Analysis Of Roman Epitaphs Alters Concept Of 'Family'

University Of Calgary ^ | 2-11-2004 | Dr Hanne Sigismund

[blam]

Analysis of Roman epitaphs alters concept of 'family'

February 11, 2004

If ancient Romans observed Family Day, their celebrations would have included wet nurses, slaves and possibly many others who had no blood relationship, according to new University of Calgary research.

A landmark analysis by classicist Dr. Hanne Sigismund Nielsen of more than 4,500 inscriptions on Roman tombstones shows that our concept of the Roman family needs to be broadened to include much more than just parents, grandparents and children.

"Roman families did not at all look like our family structure today," says Nielsen, who spent more than 10 years examining the Latin inscriptions. "Quite a few family relationships existed by choice and were not at all contained in the biological family." For example, slaves were often related to their masters by choice, families frequently included foster parents or children, and wet nurses were especially honoured.

"Whereas we might say, 'He has a face only a mother could love,' the Romans would have said, 'He has a face only his wet nurse could love'," Nielsen says. The bond was so strong with wet nurses because mothers surrendered their children to them for the first three years of a child's life.

Nielsen has written a book about her research titled Roman Relationships: The Evidence of the Epitaphs, which is currently under review for publication. Although the epitaphs have been documented and compiled in reference books, until now nobody has comprehensively described and analyzed them. Nielsen assembled a database of 4,500 complete inscriptions out of a total of 40,000 epitaphs, many of which are only fragmentary.

"It's not just accidental that you put up a tombstone for someone," she points out. "These people weren't millionaires and the stonecutter charged for each letter. I think it reflects real emotions and real attachment." The reason Roman families probably included so many individuals who were unrelated by birth was because the mortality rate was extremely high. With a life expectancy of not much beyond 45, a small family unit could not have survived.

"If you were a woman and you were 15 years old, you would be married to a man who was 10-15 years older than you. Then, because you had actually succeeded in living that long, you stood a good chance of living until you were 45. In that period you would give birth to five or six children, and half of them would die."

Nielsen says the most affecting inscriptions were always related to young children. "The grief is tangible: 'Here lies So-and-so, He was such a sweet little boy.' The proximity of death was so close in those times and these families probably had other children who died - it is always very touching."

Although it's expected Nielsen's book will have a major impact within the discipline by dispelling commonly held assumptions about the epitaphs, her research also tells us something about who we are now." Because our way of understanding the world is in many ways derived from the Romans, it's important that we know something about their culture. Even if we don't care about history, we can learn something about ourselves by looking at a culture where they did some things differently."

There are comparatively few researchers specializing in Roman social history, and even fewer who work with the epitaphs. One of the assumptions that Nielsen's research dispels relates to women and marriage. "Most of the textbooks we have on Roman social history will say it was normal to demand chastity from wives and that it was generally praised everywhere in the epitaphs. But the evidence points to a different conclusion."

It wasn't until about 300 CE when Christianity began to dominate that the idea of chasteness was cited in the inscriptions. Although Roman marriages before that time were monogamous, it wasn't something that was memorialized. Before then, up to about the middle of the 3rd century, wives tended to be described as 'very dear'.

[blam]

GGG ping.

[SolutionsOnly]

***"It wasn't until about 300 CE ...."***

Has anyone else noticed academia's shift away from the B.C. / A.D. designation? I've seen it once or twice before and suspect it's intentional- the agenda being to eliminate all Christian references from our daily lives.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

It's called an extended family.

[longtermmemmory]

Homo-propaganda.

They are seeking a secular excuse to justify their marriage re-definition.

Propaganda is in overdrive.

This is to define opposition to homosexual marraige as a religion thing. This is not true.

It is also true this is not a ban on homosexual marriage. This is codifying WHAT MARRIAGE IS. the FMA also precludes pedofilia marriage, incest marriage, and polygamy. not just homosexual marriage.

as to the CE and and BCE. That PC cr*p has been going on in Universities for some time. From the same people who want to outlaw all Christ in Christmas.

[irv]

Has anyone else noticed academia's shift away from the B.C. / A.D. designation? I've seen it once or twice before and suspect it's intentional- the agenda being to eliminate all Christian references from our daily lives.

It's been going on for quite a few years now and is pretty much complete. It's rare now to find a historian or archaeologist who refers to "BC" or "AD" times. The kids do not learn that nomenclature in school anymore, as far as I know.

It comes from the bigoted belief that using Christian-centric language excludes other traditions and is unscientific.

[squarebarb]

Yes, it is to eliminate 'Before Christ' but actually 'Before Common Era' STILL means 'Before Christ'. The dimwits.

Only rich families could afford wet-nurses.

