In the ancient world, the family was subordinated to the supremacy of the state, and woman was denied dignity in both philosophy and law. The grandeur of Greece and the might of Rome concealed a deep moral infirmity—an erosion of domestic virtue, a collapse of conjugal fidelity, and the institutional degradation of womanhood and childhood. Into this decaying order, Christianity breathed new life: honoring marriage, cherishing motherhood, exalting chastity, and protecting the sanctity of each human soul as made in the image of God.
The Supremacy of the State and the Eclipse of the Family
In classical antiquity, the state was not merely the highest authority—it was the supreme ideal of life. The civic virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice were exclusively political in nature. Aristotle declared that man is a “political animal,” created for life within the polis—a society of free citizens to which neither foreigners nor slaves could belong. In his view, the state preceded both the individual and the family in importance and design.
Plato’s utopian republic took this logic to its extreme: the state was to own everything, even children. Marriage, in such a system, bore no moral or spiritual character. It was merely an instrument for producing vigorous offspring to serve the state. Xenophon records Socrates advising his son to marry only for the sake of bearing beautiful children. Plato went further, suggesting communal wives for soldiers. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, permitted adultery to ensure strong progeny, urging old men to lend their youthful wives to the virile.
The Condition of Women in Classical Civilization
In this worldview, woman was scarcely elevated above the slave. Aristotle maintained that while women differ from slaves, they possess no genuine will of their own, and are barely capable of virtue. Confined to secluded quarters in the home, Greek women lived among the servants, far removed from public life and education.
And yet, amid the gloom, flickers of female virtue still shine in classical poetry and legend. Figures like Penelope, Andromache, Antigone, and Iphigenia reflect ideals of loyalty, purity, and strength. Plutarch, too, offers tender counsel in his writings on marriage and mourning. But such examples were the exception. Generally, women in Athens remained legal minors throughout life and were barred from inheritance unless no male heir existed. When Socrates asked Aristobulus if there was anyone with whom he conversed less than his wife, the reply was, “No one, or at least very few.”
On rare occasions, cultured women gained notoriety—Aspasia and Diotima attracted philosophers and statesmen. But these women were not wives but hetaerae: courtesans whose education and beauty granted them favor while housewives languished in obscurity. In Corinth, prostitution was institutionalized and even religiously sanctioned. Over a thousand temple prostitutes at Aphrodite’s shrine corrupted travelers under the guise of sacred duty. In such a world, licentiousness was not condemned but divinely mirrored in the myths of Olympus—where Jupiter, Mars, and Venus modeled infidelity.
Depravity and Divine Sanction
Worse yet, classical culture harbored vice so unnatural that even fallen nature recoils. It was not merely tolerated but celebrated by poets, philosophers, and even gods. Apollo’s love for boys, Jupiter’s seduction of Ganymede—these were held as divine precedents. Socrates and Plato did not wholly condemn such relations; Zeno, founder of the Stoics, was praised for moderation in this vice.
As Döllinger observed, this vice spread like an ethical disease, infecting the very air of Greek society. The public games, with their spectacle of male nudity, only fanned the flames of these distorted passions.
The Roman Family: Early Honor and Later Decay
Rome began more virtuously. The wife was hailed as domina, matrona, materfamilias. The flamens of Jupiter represented marital fidelity; the Vestal Virgins, the sanctity of chastity. In legendary lore, the Sabine women preserved peace, and Lucretia and Virginia chose death over dishonor. These figures symbolize early Roman reverence for virtue.
Yet even in its noblest era, Roman law treated woman as property. Marriage served the state. Legal union was reserved for free citizens alone. Foreign queens, like Cleopatra and Berenice, were reduced to concubines of Roman consuls and emperors. A bride was purchased from her father in an ancient ritual; in return, she received household gods—but not freedom. Cato lent his wife to Hortensius; Augustus took Livia from her husband Tiberius Nero.
As Gibbon writes, the Roman husband wielded absolute authority. He judged and punished his wife’s conduct, even with death. Her labor, property, and person were his. Legally, she was not a person but a possession, her status transferred by uninterrupted use.
Illicit Unions and Legal Concubinage
Though monogamy was technically the norm, concubinage was widespread. A concubine—a woman of lower rank—stood between a lawful wife and a harlot. Legal and socially accepted, concubinage persisted across the empire, even among emperors like Vespasian and the Antonines.
Adultery, though occasionally punished, was considered a property crime against the husband. He could violate his marriage bed without legal consequence; the wife, never. Intercourse with household slaves or prostitutes carried no stigma. The goddess of domestic peace, Viriplaca, bore a name that implied her role: to pacify angry husbands, not to protect offended wives.
A darker vice, alluded to by Paul in Romans 1:26–27, defiled both the patrician and the plebeian. By the time of Augustus, even Vesta’s priestesses had become notorious. The literature of the age—Martial’s epigrams, Petronius’ Satyricon, Apuleius’ romances—oozed unashamed obscenity.
The Collapse of Marriage and the Rise of Divorce
In the early republic, divorce was nearly unknown. But the ideal collapsed with the arrival of affluence and luxury after the Punic Wars. Greek and Eastern sensuality poured into Roman homes, and with it, moral decay.
Marriage lost its sacredness. Ceremonial rites were abandoned. Cohabitation replaced legal union. After Augustus, marriage became a dissolvable partnership. Gibbon notes that a mere word, a gesture, or even the message of a servant could sever the bond. “The most tender of human connections,” he lamented, “became a transient association for profit or pleasure.”
Men like Maecenas married dozens of times. One woman, Jerome recounts, buried her twenty-first husband after outliving twenty-two of his predecessors. Juvenal and Martial record the speed and ease with which Roman matrons moved from husband to husband.
Yet amid this ruin, noble examples persisted: Mallonia’s suicide to preserve her honor, the fidelity of Seneca’s wife Paulina, and the heroic virtue of Arria. Such women testify that even in corruption, grace could yet survive.
Parental Tyranny and the Death of the Innocent
The ancient family structure also suffered under the weight of paternal tyranny. The father held unchecked authority—even the right to kill his own child. An adult son remained, legally, little more than a chattel, like a slave.
One of the most inhumane practices of antiquity was the exposure of infants—especially those who were poor, sickly, or deformed. This cruelty was approved by the loftiest minds: Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca. “It is not anger,” wrote Seneca, “but reason, that compels us to separate the weak from the strong.”
Gibbon admits that this custom was so entrenched that even legal and philosophical reforms proved powerless. Only the combination of Christianity’s gentle persuasion and the force of Roman law—under Valentinian and others—began to curb the slaughter of innocents.
The Roman Empire, for centuries, was soaked in the blood of its own children. The voice of the Church, rising in defense of the least and the lost, would one day silence the cry of infanticide with the lullabies of mothers redeemed and homes transformed by divine love.
