History Of Private Life Volume 1 From Pagan

First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world. Behind the vast panorama of the pagan Roman empire, the reader discovers the intimate daily lives of citizens and slaves--from concepts of manhood and sexuality to marriage and the family, the roles of women, chastity and contraception, techniques of childbirth, homosexuality, religion, the meaning of virtue, and the separation of private and public spaces.

The emergence of Christianity in the West and the triumph of Christian morality with its emphasis on abstinence, celibacy, and austerity is startlingly contrasted with the profane and undisciplined private life of the Byzantine Empire. Using illuminating motifs, the authors weave a rich, colorful fabric ornamented with the results of new research and the broad interpretations that only masters of the subject can provide.

This first volume is one of the most arresting, original, and rewarding historical surveys to be published in many years, and its value is enhanced by the hundreds of illustrations, which present almost every conceivable detail of private life as it was lived in the centuries. Washington Post Book World

The new emphasis on the history of everybody has now been consecrated in [this] ambitious five-volume series...Copious illustrative materials--paintings, drawings, caricatures, and photographs, all cannily chosen and wittily captioned to display domestic life...Magnificent. Roger Shattuck

A stimulating--indeed a provocative--and beautiful book on a difficult subject...It's a treasure. Kirkus Reviews

Together these five compact volumes cover much of the history of the classical world, and do so with both ease and authority. New York Times Book Review

Private life has always been a matter of public conjecture. This admirable book brings it intelligently into the web of social history and is a model for historians and readers alike. Beautifully produced, it adds apt and rare illustrations to a text by experts who presuppose human curiosity, but no undue knowledge. Its range and level of argument will intrigue anyone who has wondered about past attitudes to such matters as sex and the family, households, social inferiors, dress and even undress. Bernard Knox - The Atlantic

The five essays collected here...treat readers to a vast array of anecdotes and conjectures about the private life of our forebears. Robin Lane Fox - Washington Post

This is a long, demanding and very rewarding book. If the remaining four volumes are of this quality, the series will indeed, as the editors claim, be "a milestone in historical research." Roger Kimball - Wall Street Journal

A book which makes the reader think, teasing and encouraging with spicy details, long views, a capacity for the unexpected insight. Now for something completely different. Jane F. Gardner - Times Higher Education Supplement

This absorbingly illustrated series is intent on presenting the past with both physical immediacy and with as little academic fuss as possible. The illustrations in the first volume have a subjective penetration of the text that is like an inner musical accompaniment. This volume does not pretend to roll out a complete rug of civilization...Few readers, even of I, Claudius, will have experienced pagan Rome with quite the freshness evident here...History-to-touch. Jasper Griffin - London Review of Books

First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world. Behind the vast panorama of the pagan Roman empire, the reader discovers the intimate daily lives of citizens and slaves--from concepts of manhood and sexuality to marriage and the family, the roles of women, chastity and contraception, techniques of childbirth, homosexuality, religion, the meaning of virtue, and the separation of private and public spaces. The emergence of Christianity in the West and the triumph of Christian morality with its emphasis on abstinence, celibacy, and austerity is startlingly contrasted with the profane and undisciplined private life of the Byzantine Empire. Using illuminating motifs, the authors weave a rich, colorful fabric ornamented with the results of new research and the broad interpretations that only masters of the subject can provide.

Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.Paul Veyne is Professor at the Collège de France.Arthur Goldhammer received the French-American Translation Prize in 1990 for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

Foreword
by Georges Duby

Introduction
by Paul Veyne

1. Roman Empire
by Paul Veyne

Introduction

From Mother's Womb to Last Will and Testament

Marriage

Slavery

The Household and Its Freed Slaves

Where Public Life Was Private

"Work" and Leisure

Patrimony

Public Opinion and Utopia

Pleasures and Excesses

Tranquilizers

2. Late Antiquity
by Peter Brown

Introduction

The "Wellborn" Few

Person and Group in Judaism and Early Christianity

Church and Leadership

The Challenge of the Desert

East and West: The New Marital Morality

3. Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa
by Yvon Thébert

The Roman Home: Foreword by Paul Veyne

Some Theoretical Considerations

The Domestic Architecture of the Ruling Class

"Private" and "Public" Spaces: The Components of the Domus

How the Domus Worked

Conclusion

4. The Early Middle Ages in the West
by Michel Rouche

Introduction by Paul Veyne

Historical Introduction

Private Life Conquers State and Society

Body and Heart

Violence and Death

Sacred and Secret

Conclusion

5. Byzantium in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
by Evelyne Patlagean

The Byzantine Empire

Private Space

Self and Others

The Inner Life

Private Belief

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index