Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias (pl.: patres familias), [1] was the head of a Roman family. [2] The pater familias was the oldest living male in a household, and could legally exercise autocratic authority over his extended family. The term is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate".
Ara Pacis showing the imperial family of Augustus Gold glass portrait of husband and wife (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Museo Sacro). The ancient Roman family was a complex social structure, based mainly on the nuclear family, but also included various combinations of other members, such as extended family members, household slaves, and freed slaves.
These observances were meant to strengthen the mutual obligations and protective ties between the living and the dead and were a lawful duty of the paterfamilias (head of the family). [4] Parentalia concluded on 21 February in the midnight rites of Feralia, when the paterfamilias addressed the malevolent, destructive aspects of his Manes.
Adoption was carried out by the male who was head of his family, the paterfamilias, and his adopting did not make his wife a mother. [1] Nor was marriage required; an adult bachelor could adopt in order to pass along his family name and potestas, [12] as could a citizen eunuch (Latin spado). [13]
Traditionally, patrician refers to members of the upper class, while plebeian refers to lower class. [2] Economic differentiation saw a small number of families accumulate most of the wealth in Rome, thus giving way to the creation of the patrician and plebeian classes. [2]
This page was last edited on 16 April 2004, at 12:56 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may ...
This figure is usually said to represent the head of the household, or paterfamilias. He is symmetrically flanked by two painted or sculpted Lares. The Lar Familiaris is a more-or-less standard image, like other lares he is young, slender, clad in high boots, a short tunic, and a hitched undergarment. [4]
Under Roman law, there were several forms of tutela ("guardianship" or "tutelage"), mainly for people such as minors and women who ordinarily in Roman society would be under the legal protection and control of a paterfamilias, but who for whatever reasons were sui iuris, legally emancipated.