Customer Reviews

History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium

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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.

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.

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.

This book is one of those doppelgangers which appear to be something good and excellent on the outside but wind up being something, well, otherwise. The cover art at once draws you in, and just flipping through the pages, the multitude of interior plates, both color and b&w, are completely engrossing.

Sadly, the text of this book is practically worthless from a scholarly perspective. The authors make a variety of highly questionable claims throughout the book, very few of which are backed up with meaningful citations. For such a large book, the reference list at the back is pathetic. Hardly any primary sources are listed at all, even though many are mentioned in the text. Worse, the various authors write in a style which makes it appear that their claims are universally accepted and completely above debate. No serious academic would long tolerate such flaws in a work which pretends to make a contribution to scholarship.

It appears, however, that the book is meant for undergraduate level students and general readers. The publisher has clearly produced it with an eye to a wide audience. But this is precisely the type of book that a student or a reader with scant knowledge of ancient history should avoid. One doesn't have to read very far before it becomes clear that this book is primarily a philosophical/political tract masquerading as history. That's not to say that there is no presentation of valid historical facts here. The trouble is, these facts are often cherry-picked to fit neatly into a certain philosophical point of view that is never explicitly defined, only hinted at. Other extant facts that might harm or invalidate this point of view are routinely de-emphasized or ignored. If you want a clue as to what this over-riding philosophical point of view might be, you need only read the tribute given to Michel Foucault, a destructive critic of western civilization, by Paul Veyne in his introduction to the section on the Roman Empire.

There are simply too many questionable claims made in this book to challenge in a review, so I'll limit my criticisms to a couple big picture issues. The single greatest problem I had with this book is that it is not really a "History of Private Life." Discussions of hygiene, diet, maternity, child growth and development, adolescence, play, religious practices, trades, occupations, domestic architecture (except for one very out-of-place chapter), furnishings, farm life, medical care, personal finance, etc. are scanty when they exist at all. Meanwhile, the subjects of slavery, death, and sexuality (particularly deviant forms of sexuality) are covered in exquisite detail, again and again, chapter after chapter. If nothing else, one is left with a very clear notion of what the authors consider the key elements of "private life."

Another major problem involved the scope of the work. Though claiming to cover all the ground between "Rome and Byzantium," the book is highly idiosyncratic in what it covers and what it leaves out. The authors spill a great deal of ink on classical Roman civilization, but expend comparatively little on Christian Roman life between the 4th and 7th centuries. And aside from a brief foray into Merovingian private life, there is nothing on the other Germanic successor states that conquered the western empire. The chapter on Byzantium is completely cursory and covers only the 9th through 12th centuries, leaving everything from the 6th through 8th centuries, including the well-recorded Justinianic period, completely ignored.

Last but not least, there are also some very basic content and consistency problems with this book. A particularly humorous example is on page 81 where the author parenthetically claims that "cats were not yet domesticated in Rome." Meanwhile, an image directly to the right of this text shows a Roman relief of a young girl holding a cat, very obviously domesticated. There is also at least one example of a photo bearing the wrong caption. But these are certainly minor quibbles compared to the ones above.

Lest I sound completely down on this book, however, I should point out that the chapter on domestic architecture in Roman Africa by Yvon Thébert was as excellent as it was out of place. It deserved a book of its own, rather than to be a single grain of wheat amidst a heap of chaff.

Over all, this is a terrible book dressed up in a nice package. Its ultimate goal is to attract unsuspecting non-specialist readers and to fill their minds with a very scholarly-sounding but poorly-grounded and skewed version of history. As such, it is a subtle piece of propaganda which should not be confused with an actual description of what private life was really like in ancient Rome or Byzantium. Admittedly, though, the pictures are nice. Had the authors left the text in the original French, I would heartily endorse this book for an English speaking audience.

The back of the book says that the "History of Private Life" series is "written and edited by leading scholars yet intended for any reader who wonders how people lived and behaved in earlier times". In this, the first volume has definitely succeeded. It is divided into five parts: The Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa, The Early Middle Ages in the West, and Byzantium in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Each of the five sections is divided into chapters, which are then each divided into portions, each portion with its own heading, for easy identification. So, for example, under "The Roman Empire" is a chapter entitled "Marriage," which is divided into sections headed "Criteria for Marriage," "The Transformation of Marriage," "Marriage as a Duty," "The Harmonious Union," etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed most of the sections, although "The Roman Empire" was a bit too long-more than 200 pages, twice as much as any of the other sections. Often it sounded like the author was repeating himself.

I didn't find "Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa" very interesting, probably because the emphasis was on the Domestic Architecture part. Since the section was based mostly on architectural excavations, it had little information on "private life." Most of the section was overviews of the plans of houses and cities in Roman Africa. Since minor details, like furniture arrangements, often do not survive to be discovered by archeological expeditions, there was little information on such minor details.

The other four parts were much more interesting. The book contains a wealth of information on private life: the way people thought, the way they acted, the way they lived. It is extremely readable. I am not a scholar of the period, but I found the book very easy and enjoyable to read. This simpleness in writing means that a lot of scholarly arguments and debates are left out. The whole text is sort of streamlined. Generally this is a good thing, but sometimes it makes one suspicious of some of the author's statements. On page 224, for example, one illustration's caption reads, "Tomb of a physician, 3rd-4th century. He is not, as was once thought, reading a medical treatise but rather his classics..." Looking at the illustration, the scrolls the physician is reading are blank, with no identification on or around them. How could one decide what the man was reading? The author may have had a reason for making this statement, but without the reason given, I found myself thinking, "For heaven's sake, the man could be reading ANYthing." However, if nothing else, this forces the reader to realize how subjective interpretations of history often are. The editors of this book are to be commended for having included enough information that the reader can make their OWN subjective judgements about how to interpret the evidence.

