Approaches to the Byzantine Family

Leslie Brubaker, Shaun Tougher, Leslie Brubaker, Shaun Tougher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409411581
• eBook ISBN: 9781317180005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The study of the family is one of the major lacunas in Byzantine Studies. Angeliki Laiou remarked in 1989 that 'the study of the Byzantine family is still in its infancy', and this assertion remains true today. The present volume addresses this lacuna. It comprises 19 chapters written by international experts in the field which take a variety of approaches to the study of the Byzantine family, and embrace a chronological span from the later Roman to the late Byzantine empire. The context is established by chapters focusing on the Roman roots of the Byzantine family, the Christianisation of the family, and the nature of the family in contemporaneous cultures (the late antique west and the Islamic east). Key methodological approaches to the Byzantine family are highlighted and discussed, in particular prosopographical and life course approaches. The contribution of hagiography to the understanding of the Byzantine family is analysed by several authors; other chapters on the family and children in art and on the archaeology of the Middle Byzantine house explore the material evidence that can shed light on the Byzantine family. Overall, the diversity of families that existed in Byzantium (blood, fictive, metaphorical) is emphasised, and chapters consider the specific cases of ascetic, monastic, aristocratic and peasant families, as well as the imperial family, which is illuminated by the comparative case of a Caliphal family. The volume is topped and tailed by a Preface and an Afterword by the editors, which address the state of the field and consider the way ahead. Thus the volume is vital in putting the subject of the Byzantine Family in sharp focus and setting the research agenda for the future.

Chapter 1
Looking for the Family: The Greek and Roman Background

Mary Harlow and Tim Parkin1

Meeting the Family

To seek out and meet an ancient Greek or Roman family two millennia or more after its heyday is no easy feat, and not only because of the tyranny of distance in time. Greeks and Romans rarely wrote about or illustrated their families for public consumption; much that we have learnt in recent years has been gleaned from semi-private correspondence or from reading between the lines in more public statements or images, especially after the death of a wife or child. But very occasionally we get generalised insights from different and potentially revealing perspectives. In a schoolbook, probably originating from fourth-century AD Gaul, we are given, in Greek and in Latin, the textbook description of a household as a Roman freeborn son greets them one morning:2

I go and greet my parents, my father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, my brother and sister and all my relations, my uncle and aunt, my nurse and my carer, the major domo, all the freedmen, the doorkeeper, the housekeeper, the neighbours, all our friends, the other residents and those who live in the apartment block, and the eunuch.

The order of events preceding this passage is a little bizarre (the boy gets up twice, for example, and goes out to greet his friends before returning home to greet his family); part of the reason must be that, as with our passage, any opportunity of reciting vocabulary is not missed. It is highly unlikely that a Greek or Roman child typically greeted all these individuals as part of his or her morning ritual. On the other hand, we should not think of the ancient family as a static or unchanging institution. The family not only evolved in the course of history, but changed on a generational basis as family members came and went. At the same time, the family in both Greek and Roman societies was deemed absolutely fundamental and a reflection of the wider society: in effect, a microcosm of the state, as both Aristotle (Politics 1.2) and Cicero (On Duties 1.54) declared.

Rather than attempt in this brief introductory chapter to give a chronological narrative of the ancient family over a period of more than a millennium and across vast geographical space, we shall turn to two individuals – one Greek, one Roman – about whom we happen to know some details regarding their families; we shall attempt to use these two case studies to develop a number of themes relevant to this volume as a whole. Our case studies are not typical – the very fact that we know quite a lot about their personal lives makes them unusual in itself – but they are illuminating and do point to some key aspects relating to ancient families in general. Plutarch, in writing of illustrious Greeks and Romans, composed his biographies as ‘parallel lives’, one Greek, one Roman: Demosthenes and Cicero were to him an obvious pairing (Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes 3); it is also a useful point of comparison for our purposes.

