FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD 153young boy whose father had died could possess power in his own one- man
familia. A defi nition that excludes the wife not only illustrates how different
familia in this legal sense is from our modern conception, but also how
misleading it is as a basis for analysing the Roman family as a functioning
social unit. Ulpian’s other defi nitions can conveniently be considered with
similar meanings of domus.
Domus in the sense of household was used by Romans more commonly
than familia in references to the family. Though often defi ned as ‘family’,
domus covered a larger group than is usually associated with the family
today, encompassing husband, wife, children, slaves and others living in the
house (not unlike the meaning of ‘family’ in early modern England where
servants as well as blood relatives were included).^6 The difference between
Roman and contemporary defi nitions, as well as Ulpian’s fourth sense of
familia , underlines a cardinal fact about the Roman family: it must be
understood in the context of a slave household staff, at least for the
prosperous classes. The pervasive presence of slaves must have had important
results for paternal authoritarianism, child- bearing and patterns of sexual
behaviour.^7
Both domus and familia could be used to refer to kin outside the
household, and, in particular, to descent groups. Since heavy emphasis is
placed on descent in some cultures, infl uencing strategies of inheritance and
marriage, some consideration ought to be given to the rather different
notions of descent embodied in the two words.^8 Ulpian’s third defi nition of
familia – ‘all related through males to a common ancestor’ – refers to an
agnatic descent group from which a daughter’s children or a mother’s blood
kin are excluded. Domus , on the other hand, is a much larger group, precisely
because it includes relatives linked through women. To judge from linguistic
usage in letters and orations, the stress in thinking about descent among the
Roman elite changed from familia in the Republic to domus in the early
empire. In Cicero’s references to the family background of his friends or
clients in court, he consistently mentioned their familia, nomen (name) and
genus (clan), all agnatic notions. In contrast, Pliny never used familia in such
contexts, but always discussed the man’s domus , with as much concern for
maternal relatives as paternal. This development coincided with the rapid
turnover of membership in the Roman aristocracy under the emperors: since
most Roman aristocrats could no longer lay claim to an agnatic lineage
going back generations that would be recognized by their peers from other
regions of the empire, the emphasis shifted to the respectability of the new
man’s circle of relatives, paternal, maternal or by marriage.
The nuclear family
The evolutionary view of family history, popular in the nineteenth century
and still repeated today, has been subjected to convincing criticism in recent