Kate Cooper is Professor of History. Her writing and teaching have charted the world of the Mediterranean in the Roman period, with a special interest in daily life, religion, and the family, and the inter-connected problems of martyrdom, resistance movements, and religious violence. Early research focused on gender and rhetoric in the ancient world, with a monograph The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Harvard UP, 1993). Later more empirical work re-framed the fall of the Roman Empire through the lens of women and family, including the monograph The Fall of the Roman Houshehold (Cambridge UP, 2007). She also writes for the general public, for example Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women (Atlantic Books 2013), which The New Statesmanhas called ‘the best kind of popular history.’
Roma toplumunun temel birimi aileydi ve ‘paterfamilias’ olarak adlandırılan baba ailenin mutlak reisiydi. Kendi çocuklarını bile aileden reddedebilir ya da köle olarak satabilirdi. Kadınlar oy kullanamaz, aday olamaz ya da toplum önünde konuşamazdı. Zaman geçtikçe daha varlıklı kadınlar, özellikle de dullar, mülk sahibi olma ve kendi işlerini yönetme hakkını kazandı; Yeni Ahit’te İsa’nın hizmetini…