Books in the OUP/Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University Series series

Patronage has been established as one of the dominant social processes of pre-industrial Europe. This collection examines the role it played in the Italian Renaissance, focusing particularly on Florence.

This text, which studies family life in the Roman Empire, moves beyond the city of Rome to the rest of Roman Italy and even into the provinces, just as Roman culture moved outwards and mingled with other cultures. The later Empire period and Christianity are also covered.

Recent studies of ancient Rome have shown that the sentimental ideal of a nuclear family was strong throughout the period, but that the reality was often different. This work looks at aspects of the composition of the Roman family and provides a case-study of the sentimental ideal versus reality.

In this volume, the study of family draws on a range of disciplines to develop the intertwined themes of status, sentiment and space. It makes use of evidence from the legal and literary to the iconographical and archaeological, with visual and material evidence reconstructing real lives.