Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 Fatherless antiquity? Perspectives on “fatherlessness” in the ancient Mediterranean
- PART I COPING WITH DEMOGRAPHIC REALITIES
- PART II VIRTUAL FATHERLESSNESS
- PART III ROLES WITHOUT MODELS
- PART IV RHETORIC OF LOSS
- 11 The disadvantages and advantages of being fatherless: the case of Sulla
- 12 An imperial family man: Augustus as surrogate father to Marcus Antonius' children
- 13 Cui parens non erat maximus quisque et vetustissimus pro parente: paternal surrogates in imperial Roman literature
- 14 The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius
- 15 “Woe to those making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless”: Christian ideals and the obligations of stepfathers in late antiquity
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 Fatherless antiquity? Perspectives on “fatherlessness” in the ancient Mediterranean
- PART I COPING WITH DEMOGRAPHIC REALITIES
- PART II VIRTUAL FATHERLESSNESS
- PART III ROLES WITHOUT MODELS
- PART IV RHETORIC OF LOSS
- 11 The disadvantages and advantages of being fatherless: the case of Sulla
- 12 An imperial family man: Augustus as surrogate father to Marcus Antonius' children
- 13 Cui parens non erat maximus quisque et vetustissimus pro parente: paternal surrogates in imperial Roman literature
- 14 The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius
- 15 “Woe to those making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless”: Christian ideals and the obligations of stepfathers in late antiquity
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
How should I rate my orphan state? I would have been so glad to see my father in his old age, but I know this for certain, that if my father had reached a ripe old age, I would now be engaged upon a different life path.
So says Libanius in the first part of his Autobiography (Or. 1.6), in which he attempted to appraise the positive and negative influence of certain events on his life. The loss of his father when he was an eleven-year-old boy apparently was not a catastrophe that shattered his life. The sophist's regret at being deprived of the comfort of a fatherly presence was counterbalanced by his realization that the event had unforeseen positive consequences. His father would not have allowed him the many years of study he enjoyed but instead would have prevented his academic career and made sure that he engaged in local politics, the law courts, or the imperial administration. Paradoxically, therefore, his personal loss allowed Libanius a degree of freedom from parental control that permitted him to follow his calling.
Libanius' orations, and particularly the narrative of his life, reveal circumstances that might temper the harshness of an orphan state and which allowed him to become an acclaimed sophist and teacher in fourth-century Antioch. The letters of Libanius, too, introduce to the reader many of the students who attended his school of rhetoric – almost 200 young men, of whom 134 can be placed in a period of fifteen school years.
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- Growing Up Fatherless in Antiquity , pp. 257 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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