First a few words about the nature of the topic. The study of the history of the family in the Greek and Roman worlds has had a profound effect on all other areas of ancient history. It has moved historians away from solely political and military arenas which tended to dominate until the last decades of the twentieth century; this has shifted most historical analyses to include the private and domestic realm, and from an area of an arguably segregated male world to one also inhabited by women and children. The change of focus has also brought about a sharpening of methodological approaches and a more sophisticated interpretation and analysis of our sources: written, visual and material. In order to find ‘individuals’ (or at any rate, ‘types’) other than politicians and generals (who tend to be the main writers of history in the ancient world) it has been necessary to learn how to approach the evidence in new ways; to look at groups who do not write their own history (women, children, slaves, non-citizens and perceived outsiders) but who appear, more often than not, as bit-part players in the writings of men. This has meant that ancient historians have become familiar with methodologies of other disciplines, particularly the social sciences, gender studies and the histories of sexuality and medicine. This multi- and interdisciplinary approach has produced some innovative work.3

As we have already said, finding the family is not a simple business. Early studies concentrated on the evidence of legal codes and court cases (often purely rhetorical) associated with marriage and inheritance with smatterings of supporting evidence from, say, Greek drama and writers such as Cicero and Pliny the Younger, as well as tombstone epitaphs. The critical interpretation of such material has become increasingly rigorous and nuanced. The understanding and deconstruction of genre, style, and author and audience expectation are key when trying to extrapolate information about the ‘family’. The relationship between social ideals (literary, male and elite) and social reality, especially for those who do not themselves have a voice, has to be carefully interpreted.4 More recently historians of the family have embraced a more diverse range of evidence, from looking at the layout of domestic space and the cultural appearance of family groupings in art to the role of patronage and particular social relationships within the family.5 It is also very important to realise from the outset that the reality of the family would have been vastly divergent over time and space. To generalise about the ancient family, as if there were no difference between the Greek and the Roman, would be patently absurd; indeed differences probably outweigh similarities.6 As we proceed we shall seek to highlight significant divergence as well as overlap.

The societies of Athens and Rome were patriarchal: power was vested in men and perceived masculine roles in society. Masculinity implied citizenship which in itself bestowed upon select individuals superior social power: men were ostensibly the decision-makers in ancient societies. They might make jokes about the ability of wives, children and slaves to undermine their power, as we see, for example, in the anecdote several times recorded by Plutarch in the second century AD about the fifth century BC Athenian statesman Themistocles:

Themistocles once said jokingly of his son, who was spoilt by his mother and, through her, by his father, that he was the most powerful person in Greece: ‘For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother.’7

The humour (for an ancient male reader) lay in the representation of a patently ridiculous reversal of traditional roles. Women were more generally perceived through a culturally constructed idea of biology and physiology as ‘failed men’, as not having the physical or mental capacity to run a city state, and only with training to run a household. This line of thinking is embodied in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus or On Household Management; and Plutarch’s Coniugalia Praecepta or Advice to the Bride and Groom.8 We should not be completely taken in by the male view, however, as much as it tends to be the image that husbands and fathers wish to present to the outside world. Instead we need to unpick the evidence to get glimpses of life inside the family grouping. Here we are looking primarily at the elite, since they are the group for whom most evidence has survived. Assumptions can be made, however, about the lives of other social groups using a wider range of evidence and anthropological comparata. We have to assume that many of the ideals that surround the upper classes are a result of having status and property to pass on to the next generation – without these controlling parameters social behaviour is not so essential to the public image of an individual. Another crucial factor to remember in analysing the testimony that we have is that it describes families that are atypical or are being described at a time that they are experiencing atypical circumstances; we tend to meet families when they are at critical moments, of formation or, even more often, of fragmentation and dissolution.

