Cicero, Tullia, and Marcus: Gender-Specific Concerns for Family Tradition?

Späth, Thomas (2010). Cicero, Tullia, and Marcus: Gender-Specific Concerns for Family Tradition? In: Dasen, Véronique; Späth, Thomas (eds.) Children, Memory, & Family Identity in Roman Culture (pp. 147-172). Oxford: Oxford University Press

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A fair number of Cicero's letters reveal his concern for his daughter Tullia and his son Marcus. Recent scholarship has read these letters as evidence for a ‘natural’ emotional attachment of a father to his children, in reaction to Philippe Ariès's opposite claim. This chapter considers whether Cicero's letters can be analysed only as expressions of paternal affection. The fact that the pater familias Cicero occupies a political position simultaneously in his nuclear family, his domus, and the Senate, results in a concern for his prestige within the social field of the aristocracy. And this concern is necessarily conferred upon his support of the education and the social and political career of his children. The chapter traces the gender-specific differences between Cicero's treatment of Tullia and Marcus, shows the social construction of parental affection, and contributes to a further understanding of the different functions of daughters and sons in the social force field of family memory.

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