Marriage, according to the famous statement of the Roman jurist Modestinus (D. 23.2.1), is a ‘union of a man and a woman, a partnership for the whole life involving divine as well as human law’ (trans. Watson). This view is not very different across cultures in different historical periods, especially if we focus on the part that marriage is ‘a partnership for the whole life’. Of course, Modestinus’ definition of marriage is not a legal prerequisite, but a socially accepted mode or expectation. The contributors to this edited volume, which is the outcome of a conference held in Lausanne in 2018, demonstrate in what manner this definition, i.e. the ideal, functions in practice. Their intention is not to prove or refute this view, but simply to shed light on the social and emotional life of married couples rather than on the institutional history of marriage or family life.
The book consists of eleven essays, each of them followed by a separate bibliography, and concludes with a general index. Each essay is in communication with the important debates and trending opinions, especially in the field of women's history, gender studies and family studies in classical antiquity, and they are in communication with each other. The scope of the collection spans from the Hellenistic period to the third century ce in the Mediterranean basin, and the essays appear chronologically as far as possible. The sources used to reconstruct or analyse the dynamics of couples in their daily lives vary across inscriptions, images, papyri, literary and philosophical texts, used exclusively or combined, depending on the approach. As a result, readers are presented with various couples – some are from real life, some are fictional characters from literary texts, some are already known to the public; nonetheless, they are all seen from different and novel aspects, with a refreshingly distinct approach.
The editor, Centlivres Challet, has contributed significantly to the field of women's history and gender studies in classical antiquity. Her introductory chapter, ‘Life within an Ancient Knot: the Extraordinary within the Confines of the Ordinary’, coherently ties the volume together, outlining the contents and the general approach towards the theme behind the book. Readers are introduced not only to the concept of the monograph, but also to the contributions in a manner that are integrated in the editor's thematic analysis of the subject: married life in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Her overall conclusion, based on the sources studied in the volume, is that married life in antiquity was not a ‘mere aspect of people's life, but the pivotal, anchoring factor that made it either tolerable or unlivable beyond its own dyadic confines’.
Chapters 2 and 3 deal with couples from the Hellenistic period. B. MacLachlan's ‘Mind the Gap: Evidence (?) for Non-Elite Couples in the Hellenistic Period’ focuses on ordinary couples, using a variety of material and textual evidence. As the title implies, she points out the importance of investigating the gaps or disruptions in history, especially the Hellenistic period, because this period, due to political and social changes in the Mediterranean, has moved the focus onto ordinary and marginalised groups. This allows us to challenge traditional ways of describing cultures. C. Golay, in ‘From Ideal to Reality: Married Couples on Hellenistic Inscribed Grave Epigrams’, has more homogeneous sources for research: grave inscriptions, but, as a subsidiary element, she also investigates oracular tablets, in order to establish logos in marital relations in this period. The overall impression is that everyone searches for harmony and affection in their marriage, and this might also be the social ideal, but it is certainly the ideal of the individuals involved in this research.
The next four chapters refer to couples in literary texts from the Roman republican period until the imperial period in the third century ce. The earliest literary text is discussed by J.P. Hallett in ‘Vilicus and Vilica in the De Agri Cultura: the Elder Cato's Script for a Farming Couple’. Hallett believes that vilicus and vilica in Cato's treatise are slaves owned by a common master. Therefore, Cato has certain expectations for these people, according to his own ‘economically obsessed agenda’, in Hallett's words. Namely, in order to achieve maximum economic benefit for himself, he expects the vilicus and the vilica to procreate and to bring more slaves into the familia rustica. He proscribes modes of behaviour on both of them, which are not very different from those in misogynistic Greek poetry. Hallett argues that Cato's recommendations on the behaviour of the vilicus in the household are a reaction to Plautus’ Casina, where the vilicus is a sexualised comic character.
Chapter 5, ‘Literary Models and Social Challenges: Marital Life According to Ovid in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto’ by J. Fabre-Serris, studies the relationship between Ovid and his wife. While in exile, Ovid has certain expectations from his wife, besides her faithfulness: to be agile in diminishing his punishment. What we know about this couple is one-sided, extracted from Ovid's works; so we get the impression that she was not good enough. According to Fabre-Serris, Ovid, although idolising his wife's morals and behaviour, is unsatisfied with her lack of interpersonal skills, which is best illustrated with his words quae scilicet in me | quam proba tam timida est experiensque parum (Pont. 3.7.11–12). What her reasons were for acting as he describes it is unknown.
