Synopses & Reviews
The family has been recognised in the ancient world as the key social institution on which both society and the state are based. However, in the pre-Classical and Classical world the family was constructed in dissimilar ways and provides the means to explaining why the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean, although sharing many cultural features, in fact differed greatly. This volume draws on the most recent work of leading scholars in the field with the aim of establishing a new understanding of the ancient family for the 21st century. In so doing, the book includes new approaches to social institutions, depictions of women and children, the Seleucid dynasty as a negative model of family, the inclusion of Etruscan societies, and a fundamental re-assessment of the family in antiquity.
About the Author
Ray Laurence is Professor of Classical and Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author of many titles including Pompeii The Living City (with Alex Butterworth) which was awarded the Longman-History Today New Generation Prize 2006.
Agneta Stromberg is a senior lecturer in ancient history at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: From Oikos to Familia - Looking Forward? - Laurence / 2. Beyond Oikos and Domus: Modern Kinship Studies and the Ancient Family - Harders / 3. Taking a Wider View: Greco-Roman Families and Political Demography Theory - Hin / 4. More Than Just Gender: The Classical Oikos as a Site for Intersectionality - Sjoberg / 5. Tracing the Oikos in Pre-Classical Corinth: The Perspective of Iconography - Avramidou / 6. The Language of the Oikos and theLanguage of Power in the Seleucid Kingdom - Coloru / 7. Inheritance, Priesthoods and Succession in Classical Athens: The Hierophantai of the Eumolpidai - Bubelis / 8. Women in the Hellenistic Family: The Evidence of Funerary Epigrams - Kotlinska-Toma / 9. Family Relationships in Late Bronze Age, Iron Age and Early Roman Veneto: Preliminary Considerations on the Basis of Osteological Analysis and Epigraphy - Perego / 10. Gender, Household Structure and Slavery: Re-interpreting the Aristocratic Columbaria of Early Imperial Rome - Penner / 11. Houses, Painting, Family Emotion - Kampen / 12. The Future of the Ancient Greek Family - Golden.