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Name: Cassidy Gallun
Date: September 28, 2017
RE: Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family
From ancient Roman times to modern Western society, the intricacies and subtleties
surrounding the notion of family remain elastic. This elasticity, coupled with several millennia of
improvements in the human condition, blurs any common reference point for beginning a coherent
discussion on family (1, 7). Notwithstanding this barrier, amid the stark differences and at times
unrecognizable landscape of the ancient Roman family, it is still possible to ascertain common
threads that permeate the modern Western family today. These common threads illustrate a
continued sense of malleability in the concept of family and demonstrate that despite changes in
definition, composition, responsibilities, and governmental policies relating to the subject, the
complex yet flexible nature of family is able to pragmatically adapt to the exigencies of the
moment.
Family is admittedly a difficult term to define. Its inherent vagueness stems from the
“great divergences in family structures” across the historical landscape necessitated by mankind’s
varied responses to exigent factors incident to everyday life in organized society (17). For the
ancient Romans, the familia and domus were centered on the necessity of production, preservation,
and redistribution of property and intangible goods across generational lines through dowry and
inheritance (28, 62). The maintenance of family legacies into the future depended upon consistent
levels of economic subsistence. This subsistence was bolstered by the vitality of the overall family
unit and was centered on the necessity of procreation. These necessities were satisfied by the
institution of marriage.
In Roman times, marriage was perceived as a family affair and less as an individual
decision based on personal attraction. The older generation and the mothers of the parties were
actively involved at the outset while the arrangement was legally condoned by the paterfamilias
(63). Although not required to validate a marriage, a dowry was seen as an essential component
of marriage. Roman society operated on the assumption that it was “in the public interest” and of
the “utmost necessity” for preserving the dowry because it encouraged the “bringing forth [of]
progeny” to replenish the state with legitimate citizen children (liberti)” (66). This communal
approach to marriage, along with its heightened emphasis on the need for a dowry, is in stark
contrast to the modern Western ideology of young romantic love and courtship separate and
distinct from the original feelings of the respective families.
Marriage was the central vehicle through which the family as a unit generated material,
economic, and emotional support for its respective members (53). The Romans viewed this
vehicle as a “dynamic unit” capable of pragmatically responding to “economic and demographic
factors and to the changing stages of the life course” (30). To respond to outside pressures as a