This book's biggest problem, I think, is its length (600+ pages). The large number of illustrations helps, but this is a book that has to be read in bits and pieces. Luckily, the book is divided in such a way that reading it a piece at a time is the easiest way to read it.

Many history books focus on the major events that changed history. This book offers a fascinating look at everyday life in ancient times. The author looks at beliefs, religion, crime and punishment, the treatment of women, law, and more. It's interesting to note how many things have stayed the same, and how many things have changed. The book is written in plain english, and doesn't require an in-depth knowledge of history to understand.

Fascinating in parts; illustrative of things I had not known or even suspected, things I had read allusions to previously, and things I never would even have thought studied. Of course, you need an interest in Roman and Byzantine life; and even if you have such an interest, not all the details will hold your attention. Some of the cross cultural comparisons were beautifully illustrative (one that sticks was a comparison between the economy of a present day middle eastern country to that of the Empire). I am pretty sure this suffered from some sort of idiological bias, as it was weirdly contradictory in places, though it is an original/odd enough bias that it it probably unique to the authors. One of the authors at least, seemed to be an intimate of Michel Foucault. All were french, and the prose suffers for it to the point of being occasionally downright nonsensical. The book certainly rid me of any "golden age" delusions I might have had, regarding Roman times. I'll stick with my electric can opener, microwave ovens, annoying legal system, and Blue Cross HMO thanks very much.

This is a fine collection of essays on the changing quality of family life as classical Rome shifted to medieval Rome. I found its accounts of early Christianity's impact on personal life particularly interesting. For example, Michele Rouche shows how evolving church doctrines on marriage affected families in Western Europe. In the long process of conversion, many missionaries seemed to assume that cultural standards from the old Near East were those of God, while those native to Europe came from the Devil. Most clergymen taught that the church's rites and approval were necessary for valid marriage, but for centuries this was hard to enforce. The priests could not simply declare all existing marriages invalid. Still, they increasingly denounced families that formed their own bonds independently, saying that these couples were living in sin. The clerics taught that lovers who separated and found other lovers were "bigamists", and their children were "bastards". The church informed local people that lovers of the same sex were "sodomites". Many European women found it shocking that the church condemned lesbian lovers, demanded they abandon each other, and required them to perform heavy "penances for sin". (p. 533)

The book traces slow but big changes in human relations, rights, duties, expectations and dreams over several centuries. It gives perspective on the options we face as families today.

--author of Correcting Jesus

I was overjoyed to find this series of books on history from the perspective of how lives were lived, only to be utterly disappointed.

The essays were difficult to read and more difficult to understand. That I was reading translated text might very well have something to do with it, but it surely cannot account for all the bad features. Sentences were unnecessarily long and windy. The tone was often condescending, disdainful and occasionally sarcastic. At times the author made a claim and then offered to illustrate it with material that was disorganized and irrelevant.

I read the first essay on the Roman Empire and my enthusiasm about the book was completely extinguished by the time I reached the chapter's end . I had hoped that the second essay, by a different author, would be an improvement. Well, it was not. And that was enough for me.

This book covers about 1,000 years of private life, from the polytheistic era of classical Rome through the acceptance there and then institutionalization of Christianity in the dark ages. It is a dazzling side glance into the cultural evolution of these tumultuous times with some reference to the larger political context.

The distinctions between these cultures are at once subtle and brutal. First, we view the civitas of Rome, that is, the obligation that Roman citizens felt towards their cities, which involved complex community-oriented mores and expensive public displays that were paid for by private means; aristocratic children, brought up with relatively less sense of their individuality than we enjoy, saw their lives and careers as reflections of the glory of their cities. The reader is also treated to the way that slaves and families were treated in great detail.

Then, in the early Christian era, more privatized cultures arose, first with the increased introspection that the christianization of the empire entailed. Next, the barbarian invasions - in which nomadic tribes smashed the urban cultures in whose wealth they had wanted to partake - merely accelerated this trend; they greatly valued their possessions, often war booty that they had to carry with them, and hence had little regard for fixed property and its supporting laws that enabled cities to flourish. Infrastructure and larger communities and political units in this period deteriorated, which severely impacted trade and hence economic welfare. The standard of measure of a life at that time became purely personal wealth and power.

A sub-theme of the book is the influence of monasticism, which created its own closed communities and became the model for family life at the beginning of the gothic era. Monks and the clergy were the holders of standards of conduct and literacy through this little-known period, and exerted immense influence on the mores of the people who lived nearby. In all its detail, this was new to me. Indeed, if it were not for their labors, much of classical learning would have been lost forever. They are also virtually the only source for information about life in Byzantium.

While there is something lost in having so many authors involved in a single volume, the chapters in this book are so long and detailed that they are like self-contained books. Ample illustrations transport the reader to each era, revealing the mystery of what made us who we are in the west over so many centuries. Nonetheless, the chapters are uneven. The chapter on Roman architecture in N. Africa is very boring indeed, and the one on Byzantium is dull as well. But those on pagan and then Christian Rome are superb, as are those on the dark ages.

Finally, this book relies more on written sources than on archaeology, which is a pity in my opinion, as the sources written after pagan Rome are rather formulaic and outright boring in their rhetorical flourishes as you read about them over hundreds of pages. At times, it reads like a compendium of obscure sources, including exhaustive analysis of funery inscriptions, though that is often what academia comes down to. Another odd thing is that there are only two pages of footnotes, which are followed by a rather poor bibliography. While the book is trying to strike a balance between popular and specialized audiences, I would have preferred better info on sources.

In spite of these criticisms, there is no question that this book is an ample and fascinating meal. Recommended.