By the time Augustine died in ad 430, the empire had undergone momentous changes, and much of the west was no longer under Roman control: by ad 418, the Visigoths were established in southern Gaul, and in ad 429 the Vandals had entered Africa. How much impact such large-scale changes have on smaller units of society will depend, of course, on factors like region, class, and identification with the current regime; changes in family structure or ideologies do not necessarily coincide with changes in government or in legal or religious policies.
The Eucharisticon (‘‘Hymn of giving’’), an autobiographical poem written in AD 459 at Marseille by the displaced Romano-Gallic aristocrat known as ‘‘Paulinus of Pella,’’ provides a sense of both the endurance of traditional Roman ideals of family and the challenges brought by changing times. Paulinus, a grandson of Ausonius, was born in AD 376 in Macedonia, but moved west when a baby to his ancestral Bordeaux. His parents, overindulgent and concerned for his health, cut short his education and allowed him to fritter away his teens in the traditional aristocratic pursuits of hunting, riding, and seducing slave women. (He hastens to add that he avoided affairs with the unwilling, the free-born, and those who belonged to someone else, and although he sired at least one child, he never actually saw any of his slave offspring.) Unlike Augustine’s parents, Paulinus’ parents steered his sex drive into legitimate channels and arranged his marriage - against his will - at age 20, to a woman of good birth but small resources.
His most meaningful family bonds were with his parents. He repeatedly refers to his relationship with them in terms ofpietasand the pia cura (‘‘dutiful anxiety’’) they felt for him and he for them. His father died when Paulinus was 30. Barbarians had just entered Gaul, but the public disaster was ‘‘much lighter compared with my unrestrained grief for my deceased father, through whom both fatherland and home itself were dear to me; for we lived with lives joined together, performing our reciprocal duties with such faithful affection that our concord exceeded that of friends of the same age’’ (Euch. 240-5). His father’s death also plunged Paulinus into a bitter dispute with his ‘‘difficult’’ (indocilis) brother over property his father had left to their mother. Paulinus took his mother’s side, motivated by feelings of pietas as well as the justice of her cause.
Paulinus had at least three children who survived to adulthood. But his marriage was not happy. He wanted to become a monk, but God did not support this high ambition, since Paulinus had a household full of dependants to whom he owed pietas: ‘‘children, mother, mother-in-law, wife, along with a large herd of their slave women’’ (451-62). Apparently both widowed mothers were living with Paulinus and his wife, which must have strained domestic harmony. He also blamed his wife for preventing his return to Greece to escape the Gothic takeover in Gaul: ‘‘my difficult [indocilis] wife opposed yielding for our common advantage, refusing to sail from excessive fear; I did not think it at all right to drag her unwilling, and it would be equally wrong to leave her behind after taking away our children’’ (Euch. 485-9). Then, in short succession, his mother-in-law, mother, and wife died. He was angry at his wife for depriving him of the consolation of a shared old age (493-7) - a perverse, though common, way of expressing grief at the death of a loved one. Meanwhile, his sons, one of whom had become a priest, were trying their fortunes with the Gothic occupiers and so also had abandoned Paulinus; they both died untimely, apparently by violence. (A daughter had married and moved away earlier.)
When he wrote the Eucharisticon at the age of 83, Paulinus’ fortunes were taking a turn for the better. But the poem as a whole is a litany of bereavement and missed opportunities. Through it all, Paulinus represents himself as behaving dutifully, though often unwillingly: obeying his parents, respecting his wife’s wishes despite her unwifely disobedience, caring for dependent womenfolk instead of responding to an ascetic calling. And through it all, he periodically pauses to thank God for what he still had in a time of want and warfare. To a modern reader this relentless thanksgiving in the face of adversity appears almost ludicrous, and Paulinus presumably had ulterior motives for portraying himself as pious and honorable (McLynn 1995). But we should be more sympathetic. Paulinus was born on one side of antiquity and died on the other. He conducted himself as best he could in the most difficult of times, and he retained traditional ‘‘family values’’ while recognizing, and envying, the life of monasticism, which pietas prevented him from following. He looked to his Christian faith to provide a reason for his trials as well as comfort for having to endure them.
Indeed, the comfort provided by this faith was one of the biggest contributions Christianity made to family life. If any emotional response stands out in the biographical and autobiographical works discussed in this chapter, it is grief at the loss of a loved one - a parent, a child, a spouse, even a beloved concubine. Given the demographic patterns of antiquity, bereavement was an intrinsic part of family life; virtually everyone would have lost at least one close family member by the time he or she reached 30, and many, like Melania the Elder, would have lost several in short succession. Jerome claimed that Melania joyfully embraced the opportunity for an ascetic lifestyle presented by the deaths of her husband and children. One need not believe him, but it is easy to understand that dedication to God and pilgrimage to the holy places would have helped to relieve grief and to divert one’s attention away from worldly sorrows.
Knowing that the loved one was living in eternal refreshment and no longer felt pain meant that excessive grief could even be sinful. As Paulinus of Nola told the bereaved parents of a child named Celsus (whose name recalled to Paulinus his own long-dead child of the same name): ‘‘Cease from sinning with many tears, I ask you, dutiful parents, so that pietas not become a fault. For it is an impious pietas to mourn a blessed soul and a harmful love to weep for one who is rejoicing in God’’ ( Carm. 31. 43-6). This was a hard pill to swallow, as Paulinus well knew, but expectation of the resurrection and eternal bliss for those who believed and lived by Jesus’ precepts suggested that some day lost loved ones could be recovered:
Then we will be able to live as comrades with our own Celsus, and be parents of our sweet pledge forever.
(Carm. 31. 631-2)
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Current scholarship on the family in Late Antiquity utilizes legal, epigraphic, and patristic sources, as well as evidence found in secular writers of the period. Evans-Grubbs 1995 and Arjava 1996 use primarily legal sources to compare late Roman legislation on women and marriage with classical law. Brent Shaw has analyzed the vast number of late Latin funerary inscriptions for evidence of demographic trends (see especially Shaw 1996 and 2002) and changes in attitudes toward women, children, and family relationships (Shaw 1984b, 1991, 2002). Shaw’s landmark article, ‘‘The Family in Late Antiquity’’ (1987b), exploits the evidence of Augustine’s sermons and letters as well as the Confessions. Augustine and other church Fathers are the focus of important work on gender and sexuality in Late Antiquity: see the work of Elizabeth A. Clark 1979, 1984, 1986; Elm 1994; Power 1996; Leyerle 2001; and Peter Brown’s seminal The Body and Society (1988b). For an excellent survey of marriage practice and ideology in the early Christian west, see Reynolds 1994.
Relatively little work has been done on the family in late Roman Egypt, despite the existence of documentary evidence from papyri not available elsewhere. A noteworthy exception is Beaucamp’s second volume (1992), and in her first (1990) she treats late imperial legislation on women.
Nathan 2000 presents a synthesis of the evidence and discussion of the most important issues in the study of the family in Late Antiquity. Another excellent synthesis, paying particular attention to women and gender issues, is Gillian Clark 1993.
Finally, one should note that Van Dam 2003a uses the extensive writings of the Cappadocian Fathers for a study that deliberately focuses on the emotional ties between Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, and their family members.
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