In ‘For Better or for Worse: Conjugal Relationships of Writers and Intellectuals under the Challenges of the Empire’ I.G. Mastrorosa examines literary texts of the early principate. The chapter presents conjugal relationships of real people, namely writers, poets and intellectuals from the first century ce. The couples conform to traditional gender roles, i.e. the woman is subjugated to her husband. The idea is to demonstrate how couples react when confronted with difficulties, such as losing a child, a spouse or other close members of the family, and how these events affect the family and the couple dynamics.
K.E. Klaiber Hersch, in ‘Worth her Weight: Worthy Women, Coupling, and Eating in Petronius’ Satyrica’, discusses the three primary female characters, Fortunata, the widow of Ephesus and Circe, in Petronius’ Satyrica and connects their refusal of food to their ability to attract men for coupling. So, women who are worth coupling with are able to control their appetite. The issue is self-control, but men are denied no pleasures to become worthy of coupling while women are expected to control their sexual and culinary overindulgence in order to attract men. As Klaiber Hersch points out, these are overlooked aspects of Petronius’ Satyrica. Although two of the women are not married to their partners, their love affairs are described with wedding vocabulary, which proves the point about the starving women.
‘Reading Plutarch's Marriage Precepts’, by D. Konstan, presents us with a Greek text, which is extensively studied, especially for gender roles. However, Konstan offers a new reading of the seemingly traditional patriarchal precepts in Plutarch's text. What seems a one-sided view of marriage in Plutarch is more equitable, according to Konstan. He finds justification for this alternative reading in other texts by Plutarch, besides the examined one, where reading between the lines is crucial.
In ‘Looking Ordinary: Ideals and Ideologies in the Iconography of Married Couples in Roman Society’ M. Harlow and L. Larsson Lovén examine the iconography of married couples in Roman Italy and Roman Gaul in the late republic and early imperial period. The social expectations expressed in the image representations of the couples as well as in the texts that follow the image are obvious. Concordia is what the couple represents, although in the republican period they are presented with modesty and without expressing emotion, while in the imperial period expressing emotion between spouses and members of the family in public is more evident and expected. Nevertheless, couples can hold their hands in handshake (dextrum iunctio), which is a symbol of their marital bond; they can be apart or close to each other; either way, via these monuments, they celebrate their marital union and its ideal – harmony. The ideals of Roman marriage were adopted in the western provinces, although in a local manner.
The last two essays complete the book as a cyclical composition, because they deal with Egypt from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The evidence used in these essays consists of papyri. M. Thoma, in ‘Material Aspects of Marriage: Economic Transactions between Spouses in Roman Egypt’, investigates the economic aspects of marriage in this particular province, via legal papyri – loan and sale agreements between spouses. We learn that women had leverage in marriage and very often supported their husbands economically. Although these documents cannot reveal the real nature of the relationship of the couples, they certainly provide information on the wife's pivotal position in the household. Yet, this is Egypt, where under the influence of the domicile population, women had the capacity to produce legal consequences on their own and were more emancipated in comparison with women of other regions.
The last essay, M. Parca's ‘“For I Have No Other Sun but You”: Emotions and Married Life in Greek Papyri’, covers the Ptolemaic period as well as the first three centuries under Roman rule in Egypt. Parca analyses the emotions expressed, or more often implied, between spouses in papyri evidence. The papyri she examines are marriage agreements, divorce documents and private letters. In her conclusion she presents another couple from Ptolemaic Egypt, Dryton and Apollonia, known from legal documents and a single literary text from their rich private archive. The point made is that this couple were no different from any other, and their ideal was no different from Modestinus’ definition cited above. They all sought for, or maybe they already had, union and oneness in their relationship.
The volume is part of Routledge's Monographs in Classical Studies series. As the classical studies are, this book is interdisciplinary and will be useful for non-Classicists as well. Although there is no ‘gender’ in its title, it is a huge contribution to gender studies in classical antiquity, providing readers with information on the historical, social and cultural context.
