Using a variety of historical sources and methodological approaches, this book presents the first large-scale study of single men and women in the Roman world, from the Roman Republic to Late Antiquity and covering virtually all periods of the ancient Mediterranean. It asks how singleness wás defined and for what reasons people might find themselves unmarried. While marriage was generally favoured by philosophers and legislators, with the arguments against it largely confined to genres like satire and comedy, the advent of Christianity brought about a more complex range of thinking regarding its desirability. Demographic, archaeological and socioeconomic perspectives are considered, and in particular the relationship of singleness to Roman household and family structures. The volume concludes by introducing a number of comparative perspectives, drawn from the early Islamic world and from other parts of Europe down to and including the nineteenth century, in order to highlight possibilities for the Roman world.

The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World

About 130 Latin inscriptions shine a fascinating light on the medium-sized Roman town of Grumentum in ancient Lucania. Most of these stones have hardly been studied since the end of the 19th century. They now for the first time appear in a scholarly edition with revised Latin text, illustration, apparatus criticus, translation and extensive commentary. Both the introduction and the edition illustrate the richness of the material : archaeology, politics, institutions, the Roman army, economy, religion, family and life course, and Christianity are dealt with. The use learned scholars made of the inscriptions opens a window to Italian intellectual history from the Renaissance on. Written and presented in an accessible way, this volume avoids the pitfalls of highly technical epigraphical editions, and opens the field to archaeologists, (ancient) historians and a more general audience with an interest for Roman sites in general, and this hidden gem in Basilicata in particular.

Livres