Adoption in the Roman World

Hugh Lindsay

Okt 2009 · Cambridge University Press

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Adoption in other cultures and other times provides a background to understanding the operation of adoption in the Roman worlds. This book considers the relationship of adoption to kinship structures in the Greek and Roman world. It considers the procedures for adoption followed by a separate analysis of testamentary cases, and the impact of adoption on nomenclature. The impact of adoption on inheritance arrangements is considered, including an account of how the families of freedmen were affected. Its use as a mode of succession at Rome is detailed, and this helps to understand the anxiety of childless Romans to procure a son through adoption, rather than simply to nominate heirs in their wills. The strategy also had political uses, and importantly it was used to rearrange natural succession in the imperial family. The book concludes with political adoptions, looking at the detailed case studies of Clodius and Octavian.

Autoren-Profil

Hugh Lindsay is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. His previous publications include Suetonius: Caligula (1993), Suetonius: Tiberius (1995) and he co-edited (with Daniela Dueck and Sarah Poethecary) Strabo's Cultural Geography (Cambridge University Press, 2005).