‘Start with the cage’: coercive control and the Roman husband in Eleanor Cowan and TIm Parkin, Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in the Roman World, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 66, Issue 2, December 2023, Pages 16–28, 2023
This chapter investigates domestic violence in the ancient world by making use of the expanded un... more This chapter investigates domestic violence in the ancient world by making use of the expanded understanding of the abusive relationship between perpetrator and victim offered by the concept of coercive control. Coercive control describes a pattern of behaviour which may include acts of physical violence, but also non-physical emotional, psychological and financial abuse. I offer four case-studies, each of which takes as its starting point a behaviour associated with coercive control: (1) patriarchal entitlement; (2) patterns of abuse; (3) intimate partner homicide; and (4) non-physical abuse. A broader definition of domestic violence allows us better to understand the abuse (physical and non-physical) experienced by victims in the ancient world and encourages greater sensitivity to the experience of modern victim-survivors of domestic abuse and the ways in which these modern readers (including our students) may interpret ancient evidence.
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itself a post-conflict community constantly threatened by the possibility that civil war might occur again. The term ‘post-conflict’ has gained widespread currency in international relations as a means of describing communities emerging from warfare (including civil war). The term seeks to recognize the peculiarly transitional, precarious, and traumatic nature of the post-conflict period. The need or desire for ‘transitional justice’ in this post-conflict space is particularly marked. My chapter begins with some
observations about the extent to which these terms might productively be used to explore the conflict and post-conflict years themselves (49 BCE – 29 CE) and one early narrative of those years.
itself a post-conflict community constantly threatened by the possibility that civil war might occur again. The term ‘post-conflict’ has gained widespread currency in international relations as a means of describing communities emerging from warfare (including civil war). The term seeks to recognize the peculiarly transitional, precarious, and traumatic nature of the post-conflict period. The need or desire for ‘transitional justice’ in this post-conflict space is particularly marked. My chapter begins with some
observations about the extent to which these terms might productively be used to explore the conflict and post-conflict years themselves (49 BCE – 29 CE) and one early narrative of those years.