that produced three volumes published in 1986,
1991 and 1997. As the editor points out in her Introduction (pp. 1-8)
"quite coincidentally a number of scholars in different parts of the
mainly Anglo-American world were beginning to focus on the topic of the
Roman family as a distinct theme in ancient social history." This book
dedicated to Beryl Rawson collects the proceedings of a fourth
Conference held in Canada in 2001. George recalls as a starting point
Keith Hopkins's pioneering application of demography to the ancient
context and particularly the demographic study of Saller and Shaw on
the Roman family. Saller and Shaw, using funerary inscriptions from
Western Europe, arrived at the conclusion that the Roman family was
essentially nuclear, similar to our modern family based on solidarity
and affection. The editor gives an outline of some of the criticisms of
this view that have been expressed. Two of the main arguments are that
the Roman term familia cannot be translated as "family", but has other
meanings such as "household" and that there is widespread evidence
through the Roman empire territories of extended families with a more
complex structure than the nuclear one. But for George, the last
generation of scholarship that has focused on the component elements of
family life, "rather than resolving the question of structure", has
complicated it "by enhancing our understanding of the many dimensions
of experience which fall within the category of 'family life', but for
which the issue of structure has only minor relevance." The stated aim
of the collection is to extend research beyond Italy to investigate
regional diversity. The approaches of the essays vary but are very
centered on criticizing, furthering or detailing the theories of Saller
and Shaw. After an overview of the book's contents we will come back to
these strong opening statements of the editor.

The first three contributions feature general problems. Susan Treggiari
(pp. 9-35) focuses on how the idea of family was used by Cicero in his
forensic works to influence judges and audience. Treggiari analyses
Cicero's efforts in depicting favorable portraits of his clients with
the aid of examples drawn from their private lives. She observes that
these digressions of the orator concentrate on mutual affection and on
the 'proper behavior' that family members should uphold. The author's
conclusion is that Cicero's powers of influencing the general public
are based on a common idea of mutual affection (father-daughter,
son-father) among Roman social classes.

Michele George (pp. 37-66) analyses family portrait groups of the
Republican and early imperial ages. Although somewhat distant in time
and space these portraits reflect the image of a stereotyped family due
to the desire of the emerging Italian middle class, ex-slaves from the
city of Rome, and Cisalpine Gaul mixed citizens to position themselves
in the mainstream culture.

How parents dealt with important issues such as the health and sickness
of their children, and the fear of losing them, is discussed by Keith
Bradley (pp. 67-92) surveying a large number of literary texts. Given
the great infant mortality and consciousness of the inadequacy of
doctors in solving medical problems, Romans--"when survival was all
that mattered"--fell back on every expedient including, charms, amulets
and prayers.

Judith Evan Grubbs's essay (pp. 93-128) introduces us to an ideal
second part of the book centered on examining family life in the Roman
world outside Italy. The author examines cases of 'improper' family
conduct, namely of parent-child conflict, through the evidence of the
Justinian Code focusing on the third century imperial rescripts, to try
to understand to what degree the Greek east families mentioned therein
fitted a Roman pattern.

Richard Alston's contribution (pp. 129-157) on the Egyptian family, by
evaluating a vast array of sources (census returns, archives and
private letters of the first three centuries AD) arrives at the
conclusion that it is not possible to sketch a homogeneous family
structure for Roman Egypt. Altson discusses endogamous marriage in
Egypt as a degree of insecurity felt by family members in respect to a
harsher outside world. Although families appear to have had a fairly
tight-knit centre "often concentrating on a single conjugal
relationship" they could extend to include others that were not kin for
social and economic purposes. In some cases the author underlines that
family was so extended as to dissolve into community (an aspect
particularly shown by the letters).

