Grounding his discussion on recent studies of ancient Judaic and early Christian sexual ideology, and employing a Foucauldian discourse-analysis approach, David Wheeler-Reed calls into question the widespread claim that the modern American code of morality surrounding the family is founded upon Judeo-Christian precepts. His major contention is that the term “Judeo-Christian” is a misnomer: neither ancient Judaism nor early Christianity, he maintains, adopted a single coherent position regarding the place of sex in the life of the worshipper, and the two belief systems themselves contradicted each other's stances on sexual ethics. Wheeler-Reed also proposes, as a contingent assertion, that contemporary ideas of family values articulated by conservative evangelical denominations, far from reflecting Judaic or early Christian tenets, are closer to the principles underlying the moral legislation of the Roman emperor Augustus—legislation whose ultimate purpose was strengthening imperial hegemony.

Wheeler-Reed's study is clearly aimed at a general reader interested in present-day debates over the form and purpose of marriage but having no specialized background in Judaic or Greco-Roman religious and social history. One important consideration, then, is whether his presentation of ancient belief systems is accurate. His core chapters 2 through 4, in which he demonstrates the presence of internal contradictions and tensions over sexuality in Judaism, the New Testament writings, and the pronouncements of the early church, rely almost exclusively on the findings of prior authorities. While experts will not dispute his conclusions, then, they also will not find bold new insights. In contrast, Wheeler-Ross's first chapter, outlining a policy on the Roman family promulgated by the emerging imperial government, and his final chapter, in which he compares that policy with the economic and political objectives of present-day proponents of traditional marriage, seem to reflect his own understanding of Augustus's legislative program. Unfortunately, he greatly oversimplifies the underlying rationale for that program, which was far more complex than its avowed goal of increasing Roman manpower for the legions.

Augustus's moral reforms, it is expressly stated at the outset, were imperialist, “to ensure population growth for the expansion of the empire” (14). That explanation permits Wheeler-Reed to draw parallels in his concluding chapter to the aims of modern proponents of conjugal marriage, who affirm that procreation is its fundamental end and who, in attempting to shore up capitalism, look to stable traditional families to train offspring in consumerist behaviors. Yet scholars have recognized for more than half a century that the Augustan marriage legislation, whose system of rewards and sanctions was expressly directed toward property holders (locupletes, Plin. Pan. 26.5) and not the poor, could have had little effect upon the overall citizen birthrate (P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.–A.D. 14 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951]: 565–566). As an alternative to the ostensible function of increasing population, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has proposed another rationale: stabilizing the transmission of property within elite families through provisions affecting eligibility for receiving inheritances (“Family and Inheritance in the Augustan Marriage Laws,” Cambridge Classical Journal 27 [1981]: 58–80). In the competition for services that characterized the relations of Roman patrons and their clients, Wallace-Hadrill argues, the childless person possessed a distinct advantage. By restricting full capacity to accept bequests from non-relatives to married men and women with at least one child, Augustus discouraged the common practice of willing away portions of the estate to outsiders in acknowledgement of benefits received. I myself suggest in an upcoming book chapter that, under his corollary legislation punishing adultery, the financial penalties imposed upon convicted offenders, particularly guilty woman, had a similar purpose: they transferred wealth out of supposedly irresponsible hands, freeing it up for potential redistribution to deserving kin (“Augustus and the Economics of Adultery,” in R. Ancona and G. Tsouvala, eds., New Directions in the Study of Women in Antiquity [New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming]). In either instance, inherited rank and privilege were being supplied with more of the financial resources needed to preserve them.

Thus Wheeler-Reed's tendentious analogy between imperial Rome and capitalist America falls short. Both societies, to be sure, appear to make preservation of the economic status quo a basic objective of their family policies. But Augustus's legislation, if we follow Wallace-Hadrill, was designed to maintain the standing of a hereditary nobility that justified its advantages by citing a record of accomplishment extending back through generations. Incommensurability with an allegedly meritocratic capitalist ideology holding out the promise of riches for entrepreneurial ingenuity, while encouraging conspicuous consumption and living beyond one's means, is self-evident.

In this study, furthermore, Wheeler-Reed does not do full justice to Augustus's symbolic employment of the domestic sphere in articulating a new vision of Roman civic life. The emperor is portrayed as a thoroughgoing misogynist (2) at the head of a repressive regime obsessed with eugenics (4, 13–14) and, motivated by an “irrational fear” of female sexuality (10), determined to exert control over women. This is a ludicrous oversimplification. While it is true that Rome, like all ancient societies, was patriarchal in structure, it is also recognized today that in Augustan civic ideology the home and family became the emotional core around which every feature of public life revolved (Kristina Milnor, Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life [New York: Oxford University Press, 2008]: 1). As a result, the women of the imperial household, without compromising their domesticity, gained prominence through community patronage, and, in Italy and the provinces, wealthy women who followed their example achieved local recognition as public priestesses and benefactors.

Consequently, I cannot recommend Wheeler-Reed's book. While his effort to dispel the myth of the “Judeo-Christian” origins of America's “family values” movement is praiseworthy, his attempt to cast the movement in a more sinister light by linking it to Augustus’ moral regulations is clumsy and tactless. I am no fan of Augustus or his legislative program, but I would say that in all fairness he deserves a better-nuanced account of his intentions than he gets from Wheeler-Reed. Fortunately, many other more scholarly treatments can offer that.