For most individuals in the ancient world, as we have already emphasised, we know very little of their personal family life, but sometimes a few words can tell us a great deal, and even about those below the social elite. Consider, for example, the tombstone of Veturia, the wife of a centurion, from Aquincum, Pannonia Inferior:9

Here do I lie at rest, a married woman, Veturia by name and descent, the wife of Fortunatus, the daughter of Veturius. I lived for thrice nine years, poor me, and I was married for twice eight. I slept with one man, I was married to one man. After having borne six children, one of whom survives me, I died. Titus Julius Fortunatus, centurion of the Second Legion Adiutrix Pia Fidelis, set this up for his wife: she was incomparable and notably respectful to him.

A relatively short but eventful life – and far from atypical, given demographic and social realities.

Two Ancient Families

Our two more detailed case studies, while highlighting critical moments, will also serve to illuminate features shared between societies, as well as those that are quite disparate. One case study comes from fourth-century BC Athens, the other from first-century BC Rome. It is inevitable, in an introductory survey such as this, that our attention is drawn towards classical Athens and Rome, simply because the vast majority of our material dates from these periods. Our two protagonists, Demosthenes and Cicero, are relevant, and unusual, because they (and others) wrote about themselves and their families. Their political lives are of interest here only in so far as they influenced the choices each made in terms of his marriage and his behaviour to his wife, children, friends and family.

Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator and politician (384–322 BC), was born to a well-off family. We are able to reconstruct, from biographies and legal speeches, Demosthenes’ family tree, even though, following Athenian social convention, most of the females in the tree remain unnamed.10 His father, also named Demosthenes, had married Cleoboule early in the 380s (when she was probably in her early or mid teens; he would have been twice her age). Demosthenes senior died when his only son was just seven years old. The father had made provision for an untimely death: in his will he had betrothed his wife to his sister’s son, Aphobus (the latter was probably about the same age as his intended bride, highly unusually), and his daughter (five years old at the time) to his brother’s son, Demophon – a typically endogamous (i.e. a partner chosen within the extended family) arrangement, and also a very clear sign that women should not be left unattached, especially where property was concerned. Both women had large dowries attached. Demosthenes junior being so young, the family estate – a sizeable one – was left to the management of two of his father’s nephews, Aphobus and Demophon, along with a friend, Therippides, as guardians (kyrioi). They did not manage the estate well (if we believe Demosthenes they were more than just careless, they were positively evil), nor did the intended marriages to Demosthenes’ mother (with Aphobus, her nephew) and sister (with Demophon, her cousin) take place as planned, though both men apparently appropriated their substantial dowries; indeed Demosthenes’ young sister would not be married for another decade, to another of her mother’s nephews. Demosthenes meanwhile grew up under his mother’s care.11 At the age of 18, when he was able to assert his financial independence, Demosthenes found himself in serious straits. On claiming his pa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Looking for the Family: The Greek and Roman Background
• 2 Family Violence: Punishment and Abuse in the Late Roman Household
• 3 Family Relations and the Socialisation of Children in the Autobiographical Narratives of Late Antiquity
• 4 The Death of the Father in Late Antique Christian Literature
• 5 Preserving Family Honour: Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina as Theological Polemic
• 6 The Family in the Late Antique West (AD 400–700): A Historiographical Review
• 7 The Family in Medieval Islamic Societies
• 8 Age, Gender and Status: A Three-Dimensional Life Course Perspective of the Byzantine Family
• 9 Looking at the Byzantine Family
• 10 The Byzantine Child: Picturing Complex Family Dynamics
• 11 Social Mobility in Byzantium? Family Ties in the Middle Byzantine Period
• 12 The Middle Byzantine House and Family: A Reappraisal
• 13 Family in the Byzantine Greek Legend of Saint Alexios, the Man of God
• 14 La Vie de Théodora de Thessalonique, un écrit familial
• 15 Imperial Families: The Case of the Macedonians (867–1056)
• 16 An Abbasid Caliphal Family
• 17 Byzantine Monastic Communities: Alternative Families?
• 18 Families, Politics, and Memories of Rome in the Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios
• 19 Changes in the Structure of the Late Byzantine Family and Society
• Afterword
• Index