Intl. Conference and Edited Volume: Singles and the Single Life in the Roman and later Roman Worlds

Research Project
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01.07.2014
- 31.12.2015

Singleness is not only a new and rapidly increasing lifestyle of the present day. It has also become a fashionable field of research in social history. During a series of sessions at the European Social Science History Conference (Glasgow, 2012), questions were raised about the structural and cultural particularities of 'single life' in cities. A conference at the University of Antwerp (Singles in the Cities of North-West Europe, c. 1000-2000) in March 2013 further expanded upon the insights from the Glasgow conference. In this new field of research the silence of ancient historians is striking. This may be partly explained by the lack of demographical data: there are virtually no statistics or censuses to indicate how many men or women were single in the towns and villages of the Roman Empire. But far more problematic is the definition of singleness. In a society which did not yet know the Christian concept of marriage, in an environment where both the contracting of a marriage and divorce were quick and easy, the lines between married and unmarried were somewhat vague. This may explain why there is no proper or much-used Latin or ancient Greek word to denote the status of a bachelor or spinster. We might even raise the question whether singleness for the ancient period could possible be defined as being unmarried. But even without the criterion of marriage, other approaches towards singleness in antiquity are possible.

Collaborations & Cooperations

2016 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on an international level

Laes, Christian, professor of ancient history, University of Antwerp, Research cooperation

Members (1)

Sabine Huebner

Principal Investigator

Research Groups

Ancient history (Huebner)