|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
The family in
ancient China and Rome The family, not the individual, was the
basic unit of society in both ancient Rome and ancient China. In
sociopolitical contexts, “family” took on a broad spectrum of meanings, many
of which referred to entities much more extensive than the nuclear family of
parents and siblings. Most broadly, it referred to a clan, a patrilineal
group descend from a common ancestor whose members were identified by the
same family name. In Rome, a clan was called a gens and its branch a familia.[1] In Chinese, xing 姓stood for both a clan and its family name.
A branch of a clan was called a zong 宗 or zu 族.[2] A related concept was
the house, Roman domus and Chinese shi 室, which included not only biological relatives but also social
dependents and physical properties. The relative importance of families in
various societies is suggested by the naming systems. In many ancient
cultures, a person had only one name with perhaps a patronymic, such as
Jesus, son of Joseph, which conveyed very little information about family
relationship. In contrast, a Roman or a Chinese had, besides a given name (praenomen or ming 名), a family name (nomen or xing姓) and, if he was a aristocrat, a surname
(cognomen or shi氏) that kept track of clan branches. A Roman example: Julius was the nomen for the gens that claimed
Trojan descend. A familia in the
Julian clan adopted the cognomen Caesar. The most famous member of the
Julius Caesar family had the praenomen Gaius. Gnaeus
Pompey, Gaius Julius Caesar’s rival, was an upstart with nomen
and but no cognomen.
A Chinese example: Ying was the xing of the
lords of the states of Qin and Zhao. The Zhao lords, as a zu
of the Yings, adopted Zhao as their shi. The Qin lords retained their xing as their shi. Married
women in both worlds were known by the family name of their father. Thus all
women from the Julii family were called Julia, as
all women from the Chen family were called Chen shi. The elaborate naming systems helped
recognition of distant relatives and social networking. It also preserved
intergenerational and historical memory, facilitating power endurance. Tracing the family names of
rulers and magistrates become a research tool for historians to study social
mobility and changes in the composition of ruling classes.[3] When you are confused by
the recurrence of some names in narratives covering centuries, you have a
glimpse at the persistent of familial power. The Roman and Chinese societies were both
patriarchic, although with varied customs. As the head of family, the Roman
father, paterfamilias, had extensive and unrestricted legal power over
family members, including all male offspring, married or not. Originally,
they even had the right to kill adult children. Although right became
obsolete in the mid-Empire, authoritarian paternal power spread throughout
the Roman Empire and persisted beyond its fall.[4]
The power of the Chinese head of family, although more customary than legal,
was no less extensive and enduring. The father, fu 父, could punish family members corporally,
even when they held high government posts. Confucians elevated filial piety
to the top of virtues and taught subjects to obey the ruler as children obey
their parents.[5] To
rule the state by filial piety, yixiao zhiguo 以孝治囯, became the Confucian motto of several dynasties.[6]
Authoritarianism began at home. The fount of nature and nurture, the
family transmits not only genes but also wealth and life style, skill and
knowledge, and in some cases, prestige and power. It has been a cornerstone
of tradition, whose authority ideally maintained sociopolitical stability
with minimal coercion. Before schools appeared with Confucius in China in the mid fifth
century BCE and Greek teachers in Rome in the mid second century BCE,
children got their education at home or clan establishments.[7] It is no surprise that
families and clans formed the foundation of aristocracy, the hereditary elite
and ruling class in ancient times. Ancestor worship
pervaded China and was also practiced in Rome.[8] A relatively small number of aristocratic families occupied key positions and controlled the wellsprings of power in Rome. Roman senators were called patres, fathers, “either because of their age or because their duties resembled those of the father of a family.”[9] Pater patriae, father of the fatherland, was an official title for Augustus and some other emperors. A Chinese state in feudal times was undifferentiated from the royal household where relatives doubled as ministers. Chinese emperors and their pre-imperial forerunners were called tienzi, son of heaven. “Tienzi acts as the parents of the people and the lord of all under heaven.”[10] Guojia, literally state-family, is the common Chinese term for the state. Marriage and family relations weighed
heavily in the politics of both realms, but with a crucial difference.
Pre-imperial China was mainly feudal, where aristocrats fused rank, fief, and government office, all hereditary. In
contrast to the nobility of pre-imperial |
||||||||
|
|
|