Social life in Roman times is very well documented by a famous book called Daily Life In Ancient Rome, a marvelous work, written in the '30's. Jerome Carcapaccio or something like that. I have it in my bookshelf and am too lazy to get up and look. A whole chapter on the insanity of the Roman Games and why no politician could stop them even though they knew they were deeply wrong.

Wives were not called 'chaste' on their tombstones because it was expected. Would you put on YOUR spouse's tombstone 'S/He didn't have sex with that or any other woman/man"? Stupid kind of epitaph.

The idea of 'family' was also different in Elizabethan and American Colonial times, it included apprentices, orphans, servants, farm hands, all referred to by the head of the household as 'my family', or 'my people'.

I think this woman has an agenda or hasn't read very widely. She looks thick.

[blam]

"Has anyone else noticed academia's shift away from the B.C. / A.D. designation? I've seen it once or twice before and suspect it's intentional- the agenda being to eliminate all Christian references from our daily lives."

Yup. Just ignore it like I do and continue using BC/AD. (Screw'em!)

[longtermmemmory]

How many of us actuall remember living in a home with three blood generations?

Has anyone done a study on the broken family rate among democrats vs republicans?

[537 Votes]

The bond was so strong with wet nurses because mothers surrendered their children to them for the first three years of a child's life.

Cause of fall of Roman Empire now satisfactorily identified.

[longtermmemmory]

It is also very 1984. Children have no reason to believe why it was year zero. There is no subtle reminder of "Christ". They eliminate the word and thus the thought.


(s)Fight terrorism, outlaw the NEA.(/s)

[AnAmericanMother]

I think she backed into this by way of archaeology. The excavation guys have become more and more divorced from the classicists, ever since they put classical archaeology over in the art department. I had to hike all the way across campus to take those courses!

Seriously, this lady has obviously never read any of the many available texts on Roman family life, and she hasn't read the Latin authors, because you can glean a lot of this from just what Cicero and Tacitus and the rest of them let drop in passing. I thought everybody knew that a Roman of good family (senators and knights and any wealthy freedmen or merchants who could aspire) lived in an extended household where the father, wife and children simply formed the core.

This is no big deal anyhow. An awful lot of southern families have had widowed granny and a housekeeper and/or nanny living in - we certainly did.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Agreed. It was current up to recent times in South France, Italy etc.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't see anything in regard to homosexuality or homosexual marriage in this article. Did I overlook something?

This sort of extended family is certainly more common in rural than urban households, but it has nothing to do with homosexual marriage. A certain segment of Roman society, aping the upper class Greeks, did countenance relationships with a catamite, but a casual reading of, say, Suetonius, will demonstrate that the Romans did NOT look on it kindly and would never have permitted marriage. I faintly remember a scandalous story (and it may have been in Suetonius) about some extremely femme Roman young buck going through the form of marriage with his boy toy, but it wasn't valid and it was held up as an example of how low the morals of the upper class had sunk . . .

[elli1]

I'm reading Colleen McCullough's The First Man In Rome. Good book. Anyway, she has quite a lot of detail about family life among the patricians of Rome in the first century BC. Good balance w/ the political & military intrigue. I'd highly recommend the book to anyone interested in ancient Rome. It's the first book in a series.

[Eternal_Bear]

Societies consisting mostly of nuclear families of a husband, wife and kids is a fairly new social convention. People seemed to do well living in clans and extended families for thousands of years. Many Hispanic and immigrant groups still adhere to the older social traditions of extended families and that may indeed be a more natural order of things and may again be the norm some day.

[Verginius Rufus]

Jerome Carcopino.

[longtermmemmory]

I just found it odd how in this period when the left is trying to breakdown the definition what is marriage and what is family.

It is just beyond coincidence that the Mass. opinion adopts a concept of law that excludes children as the basis of marraige. The American Law Institute model divorce code project (ABA division) has portions in which a non-blood person could claim rights to a child (ie homosexual lover). This is not exended family but jut affiliation by non-blood reasons. (ie sexual gratification)

conspiracy no, but definitly all pushing in the same direction.

[Burkeman1]

It is hardly "Homo propaganda." Roman families often contained non biological members through the very common insitution of adoption due to high mortality rates. Even adults were adopted into other families. The Patron- client system of Roman life also fed this notion of a greater family- the number of "clients" a family had was a measure of it's power and prestiege. Many such "clients" were adopted. And this bond was just as real as blood relations to the Romans. Often- heirs of a family fortune were not blood related but an adoptee.

Gauis Octavius- better known as Emporer Augustus was the adopted son and heir of Julius Ceaser.

As for the CE and BCE PC idiocy- they tried to pull that off for a while but I don't see it used much anymore.

[anniegetyourgun]

How much of this justification will we have to put up with.....