Sacrificing the Family: Christian Martyrs and Their Kin‪.‬

One of the many complaints brought against Christians by the second-century polemicist Celsus was that in their zeal for gaining converts Christian evangelists of low estate habitually ensnared young children of better background and turned them against their non-Christian fathers. Only they, the Christians, knew the proper way to live and to find true happiness, and so they encouraged the respectable young to disregard, and even to rebel against, their pagan fathers and the foolish views their fathers held. Children's teachers (didaskaloi) they likewise attacked: Celsus' remarks imply that proselytising Christians of the second century were seriously undermining the conventional relationship between father and child in Roman society--that they were subverting a crucial element of traditional Roman family life. Fathers at Rome had always been expected to look to the well-being of their children, to provide for them and to prepare them for adulthood, and this obligation prevailed wherever Roman culture established itself. In elite circles, of which most is known, it was the father's duty to ensure the continuation of the family name and cult, and to see to the maintenance of family success in the public domain. Fathers were particularly expected to look to the education of their sons and to contract suitable matches for their daughters--which is not to say that daughters might not be well-educated as well--and presumably elite fathers set standards for the rest of society. There is some evidence to suggest so. In return, children were expected to show their fathers dutiful obedience and respect, to assimilate and later replicate the family ideals their fathers inculcated in them, and to care for them--and their mothers--in old age. Roman culture was fundamentally patriarchal, with the pater always the uniquely dominant head of his household, exercising an authority (patria potestas) unique to Roman culture. And while within the Roman Empire as a whole in Celsus' day other family traditions than those of Rome were obviously to be found--Greek and Jewish traditions for instance--nowhere was the Roman paradigm of patriarchy seriously at odds with other social and cultural norms. If, consequently, Christians were assaulting the bond between father and child, they were in a sense threatening the very foundations of society. (2)