Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity

by Edited by Sabine R. Hübner , David M. Ratzan

• ISBN13: 9780521490504
• ISBN10: 0521490502
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-16
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

As the changes in the traditional family accelerated toward the end of the twentieth century, a great deal of attention came to focus on fathers, both modern and ancient. While academics and politicians alike singled out the conspicuous and growing absence of the modern father as a crucial factor affecting contemporary family and social dynamics, ancient historians and classicists have rarely explored ancient father-absence, despite the likelihood that nearly a third of all children in the ancient Mediterranean world were fatherless before they turned fifteen. The proportion of children raised by single mothers, relatives, step-parents, or others was thus at least as high in antiquity as it is today. This book assesses the wide-ranging impact high levels of chronic father-absence had on the cultures, politics, and families of the ancient world.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. x
List of tables	p. xi
List of contributors	p. xii
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Note on abbreviations	p. xvi
Introduction	p. 1
Fatherless antiquity? Perspectives on "fatherlessness" in the ancient Mediterranean	p. 3
Coping With Demographic Realities	p. 29
The demographic background	p. 31
Oedipal complexities	p. 41
Callirhoe's dilemma: remarriage and stepfathers in the Greco-Roman East	p. 61
"Without father, without mother, without genealogy": fatherlessness in the Old and New Testaments	p. 83
Virtual Fatherlessness	p. 103
Bastardy and fatherlessness in ancient Greece	p. 105
Fatherlessness and formal identification in Roman Egypt	p. 120
Roles Without Models	p. 139
Diomedes, the fatherless hero of the Iliad	p. 141
Sons (and daughters) without fathers: fatherlessness in the Homeric epics	p. 162
Absent Roman fathers in the writings of their daughters: Cornelia and Sulpicia	p. 175
Rhetoric of Loss	p. 193
The disadvantages and advantages of being fatherless: the case of Sulla	p. 195
An imperial family man: Augustus as surrogate father to Marcus Antonius' children	p. 217
Cui Parens non erat maximums quisque et vetustissimus pro parente: paternal surrogates in imperial Roman literature	p. 241
The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius	p. 257
"Woe to those making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless": Christian ideals and the obligations of stepfathers in late antiquity	p. 273
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 326
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