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

Harvard University Press

A History of Private LifeAuthor(s): Paul Veyne, Arthur Goldhammer, Phillippe Aris, Georges Duby\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Harvard University Press, United States\nImprint: The Belknap Press\nISBN-13: 9780674399747, 978-0674399747\nSynopsis\nFirst 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 slavesfrom 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.\n\nThe 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. Usi.