Law and Family in Late Antiquity


Book Description

This is a new and thought-provoking look at law and marriage in late antiquity, dealing particularly with the legislation on marriage enacted by the Roman emperor Constantine. Though Constantine is usually accepted as being the first Christian emperor, Judith Grubbs argues here that the extent of Christian influence on his marriage legislation was limited. Her study of his laws against the background of both classical Roman law and early Christian attitudes toward marriage reveals much about contemporary behavior and belief in this period.




The Family in Late Antiquity


Book Description

The Family in Late Antiquity offers a challenging, well-argued and coherent study of the family in the late Roman world and the influence of the emerging Christian religion on its structure and value. Before the Roman Empire's political disintegration in the west, enormous political, religious and cultural changes took place in the period of late antiquity. This book is the first comprehensive study of the family in the later Roman Empire, from approximately 300 AD to 550 AD. Geoffrey Nathan analyses the classical Roman family as well as early Christian notions of this most basic unit of social organisation. Using these models as a contextual backdrop, he then explores marriage, children, domestic servitude, and other familial institutions in late antiquity. He brings together a diverse collection of sources, transcending traditional studies that have centred on the legal record.




The Family in Late Antiquity


Book Description

The Family in Late Antiquity offers a challenging, well-argued and coherent study of the family in the late Roman world and the influence of the emerging Christian religion on its structure and value. Before the Roman Empire's political disintegration in the west, enormous political, religious and cultural changes took place in the period of late antiquity. This book is the first comprehensive study of the family in the later Roman Empire, from approximately 300 AD to 550 AD. Geoffrey Nathan analyses the classical Roman family as well as early Christian notions of this most basic unit of social organisation. Using these models as a contextual backdrop, he then explores marriage, children, domestic servitude, and other familial institutions in late antiquity. He brings together a diverse collection of sources, transcending traditional studies that have centred on the legal record.




Families in the Roman and Late Antique World


Book Description

This volume seeks to explain developments within the structure of the family in antiquity, in particular in the later Roman Empire and late antiquity. Contributions extend the traditional chronological focus on the Roman family to include the transformation of familial structures in the newly formed kingdoms of late antiquity in Europe, thus allowing a greater historical perspective and establishing a new paradigm for the study of the Roman family. Drawing on the latest research by leading scholars in the field the book includes new approaches to the life course and the family in the Byzantine empire, family relationships in the dynasty of Constantine the Great, death, burial and commemoration of newborn children in Roman Italy, and widows and familial networks in Roman Egypt. In short, this volume seeks to establish a new agenda for the understanding of the Roman family and its transformation in late antiquity.




The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity offers an innovative overview of a period (c. 300-700 CE) that has become increasingly central to scholarly debates over the history of western and Middle Eastern civilizations. This volume covers such pivotal events as the fall of Rome, the rise of Christianity, the origins of Islam, and the early formation of Byzantium and the European Middle Ages. These events are set in the context of widespread literary, artistic, cultural, and religious change during the period. The geographical scope of this Handbook is unparalleled among comparable surveys of Late Antiquity; Arabia, Egypt, Central Asia, and the Balkans all receive dedicated treatments, while the scope extends to the western kingdoms, and North Africa in the West. Furthermore, from economic theory and slavery to Greek and Latin poetry, Syriac and Coptic literature, sites of religious devotion, and many others, this Handbook covers a wide range of topics that will appeal to scholars from a diverse array of disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity engages the perennially valuable questions about the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the medieval, while providing a much-needed touchstone for the study of Late Antiquity itself.




Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity


Book Description

These sixteen studies consider the interrelationship between social change and the development of new kinds of law and authority during Late Antiquity (260-640 AD). They provide new ways of looking at both the law and the society of this period, in the context of the kinds of impacts that each had on the other against the backdrop of the manifestations of new kinds of authority.




Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity


Book Description

The sixteen papers in this volume investigate the links between law and society during Late Antiquity (260-640 CE). On the one hand, they consider how social changes such as the barbarian settlement and the rise of the Christian church resulted in the creation of new sources of legal authority, such as local and 'vulgar' law, barbarian law codes, and canon law. On the other, they investigate the interrelationship between legal innovations and social change, for the very process of creating new law and new authority either resulted from or caused changes in the society in which it occurred. The studies in this volume discuss interactions between legal theory and practice, the Greek east and the Roman west, secular and ecclesiastical, Roman and barbarian, male and female, and Christian and non-Christian (including pagans, Jews, and Zoroastrians).




Law and Empire in Late Antiquity


Book Description

This is the first systematic treatment in English by an historian of the nature, aims and efficacy of public law in late imperial Roman society from the third to the fifth century AD. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, and using the writings of lawyers and legal anthropologists, as well as those of historians, the book offers new interpretations of central questions: What was the law of late antiquity? How efficacious was late Roman law? What were contemporary attitudes to pain, and the function of punishment? Was the judicial system corrupt? How were disputes settled? Law is analysed as an evolving discipline, within a framework of principles by which even the emperor was bound. While law, through its language, was an expression of imperial power, it was also a means of communication between emperor and subject, and was used by citizens, poor as well as rich, to serve their own ends.




The Transition to Late Antiquity on the lower Danube


Book Description

Excavations on the site of this remarkable fort in northern Bulgaria (1996–2005) formed part of a long-term program of excavation and intensive field survey, aimed at tracing the economic as well as physical changes which mark the transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages, a program that commenced with the excavation and full publication of the early Byzantine fortress/city of Nicopolis ad Istrum. The analysis of well-dated finds and their full publication provides a unique database for the late Roman period in the Balkans; they include metal-work, pottery (local and imported fine ware), glass, copper alloy finds, inscriptions and dipinti (on amphorae), as well as quantified environmental reports on animal, birds, and fish with specialist reports on the archaeobotanical material, glass analysis, and querns. The report also details the results of site-specific intensive survey, a new method developed for use in the rich farmland of the central Balkans. In addition, there is a detailed report on a most remarkable and well-preserved aqueduct, which employed the largest siphon ever discovered in the Roman Empire. This publication will provide a substantial database of material and environmental finds, an invaluable resource for the region and for the Roman Empire: material invaluable for studies, which seeks to place the late Roman urban and military identity within its regional and extra-regional economic setting.




Late Antiquity: A Very Short Introduction


Book Description

Sheds light on the concept of late antiquity and the events of its time, showing that this was in fact a period of great transformation