Overview

This book bridges a gap between two traditional disciplines. Since the 1970s, there has been a remarkable outpouring of work on women in antiquity, but women in late antiquity (3rd-6th centuries A.D.) have been far less studied. Classicists have been more concerned with the first two centuries A.D., and theologians have been interested in New Testament, rather than patristic, teaching about women or its social and cultural setting. In this book, Clark offers an introduction to the basic conditions of life for women: marriage, divorce, celibacy and prostitution; legal constraints and protection; child-bearing, health care, and medical theories; housing, housework, and clothes; and the general assumptions about female nature which were discarded at need. Christian and non-Christian literature, art, and archaeology are used to exemplify both the practicalities of life and the prevailing "discourses" of the ancient world.