Growing up fatherless in antiquity: the demographic background
Scheidel, Walter
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, June 2006
Abstract
In ancient societies, many individuals lost their fathers while they were still minors or unmarried. Building on Richard Saller’s seminal work, this paper examines the demographic dimension of this phenomenon. This paper is designed to provide demographic context for a forthcoming collection of essays on growing up fatherless in antiquity.
The severe mortality regime of the ancient world caused many minors to lose their fathers. In classical Athens, men attained legal maturity at the age of eighteen while women commonly got married in their mid-teens and passed under the control of their husbands. In Roman society, males entered legal adulthood at the age of fourteen and and assumed unqualified competence at twenty-five. Women were considered mature at twelve and often appear to have begun marrying in their late teens. In Roman Egypt, men started paying poll tax at fourteen and the majority of women found husbands in their mid- to late teens. Under these circumstances, the loss of fathers during the first 15 to 20 years of life mattered most and merits our attention here.
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