Since the publication of her first book, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), Kate Cooper has become one of the preeminent historians of women and the family in late antiquity. In her new book, Cooper again confirms why. With great clarity and erudition, The Fall of the Roman Household argues that the ancient Roman familia transformed during late antiquity and ushered in a new, Christianized one—created out of the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious realities of the later Western Roman Empire. To chart this, Cooper examines the role of the woman, particularly the domina within the familia.

After a preface that outlines the state of the scholarship on the Christianization of marriage in the West, chapter 1, “The Battle of this Life,” explores how the battle motif entrenched in late antique culture filtered into Christian literature. Her focus is on two Latin conduct manuals: the anonymous Ad Gregoriam in palatio, which is translated in full in the appendix, and Ferrandus's Ad Reginum Comitem Paraneticum. Using a comparative method, with a vast command of the relevant ancient and late Roman literature, Cooper shows how the upper-class family became soldiers on the front lines of senatorial ethics in Christ's militia. In this, the domina takes a central role.

The next chapters continue to examine the Ad Gregoriam, while at the same time looking anew at the literature of the senatorial class of the fifth and sixth centuries. Chapter 2, “The Obscurity of Eloquence,” considers the hitherto underemphasized role senatorial lay Christianity had in shaping Christian ethics in late antiquity. Cooper focuses on how writers such as Cassiodorus and Boethius, as well as the Ad Gregoriam, constructed an “exuberant senatorial Christianity” (61). These sources emphasize harmony between Christian ideals and ancient Roman values of tradition, family, and property. Chapter 3, “Household and Empire,” puts economics at center stage in evaluating the ethical positions of the senatorial aristocracy. Placing the transformation of the Roman household within the larger context of the empire, Cooper connects religious history with the political, economic, and social contexts of the late Roman world.

The final chapters focus on the transformation of marriage in late antiquity and the role of the domina as a model martyr and ascetic. Chapter 4, “Such Trustful Partnership,” explores in detail the creation of the sexually active marriage as a form of askesis. Cooper shows that the Christianization of marriage occurs during late antiquity and not the Middle Ages, as the previous generation of scholars of marriage, especially Georges Duby in The Knight, the Lady and the Priest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), has maintained. With the success of Christian asceticism, sexually active marriage was considered a second tier of asceticism. The new ideal was that the bishop became the arbiter of familial piety and justice. Charting this shift, her focus is on the ways in which Christian household manuals from late antiquity construct the roles of women within the elite senatorial class. Christianity plays only a contributing part in this shift; it is rather the social, political, and economic forces of the later Roman Empire that shape the new Christian family. For Cooper, “late Roman history really does not need to be divided into two historiographical streams, one oriented to economic, political, and military infrastructures while the other considers religious matters and ‘private life,’ in each case with a minimum of reference to the other end of the spectrum” (8). As this historian shows masterfully, that is simply not how history works.

Chapter 5, “The invisible enemy,” connects the late antique vision of life as a spiritual battle with the reinvention of marriage within the context of late ancient and early medieval spirituality. Using the imaginary landscape of spiritual warfare as a model, Cooper shows how Latin writers borrowed the metaphor to explore the problems of Christian public authority as well as the inner struggle with invisible enemies. “Like the plague,” Cooper writes, “the prospect of war sharpened the urgency and rhetorical point of the habit of self-examination” (204). The matron is an athlete for Christ, a martyr for the fight against evil for the good of the familia.

The fact that this work does not have a concluding chapter is a regrettable omission since the many intersecting themes within this important transformation in the late Roman world just begs for a final synthesis. In this way, the work feels more like a collection of related essays built around a close reading of Ad Gregoriam. Also, one may argue whether “fall” in the title is a useful metaphor when it comes to the Roman family, especially in work that speaks so much of transformation. Certainly the title serves more of an ironic function. Further, although the translation is clear and even poetic at times, an inclusion of the Latin text of the translation of the Ad Gregoriam in palatio would have been of great benefit to the scholar. Furthermore, it should also be noted that the scope of the study is understandably exclusive to the senatorial and literate householder classes of later Rome—a very small group indeed. For a vast majority of the Roman population, Cooper has nothing to say. Methodologically, focus on Christian household manuals can only serve to peer into literary constructions and idealized types inherent in the texts. Little beyond the highest classes can be seen here. For a more inclusive cross-section of the late Roman famila, see Kim Bowes's impressive Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Nevertheless, for a model of probing the aristocratic household and the role of the domina within the literary world of the late Roman West, there are few better than Kate Cooper.