Unfaithful spouses, divorce and remarriage, rebellious children, aging
parents--today's headlines are filled with issues said to be responsible
for a "breakdown" of the traditional family. But are any of these
problems truly new? What can we learn from the ways in which societies
dealt with them in the past? Suzanne Dixon sets the current debate about
the family against a broader context in The Roman Family, the first book
to bring together what historians, anthropologists, and philologists
have learned about the family in ancient Rome. Dixon begins by reviewing
the controversies regarding the family in general and the Roman family
in particular. After considering the problems of evidence, she explores
what the Roman concept of "family" really meant and how Roman families
functioned. Turning to the legal status of the Roman family, she shows
how previous studies, which relied exclusively on legal evidence, fell
short of describing the reality of Roman life. (Many relations not
recognized by law--the slave family, for instance, or the marriage of
imperial soldiers--were tolerated socially and eventually gained some
legal recognition.) Other topics include love and other aspects of the
institution of marriage, the role of the children in the family, how
families adjusted to new members, and how they dealt with aging and
death.
