Fertility, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of Reproduction at Rome

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-54077-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 45, 314 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Impact of Empire

Roman women bore children not just for their husbands, but for the Roman state. This book is the first comprehensive study of the importance of fecunditas (human fertility) in Roman society, c. 100 BC - AD 300. Its focus is the cultural impact of fecunditas, from gendered assumptions about infertility, to the social capital children brought to a marriage, to the emperors’ exploitation of fecunditas to build and preserve dynasties. Using a rich range of source material - literary, juristic, epigraphic, numismatic - never before collected, it explores how the Romans shaped fecunditas into an essential female virtue.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hug, Angela

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations and Conventions

Introduction

1 The Place of Marriage and Children in Roman Society

2 Gendering Fecunditas

3 Exploiting Fecunditas

4 Lacking Fecunditas: Overcoming Involuntary Childlessness

5 Fecunditas and the State

6 Fecunditas and the Imperial Family

Conclusion

Appendix: Latin Inscriptions Commemorating Women Who Likely Died in Childbirth or While Pregnant

Bibliography

Index of Sources

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Angela Hug, Ph.D. (2014), York University (Toronto), teaches at that university in the Departments of History and Humanities, and at Glendon College. She is the co-editor of The Roman Emperor and His Court (Cambridge, 2022).