1 Institutes 1.55.

2 Thomas, J. A. C., Textbook of Roman law (Amsterdam, 1976), 414–17Google Scholar; Watson, A., The law of persons in the later Roman Republic (Oxford, 1967), 77–101.Google Scholar

3 Watson, , Law of persons, 19–23, 29–31Google Scholar; Saller, R., ‘Dowry and the devolution of property in the Principate’, Classical Quarterly 34(1984), 195–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Flandrin, J.-L., Families in former times, transl. by Southern, R. (Cambridge, 1979), 125.Google Scholar

5 Thomas, , Roman law, 415.Google Scholar

6 Kuehn, T., Emancipation in late medieval Florence (New Brunswick, N.J., 1982), 2.Google Scholar

7 McRae, K. D., ed., The six bookes of a commonweale, from the 1606 translation by Knolles, R. (Cambridge, Mass, 1962), 26f.Google Scholar

8 Ibid, IC.

9 Ibid, 8G.

10 Daly, J., Sir Robert Filmer and English political thought (Toronto, 1979), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Commonweale, 24H.

12 Veyne, P., ‘La famille et l'amour sous le Haut-Empire Romain’, Annales E.S.C. 33 (1978), 35–63.Google Scholar

13 Thomas, Y., ‘Droit domestique et droit politique á Rome’, Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'école française de Rome: Antiquité 94(1982), 527–80Google Scholar; Hopkins, K., Death and renewal (Cambridge, 1983), 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Laslett, P. and Wall, R., eds., Household and family in past time (Cambridge, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitterauer, M. and Sieder, R., The European family (Cambridge, 1982).Google ScholarPubMed

15 Guichard, P., ‘De l'antiquité au moyen âge: Famille large et famille étroite’, Cahiers d'histoire 24, 4(1979), 45–60.Google Scholar

16 Ibid, 58.Google Scholar

17 Mitterauer, and Sieder, , European family, 16.Google Scholar

18 Daube, D., Roman law: Linguistic, social and philosophical aspects (Edinburgh, 1969), 79.Google Scholar

19 Crook, J., ‘Patria potestas’, Classical Quarterly 17(1967), 113 with n. 5, gives a critical description of this view with references.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Daube, , Roman law: Linguistic, social and philosophical aspects, 85.Google Scholar

21 Hopkins, K., ‘Brother–sister marriage in Roman Egypt’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 22(1980), 303–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum II. 147.

23 Hopkins, K., ‘On the probable age structure of the Roman population’, Population Studies 20 (1966), 245–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

24 Frier, B., ‘Roman life expectancy: Ulpian's evidence’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982), 213–51CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Frier, B., ‘Roman life expectancy: the Pannonian evidence’, Phoenix 37 (1983), 328–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Harkness, A., ‘Age at marriage and at death in the Roman empire’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 27 (1896), 35–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkins, K., ‘The age of Roman girls at marriage’, Population Studies 18(1965), 309–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The tabulation of the epitaphs by region and a detailed analysis of them can be found in my ‘Men's age at marriage and its consequences in the Roman family’, forthcoming in Classical Philology 82 (1987).Google Scholar

27 Hopkins, ‘Age of Roman girls’; Shaw, ‘The age of Roman girls at marriage: Some reconsiderations’, presented to the annual meeting of the American Ancient Historians, 4 May, 1985 and as yet unpublished.

28 Laslett, P., ‘Family and household as work group and kin group: Areas of traditional Europe compared’, in Wall, R., ed., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 526.Google Scholar

29 Smith, R. M., ‘The people of Tuscany and their families in the fifteenth century: medieval or Mediterranean?’, Journal of Family History 6(1981), 107–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

30 Saller, R. and Shaw, B., ‘Tombstones and Roman family relations in the Principate: Civilians, soldiers and slaves’, Journal of Roman Studies 74(1984), 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 64.Google Scholar

32 Hopkins, ‘Age of Roman girls’Google Scholar.

33 See above, note 18.Google Scholar

34 I owe a special debt of gratitude to James Smith for incorporating the Roman material in his simulation and to Ezra Zubrow for taking the time and trouble to rerun the programme with new variables.Google Scholar

35 For mortality rates we used Model Life Table 3 West from Coale, A. J. and Demeny, P., Regional model life tables and stable populations (New York, 1983).Google Scholar First marriages were distributed so that 67 per cent of women were married by age 22 and 67 per cent of men by age 32. Levels of fertility were the same as those used by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure for eighteenth-century England, with the result that the mean age of maternity was 27 years. The simulation will give more accurate results for some types of relatives than others. For instance, the number of siblings will depend to a considerable extent on the fertility levels, about which we can only make educated guesses. Generational depth, the result of critical interest in this paper, is most sensitive to age of marriage, for which the evidence is relatively good.

36 Treggiari, S., ‘Consent to Roman marriage: Some aspects of law and reality’, Echos du Monde Classique: Classical Views, n.s. 1(1982), 34–44Google Scholar; Treggiari, , ‘Digna condicio: Betrothals in the Roman upper class’, Echos du Monde Classique: Classical Views, n.s. 3 (1984), 419–51.Google Scholar

37 The demography of the Roman family largely vitiates the argument of Gratwick, A. S., ‘Free or not so free? Wives and daughters in the late Roman Republic’, in Craik, E. M., ed., Marriage and property (Aberdeen, 1984), 30–53, that Roman women enjoyed little freedom because, though they were not subject to their husband's authority, they remained in patria potestas.Google Scholar

38 Saller and Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman family relations’, 136–37.

39 Czap, P. Jr., “A large family: The peasant's greatest wealth”: serf households in Mishino, Russia, 1814–1858’, in Wall, , ed., Family forms, 145.Google Scholar

40 Crook, ‘Patria potestas’ offers a very sensible discussion.

41 Letters to Atticus 12.32.2.

42 Daube, D., ‘Did Macedo murder his father?’, Zeitschrift der Savigny–Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 65 (1947), 261–311.Google Scholar

43 Thomas, , Roman law, 416–17.Google Scholar

44 Saller and Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman family relations’, 137, discusses household structure with references to the ancient literature.

45 Gaunt, D., ‘The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe’, in Wall, , ed., Family forms, 249–79.Google Scholar

46 Ibid, 261; a similar point has been made by others, e.g., Laslett, P., Family life and illicit love (Cambridge, 1977), 78Google Scholar; and Held, T., ‘Rural retirement arrangements in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Austria: A cross-community analysis’, Journal of Family History 7(1982), 227–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Valerius Maximus, Dictorum factorumque memorabilium exempla 6.1.5.

48 Sallust, , Bellum Catilinae 39.Google Scholar

49 Seneca, De clementia 1.15.Google Scholar

50 Digest 48.8.2.Google Scholar

51 Attic nights 2.7.Google Scholar

52 Pro Sexi. Roscio Amerino 38.Google Scholar

53 Commonweale, 241.Google Scholar

54 Abrams, P., Past and Present 55(1972), 29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar