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"Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity"

ed. Sabine R. Huebner, David M. Ratzan

(Cambridge University Press 2008)



V.W. Bromley, The meeting between Ulysses and Telemachus (1892)


The role of modern fathers has received a great deal of attention in the last couple of decades from multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary perspectives, and the same is true for ancient fathers, with particular attention paid to his relationship to, and power over, his family. Yet, while the former usually treat the absence of the father as an important, sometimes even pivotal, aspect in understanding the social dynamics of the modern family, the latter almost never address his absence. This gap in the scholarship is made all the more glaring by the fact that the problem of children growing up fatherless was far more acute in antiquity than in modern societies: In fact, one of the most startling demographic facts to have been established about the ancient world in the past decade is that approximately one-third of all children in every social and economic strata all over the ancient Mediterranean would have lost their fathers before they reached the age of 15. These findings challenge the assumption that growing up fatherless is a modern phenomenon, a product of growing individuation in Western societies in recent decades. In fact, the rate of children raised by single mothers, by relatives or stepparents was much higher in antiquity than today.

We believe that it is high time that the consequences of these demographic findings be explored with respect to social realities of daily life, e.g., family formation, household structure, surrogate fathers, and the emotional, economic and social consequences for the individual who suffered the early loss of his or her father. This volume is therefore devoted to investigating the individual, social, economical consequences of a father`s absence and the coping strategies employed to alleviate the effects of fatherlessness.



Index of Contents:

(Cambridge University Press 2008)

Introduction:

Sabine R. Huebner and David M. Ratzan (Columbia University): Fatherless Antiquity? Perspectives on Fatherlessness in the Ancient Mediterranean


Section I: Coping with Demographic Realities

Walter Scheidel (Stanford): The Demographic Background

Mark Golden (Winnipeg): Oedipal Complexities

Sabine Huebner (Columbia University): Callirhoe’s Dilemma: Remarriage and Stepfathers in the Graeco-Roman East

Marcus Sigismund (Wuppertal): Without father, without mother, without genealogy [...] (Heb. 7:3) Fatherlessness in (Old and) New Testament

Section II: Law vs. Social Practice

Daniel Ogden (Exeter): Bastardy and fatherlessness in the ancient Greek world

Myrto Malouta (Oxford): Illegitimate Paternity and Formal Identification in Roman Egypt

Section III: Roles without Models

Louise Pratt (Emory University): Diomedes, the fatherless hero of the Iliad

Georg Woehrle (Trier): Sons (and Daughters) without Fathers: Fatherlessness in the Homeric Epics

Judith P. Hallett (Maryland): Absent Roman fathers in the writings of their daughters: Cornelia and Sulpicia

Section IV: Rhetoric of Loss

Sabine Mueller (Hannover): The disadvantages and advantages of being fatherless - The case of Sulla

Ann-Cathrin Harders (Freiburg): An imperial family man: Augustus as surrogate father to Marcus Antonius` children

Neil Bernstein (Ohio University): "Cui parens non erat maximus quisque et uetustissimus pro parente": Paternal Surrogates in Imperial Roman Literature

Raffaella Cribiore (Columbia University): The Education of Orphans: An Reassessment from the Evidence of Libanius

Geoffrey Nathan (University of New South Wales): ‘Woe to those making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless’: Christian Ideals and the Obligations of Stepfathers in Late Antiquity”












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