Roman paternal authority operated against mothers with equal investment

Evidence

We can read Quintilian, after Perpetua, with the recognition that the schoolmaster’s authority operated against actual mothers whose interiorities looked something like Perpetua’s. We can read Augustine, after Perpetua, with the recognition that the bishop’s doctrine of original sin operated in the world of actual mothers whose investment in their children was as substantive and physically grounded as Perpetua’s. We can read patria potestas, after Perpetua, with the recognition that the paterfamilias’s legal authority operated against actual women whose intellectual capacity and emotional investment matched her father’s, even when their legal standing did not. — , The Rod and the Child, 2184

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the chapter’s framing — patria potestas and the legal doctrine of the father — against the maternal counter-voice recovered here. — connects to: Roman fathers held unique life-and-death authority over their children — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1373; The unregulated Roman household was the central site of child corporal violence. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 2006; Roman fathers exercised less actual power over children than law allowed — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 12347 (+2 more)

Related

• Roman fathers exercised less actual power over children than law allowed (similarity 0.87)
• Roman fathers held unique life-and-death authority over their children (similarity 0.85)
• The unregulated Roman household was the central site of child corporal violence. (similarity 0.83)
• Romans learned to hold contradiction between moral authority and legal ownership of their teachers (similarity 0.80)
• Roman law made the mother equal to the father by 178 CE. (similarity 0.80)
• Roman guardianship of women served the guardians’ own inheritance interests. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Roman fathers exercised less actual power over children than law allowed #corroborates (0.65) — , The Rod and the Child, 12347