A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium [Paperback]

Paul Veyne (Editor), Phillippe Aries (Series Editor), Georges Duby (Series Editor), Arthur Goldhammer (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674399749 | ISBN-13: 978-0674399747 | Publication Date: September 1, 1992

First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world. Behind the vast panorama of the pagan Roman empire, the reader discovers the intimate daily lives of citizens and slaves—from concepts of manhood and sexuality to marriage and the family, the roles of women, chastity and contraception, techniques of childbirth, homosexuality, religion, the meaning of virtue, and the separation of private and public spaces.

The emergence of Christianity in the West and the triumph of Christian morality with its emphasis on abstinence, celibacy, and austerity is startlingly contrasted with the profane and undisciplined private life of the Byzantine Empire. Using illuminating motifs, the authors weave a rich, colorful fabric ornamented with the results of new research and the broad interpretations that only masters of the subject can provide.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

These volumes, edited by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, are aimed at both the scholar and layperson who wonder how people lived and behaved from ancient times to the present: "their thoughts, their feelings, their bodies, their attitudes, their habits and habitations, their codes, their marks, and their signs." The focus is on western European life, primarily French.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The new emphasis on the history of everybody has now been consecrated in [this] ambitious five-volume series...Copious illustrative materials--paintings, drawings, caricatures, and photographs, all cannily chosen and wittily captioned to display domestic life...Magnificent.
--Roger Shattuck (New York Times Book Review )

Together these five compact volumes cover much of the history of the classical world, and do so with both ease and authority. (Washington Post Book World )

This first volume is one of the most arresting, original, and rewarding historical surveys to be published in many years, and its value is enhanced by the hundreds of illustrations, which present almost every conceivable detail of private life as it was lived in the centuries.
--Bernard Knox (The Atlantic )

Private life has always been a matter of public conjecture. This admirable book brings it intelligently into the web of social history and is a model for historians and readers alike. Beautifully produced, it adds apt and rare illustrations to a text by experts who presuppose human curiosity, but no undue knowledge. Its range and level of argument will intrigue anyone who has wondered about past attitudes to such matters as sex and the family, households, social inferiors, dress and even undress.
--Robin Lane Fox (Washington Post )

The five essays collected here...treat readers to a vast array of anecdotes and conjectures about the private life of our forebears.
--Roger Kimball (Wall Street Journal )

This is a long, demanding and very rewarding book. If the remaining four volumes are of this quality, the series will indeed, as the editors claim, be "a milestone in historical research."
--Jane F. Gardner (Times Higher Education Supplement )

A book which makes the reader think, teasing and encouraging with spicy details, long views, a capacity for the unexpected insight. Now for something completely different.
--Jasper Griffin (London Review of Books )

This absorbingly illustrated series is intent on presenting the past with both physical immediacy and with as little academic fuss as possible. The illustrations in the first volume have a subjective penetration of the text that is like an inner musical accompaniment. This volume does not pretend to roll out a complete rug of civilization...Few readers, even of I, Claudius, will have experienced pagan Rome with quite the freshness evident here...History-to-touch. (Kirkus Reviews )

A stimulating--indeed a provocative--and beautiful book on a difficult subject...It's a treasure. (Christian Science Monitor )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674399749
• ISBN-13: 978-0674399747
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #483,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Motley crew, August 10, 2002

By 

Glenn McDorman (Denver) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Paperback)

This is the first volume of a multi-author endeavor to trace the changes in private attitudes, beliefs, benaviors, and lifestyles from the early Roman Empire to the late twentieth century. The first volume begins with the early Roman Empire and ends with the apogee of the Byzantine Empire. Containing five lenghty essays by different authors (mainly French -- the whole project is a French one) dealing with the early Roman Empire, the late Roman Empire, housing and architecture in Roman Africa, Merovingian Gaul, and tenth and eleventh-century Byzantium.

The project is a fresh and invigorating look at the ways that societies change. There are several excellent illuminations in this book. We are shown that the notion of Roman "sexual liberation" is not well-founded; that Christianity did not change Western views on sex and the body, but that Christianity adopted the views of the poorer (and more numerous) Roman classes; how architecture can reveal much about a society; and that the major change between the late Empire and the early medieval had to do with notions of "private" and "public."

Although the book is interesting and useful, there are some reasons to criticize it. Most of the attention is given to the early Roman Empire, which consumes almost one third of the book. Entirely too much space is given to the chapter on architecture in Roman Africa -- it is significantly longer than the chapter on the late Empire. The chapter entitled "The Early Middle Ages in the West" is really only about Merovingian Gaul, and does not always have the change between the late Empire and early medieval as a focus. The chapter on Byzantium did not seem to fit with the rest of the book. The reason for including Byzantium in this volume rather than the next volume (Middle Ages) was to show Byzantine culture as a continuation of Roman culture. Unfortunately, the piece was not about the early Byzantine, but rather the middle Byzantine era, thus having no connection with the rest of the book. It is also dubious that the book begins with the Roman Empire, not the Roman Republic or classical Greece. Paul Veyne says that this decision was made because Rome was essentially Greek in character, and that a section on Greece and a section on Rome would be repetitive. This is weak reasoning at best, but, given the lenght of the book as it stands now, it may still have been a good decision. Finally, the book is not footnoted or endnoted. There is a lengthy bibliography and a small notes section in the back, but assertions, ideas, and evidence are not clearly referenced. I do not know if this is how French scholarship is done, or if this major chunk of scholarship was left out in the interest of marketing the book to a lay audience. Either way, it is frustrating, and only hurts the academic value of this major project.

Despite these critical comments, I view the book as an excellent effort and an enlightening read. Too often history is about events, not people, and these historians have made a noble attempt to humanize our past.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic of the Annales School, November 2, 2004

By 

S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Paperback)

This book is the product of the methodology created by the annales school of historians in france. Founded in the late 20's, the Annales school pioneered the use of the methods and teachings from other schools of social science in the service of history. This approach spurned a focus on wars and politics in favor of a focus on "everyday life" i.e. the life of non-presidents and generals.

The general editors of this book (Durby and Aries) were pioneers of the approach, along with it's most famous author: Braudel. See his work on the mediteranean, or Aries' classic "In the Hour of Our Death".

These authors are second and third generation. The work is, on the whole, excellent, but it's a distinct style of scholarship, which may account for some of the confusion in the other reviews.

Each chronological segment is written by a different author. The section on Rome is an anchor to the whole five volume series. The secton on late antiquity is a bit brief. I skipped the chapter on roman domestic architecture in africa. The period on the early middle ages is rich and fascinating, but too brief. I could have read a whole book on the Merovinigian empire in northern Gaul! The chapter on the Byzantine empire focuses on the later empeire (900-1200(?) and the source material for the last chapter seems to consist almost of entirely of information on monastery life.

Over all, one is struck by the dramatic, though gradual, shift from pagan rome to early christianity. It is a unique book, and well worth reading.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Grandeur that was Rome, July 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Paperback)

The subjects, and people, covered in this volume of the History of Private Life are probably the most remote for the modern day reader. Medieval and Renaissance life appears more colorful than Pagan Rome and Early Christian Byzantium, just like a medieval tapestry draws the eye away from a worn marble statue. But Roman life proves to be just as colorful and complex--perhaps more so than medieval life. This volume pays close attention to the everyday activities which took man, woman, child, and slave from cradle to grave. One learns that a man would be fined more for stealing a pig than for killing a slave; that women would attempt to attract men by feeding them a fish that had been held between their loins; and that the domestic sphere of ancient Rome was queerly both public _and_ private. Copiously illustrated with photographs and reproductions, some in color.