Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity
Edited by Sabine R. Hübner and David M. Ratzan
Cambridge University Press, 2009
ISBN: 9780521490504
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
Introduction
1. Fatherless antiquity? Perspectives on ‘fatherlessness’ in the ancient Mediterranean, by Sabine R. Hübner and David M. Ratzan
Part I. Coping with Demographic Realities:
2. The demographic background, by Walter Scheidel
3. Oedipal complexities, by Mark Golden
4. Callirhoe’s dilemma: remarriage and stepfathers in the Graeco-Roman east, by Sabine R. Hübner
5. ‘Without father, without mother, without genealogy’: fatherlessness in the Old and New Testaments, by Marcus Sigismund
Part II. Virtual Fatherlessness
6. Bastardy and fatherlessness in ancient Greece, by Daniel Ogden
7. Fatherlessness and formal identification in Roman Egypt, by Myrto Malouta
Part III. Roles Without Models
8. Diomedes, the fatherless hero of the Iliad, by Louise Pratt
9. Sons (and daughters) without fathers: fatherlessness in the Homeric epics, by Georg Wöhrle
10. Absent Roman fathers in the writings of their daughters: Cornelia and Sulpicia, by Judith P. Hallett
Part IV. Rhetoric of Loss
11. The disadvantages and advantages of being fatherless: the case of Sulla, by Sabine Müller
12. An imperial family man: Augustus as surrogate father to Marcus Antonius’ children, by Ann-Cathrin Harders
13. Cui parens non erat maximus quisque et uetustissimus pro parente: parental surrogates in imperial Roman literature, by Neil Bernstein
14. The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius, by Raffaella Cribiore
15. ‘Woe to those making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless’: Christian ideals and the obligations of stepfathers in late antiquity, by Geoffrey Nathan.
Read an Excerpt
Fatherless antiquity? Perspectives on “fatherlessness” in the ancient Mediterranean
Growing up fatherless in antiquity: the demographic background - draft paper
