[blam]

GGG ping.

[SolutionsOnly]

***"It wasn't until about 300 CE ...."***

Has anyone else noticed academia's shift away from the B.C. / A.D. designation? I've seen it once or twice before and suspect it's intentional- the agenda being to eliminate all Christian references from our daily lives.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

It's called an extended family.

[longtermmemmory]

Homo-propaganda.

They are seeking a secular excuse to justify their marriage re-definition.

Propaganda is in overdrive.

This is to define opposition to homosexual marraige as a religion thing. This is not true.

It is also true this is not a ban on homosexual marriage. This is codifying WHAT MARRIAGE IS. the FMA also precludes pedofilia marriage, incest marriage, and polygamy. not just homosexual marriage.

as to the CE and and BCE. That PC cr*p has been going on in Universities for some time. From the same people who want to outlaw all Christ in Christmas.

[squarebarb]

Yes, it is to eliminate 'Before Christ' but actually 'Before Common Era' STILL means 'Before Christ'. The dimwits.

Only rich families could afford wet-nurses.

Social life in Roman times is very well documented by a famous book called Daily Life In Ancient Rome, a marvelous work, written in the '30's. Jerome Carcapaccio or something like that. I have it in my bookshelf and am too lazy to get up and look. A whole chapter on the insanity of the Roman Games and why no politician could stop them even though they knew they were deeply wrong.

Wives were not called 'chaste' on their tombstones because it was expected. Would you put on YOUR spouse's tombstone 'S/He didn't have sex with that or any other woman/man"? Stupid kind of epitaph.

The idea of 'family' was also different in Elizabethan and American Colonial times, it included apprentices, orphans, servants, farm hands, all referred to by the head of the household as 'my family', or 'my people'.

I think this woman has an agenda or hasn't read very widely. She looks thick.

[537 Votes]

The bond was so strong with wet nurses because mothers surrendered their children to them for the first three years of a child's life.

Cause of fall of Roman Empire now satisfactorily identified.

[elli1]

I'm reading Colleen McCullough's The First Man In Rome. Good book. Anyway, she has quite a lot of detail about family life among the patricians of Rome in the first century BC. Good balance w/ the political & military intrigue. I'd highly recommend the book to anyone interested in ancient Rome. It's the first book in a series.

[Eternal_Bear]

Societies consisting mostly of nuclear families of a husband, wife and kids is a fairly new social convention. People seemed to do well living in clans and extended families for thousands of years. Many Hispanic and immigrant groups still adhere to the older social traditions of extended families and that may indeed be a more natural order of things and may again be the norm some day.

[Snuffington]

Odd spin on this. I know something about the previous ideas about the Roman family, and this fits easily within. Sure it may provide some more solid evidence to support it. And it may elevate the importance of certain relationships. But it's definitely not a major change.

Methinks I sense the hand of the "progressives" cooking up something related to this.

[reed_inthe_wind]

Scholars have known this for a long time.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP - SOCIOLOGY - FAMILY

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[marsh2]

(Reference: John Crook, Law and Life of Rome, Cornell University Press, c1967.)

In the agricultural society of the early Romans, the patriarchial farmer worked the land with his whole family, sons and slaves.

The Roman "familia" included free members, those under various forms of guardianship and slaves. The rules regarding "filias familias" and "servus" were very much alike. The patriarchial power over life and death applied to both and neither could own anything. Both had only "peculium"- property legally belonging to the patriach that the son or slave was given for his own use. Further, family members under guardianship, (all freedmen who were minors and freedwomen,) could only alienate property with their guardian's consent. If you were in potestate you owned nothing. Whatever you acquired accrued automatically to your paterfamilias. You could make no gifts and if you borrowed money, it was a charge on your paterfamilias.

The authority of the patriarch lasted not merely until those in the familia grew up and formed their own conjugal groups, but until the day he died. Every member of the familia was in the potestas of the oldest surviving male ascendant or paterfamilias. His household jurisdiction dealt with offences of its members that threatened the family's reputation. He could inflict chastisements and even death in judgment.

If the paterfamilias died, the familia would fall into the potestas of the next oldest ascendant in the male line. If there was none, those fee persons in the familia would become sui iuris.

[A.J.Armitage]

She spent ten years studying inscriptions to learn what any popular treatment already includes?

Is this woman stupid?

[ZULU]

So?? Is this news???

Anybody who has studied Roman History knows what this guy is stating is true. As a matter of fact, it was also true of the anti-bellum South. "Family" there included household slaves.

What's his point?

Is this some leftwing fruitcake trying to justify gay marriage??? Well, even inhedonistic Rome that didn't exist. Its a construct of today's degenerate Americans.

You'd have to go back further than Ancient Rome to find "gay marriages" - probably to Sodom and Gomorrha.

[Cacique]

Interesting ping

[Eva]

This written as though it is some kind of revelation, it is not. Wealthy families seldom raised their own kids and poor ones often sent their kids to work as indentured servants or apprentices to learn a trade.

Maybe if the Romans and other ancient cultures had evolved to the point of strong family bonds, they would still be around today. The strong family is the reason that the Jews have survived, even without a homeland.

[MissAmericanPie]

What a lame attack on the family unit, even during slavery in the USofA slaves took the last name of their masters, were buried in the family cemetary with the rest of the family and more often than not were considered family.

[Devil_Anse]

Bottom line: SOMEBODY in that society was engaging in normal sexual relations, or there wouldn't have been any wet nurses, etc.--there wouldn't have been any population at all.

There are all kinds of reasons why marriage includes a pledge of fidelity to the person you marry. IMO, the number one reason it evolved that way was to prevent a man from unknowingly having the expense (not just monetary expense) of rearing another man's biological offspring. It's only fair that a person should only be obligated to expend effort on behalf of his/her own biological offspring. (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with VOLUNTARILY taking care of another person's biological offspring.)

So fidelity is important to heterosexual marriages. IMO, it is less important to homosexual couplings--and oh, BROTHER, is that evident in their behavior.

So if we call homosexual pairings "marriage", then we do indeed change the nature of marriage, making fidelity less important. I mean, who cares if homos cheat on each other?

And without at least a serious attempt at fidelity, what the hell reason is there for getting married in the first place?