INTRODUCTION: BEREAVEMENT AND SELF-PRESENTATION

Despite its relatively high incidence, fatherlessness presented a social challenge to young aristocratic Roman men who aspired to a political career. Roman society placed great emphasis on the authority wielded by a father, the emulation of his example by his sons, and the political and social connections granted through membership in a high-status family. Upper-class Roman literary sources generally represent youth as an unstable age, in need of careful guidance. Pliny the Younger, for example, observes that the son of Corellia Hispulla, an adulescens, needs “not only a teacher but also a guardian and a master at this slippery period of life.” In addition to the prejudice that might potentially be focused upon the young man without a guardian, a fatherless man could also find himself without the important links of patronage or suffragium that were essential at the beginning of an imperial Roman career. The social disadvantages affecting legitimately born children bereaved of their fathers at an early age naturally differ considerably from those affecting the illegitimate, though in comparison with other societies ancient Rome was remarkably free of prejudice against the illegitimate. While servile or freedmen “child-minders” might provide instructive and (potentially) psychologically stabilizing companionship for a fatherless young man, of necessity they could not provide the social benefits that came from a publicly visible association with an older upper-class man.