Our two more detailed case studies, while highlighting critical moments, will also focus diverse and complex material and illuminate features both shared between societies and those that are quite disparate. One case study comes from fourth-century bc Athens, the other from first-century bc Rome. It is inevitable, in an introductory survey such as this, that our attention is drawn towards classical Athens and Rome, simply because the vast majority of our material dates from these periods. Recent scholarship, however, is increasingly becoming aware of the danger of periodization, and in the reading list at the end of this chapter we highlight some of the most recent material.
Demosthenes and Cicero are relevant because they wrote about themselves and their families; they are not alone in this, but they are rare. Their political lives are of interest here only insofar as they influenced the choices each made in terms of his marriage, and his behavior to his wife, children, friends and family.
Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator and politician (384-322 bc), was born to a well-off family. We are able to reconstruct, from biographies and legal speeches, Demosthenes’ family tree, even though, as is common in the Athenian context, most of the females in the tree remain unnamed (S. Pomeroy 1997: 165); it was the social convention that respectable women should not be named in public. His father, also named Demosthenes, had married Kleoboule early in the 380s (when she was probably in her early or mid teens; he would have been twice her age). Demosthenes senior died when his son was only seven years old. The father had made provision for an untimely death: in his will he had betrothed his wife to his sister’s son, Aphobos (he was probably about the same age as his intended bride, highly unusually), and his daughter (5 years old at the time) to his brother’s son, Demophon - a typically endogamous arrangement (i. e. within the wider family group), and also a very clear sign that women should not be left unattached, especially where property was concerned. Both had large dowries included. Demosthenes junior being so young, the family estate - a sizeable one - was left to the management of Aphobos and Demophon, along with a friend, Therippides, as guardians (kurioi). They did not manage the estate well (if we believe Demosthenes, they were more than just careless, they were positively evil), nor did the intended marriages to Demosthenes’ mother and sister take place as planned; indeed Demosthenes’ young sister would not be married for another decade, to her mother’s nephew. Demosthenes meanwhile grew up under his mother’s care. At the age of 18, when he was able to assert his financial independence, Demosthenes found himself in serious straits. On claiming his patrimony from his guardians, long and difficult negotiations ensued. Finally, at the age of 21, Demosthenes succeeded in the action he brought against his guardians; it would be another two years, however, before he received what little was left of the property. In all this it is revealing to see the way the family grouping effectively and publicly disintegrated into litigious squabbling, and on occasions even into physical violence. At least his experiences gave Demosthenes real grounding in the law, and his career would blossom thereafter.
He married at least once: we do not know the name of any wife, nor the name of a daughter he had. The latter died before her father, in 336 bc, and too young to have married. Allegedly, and much to the disgust of his enemy Aeschines, Demosthenes’ grief was assuaged by the assassination of Alexander the Great’s father a week later (Plut. Dem. 22). Demosthenes himself committed suicide in 322, and left a rich estate to his sister and her kin.
Cicero (106-43 bc) was a “new man” and not particularly wealthy, so he needed to make the right choice in his marriage partner. In c.79 bc he married Terentia, a wealthy heiress, at a point where his legal career had had a good start but his political career needed a boost - in financial and social terms. Cicero would have been aged 26 or 27, and as this was Terentia’s first marriage, we can assume that she was in her mid - to late-teens. This age gap between husband and wife in a first marriage was normal practice. Without the evidence of personal letters this marriage could have the appearance of a business and political alliance, but the partnership demonstrated in correspondence, particularly at times of stress, suggests that Terentia and Cicero managed a semblance, and perhaps a reality, of concordia for a large part of their thirty years together. They had two children, Tullia (born in the first years of the marriage) and Marcus (born over a decade later, in 65 bc), and again Cicero’s correspondence reflects a personal affection and concern. Cicero, very much the traditionalist in some ways, arranged for Tullia’s first marriage to take place when she was aged 13-15 to an aspiring politician aged 25. While Roman ideals and laws suggest that a father should have complete control over his children (potestas - see section 3 below), Cicero’s relationship with his offspring suggests that the reality might sometimes be rather problematic. Young Marcus caused his father angst while he was away studying in Athens, and Tullia demonstrated a strong independence of mind, supported by her mother, in the choice of her third, and last, husband. Finding suitable partners was considered a key parental duty, as was the provision of dowry for daughters. The reality, as the letters of Cicero show, was that the womenfolk of a family were often closely involved in both the process of choice and the provision of dowry.
Alongside the immediate family, Cicero’s letters also allow us glimpses into wider family relations - particularly that with his brother Quintus and close friend Atticus. The families were joined by the marriage of Atticus’s sister, Pomponia, to Quintus Cicero. This marriage was not a happy one, and the seemingly accepted interference of brother and brother-in-law in the relationship of the troubled couple is quite revealing, as is Cicero’s concern for his nephew and the effect that his parent’s divorce might have on him. The marriage of Quintus and Pomponia is atypical in that they appear to be very close in age - this might suggest that this was not Pomponia’s first marriage. Cicero’s own marriage was not always rosy; it is not irrelevant that Terentia was independently wealthy (and it should be noted that Roman husbands and wives could not normally make each other gifts of money or property). Cicero disagreed with the choice of Tullia’s third husband - a selection made by the two women while he was out of the country - and his long marriage finally ended in divorce in 46 bc. In the same year Cicero married a young heiress, Publilia, when he was 60 and she was at the age of first marriage and younger than his daughter. The marriage did not last, and it allegedly attracted the ridicule of Terentia (Plut. Cic. 41), and was defended by Tiro (Cicero’s secretary and freedman) on the more traditionally accepted grounds that the marriage was for financial and political reasons. Unlike the representation of Demosthenes’ grief at the death of his young daughter, the grief Cicero felt at the death of Tullia was overpowering - it preoccupied him for many months in 45 - to the extent that his friends began to worry about the very public nature of his grief. The information we have on Cicero’s family and friends is not unproblematic in terms of its provenance but it does expose emotive reasoning and moments of affection that are lacking in many of our sources, and serves as a reminder that social interaction, particularly in the close confines of family living, is not all about ideals and rules (for a fuller discussion, K. Bradley 1991, chap. 8, and Treggiari 2007).
World History