The Jewish family in Judea from Pompey to Hadrian is analyzed by
Margaret Williams (pp. 159-182). Romanization, according to the author,
was mainly restricted to the elites who had the wealth to buy the Roman
status symbols, and--as far as regulation was concerned--it took place
in areas where the Thora was unprescriptive as in the fields of
marriage arrangements and burial. Without doubt Romanization brought
changes but they were superficial as the onomastic data would prove.
Williams argues that "it would not have cost non-elite Jews anything to
give their children Roman names," therefore if they chose not to,
preferring the names used by the Maccabees and the Hasmonean dynasty,
it is evidence of their intention of maintaining a cultural identity
but also of their political attitude towards Rome.

Jonathan Edmonson (pp. 183-229) investigates funerary commemoration and
family relations in Lusitania. He adopts Saller and Shaw's demographic
method aiming to concentrate on regional variation thanks to the great
number of inscriptions that have been published after the CIL. His
conclusion is that if nuclear families were predominant there were
subtle variations. According to the author, where Romanization had
penetrated to a lesser degree, women appear to have played a more
prominent role as commemorators.

Family structure and relations in Northwest provinces are discussed by
Greg Wolf (pp. 231-254) using a comparative approach given the little
epigraphic and funerary evidence that can be found in these areas.
Wolf, considering the seduction of Roman patriarchy with all the powers
on the members of the household that it entailed, argues that it was in
the interest of the adult males (of those who had Roman citizenship or
desired to acquire it) "that makes it likely that many chose to
organize their families in the Roman way even if they did not have to
do so."

Mirelle Corbier (pp. 255-285) examines marriages between cousins in
Roman Africa underlining that close-kin marriage, as well as remarriage
of a widow to her husband's brother were present and permitted until
the third century. It was with the Christians that this kind of union
became suspicious before being prohibited.

The peculiarities of the tombstones of Pannonia are discussed by Mary
T. Boatwright (pp. 287-318). The author focuses particularly on the
representation of a mother nursing her infant, found on three Pannonian
stelae, an image extremely rare in Roman art. Boatwright argues that
this picture is less striking in Pannonian context where usually
funerary art displays great emphasis on family ties in all social
groups cutting across "simplistic binary oppositions of 'native' and
Roman, civilian and military." The strong idealization of the nuclear
family may be connected to the harsh living conditions of a region
continuously exposed to war that rendered family life especially
precious.

Displaying a great array of sources the book provides useful
information especially on the Roman family beyond Italy, but the lack
of a unitary timeframe does not help the reader to understand the
peculiarities of Roman family in the empire and the differences with
the Republican period. Furthermore, at first glance the sources seem to
include also the legal ones. George stresses in her Introduction how
Evan Grubbs "concentrates on an undervalued juridical source".  But
what seems to be undervalued is in general Roman family law. The legal
sources used in the book are isolated in Grubbs's study and are very
scarcely used in the rest of the articles. The legal debate on the
family taking place in European legal history seems to be totally
missing. George's opening statement that mainly the Anglo-American
world focused on the Roman family making it an autonomous topic
displays how auto-referential these studies appear to the European
reader. There is almost no trace in the references of the German,
Italian, French, and Spanish legal bibliography on the subject. It must
be said that also the European legal historiography has been at times
somewhat deaf to the Anglo-American world but certainly not to the same
degree. But it is difficult to think that the proposed study of the
Roman family in the Empire can avoid taking into consideration Michel
Humbert's social and legal study on remarriage, the analysis of
Augustus' legislation on marriage by T. Spagnuolo Vigorita, and the
studies of E. Cantarella on sexuality, just to mention a few. I would
like to end with an example of an article that could have been
particularly useful to the editor and the contributors: Famiglia romana
e demografia sociale (in Iura 43, pp. 99-111 published in 1995) by Eva
Cantarella on the structure of the Roman familia and its consequences
on family relations using a demographic, an anthropological and a legal
approach. Cantarella observes that the confrontation between different
disciplines and methodologies avoids us falling into
over-simplifications that take us far away from the comprehension of
reality. And this is valid both for the jurist who undervalues the
analysis analytical instruments of society, and for the historian or
the anthropologist who does not give proper consideration to the role
played by law. Unfortunately the latter seems to apply in the case of
this interesting book.