ANDREW WALLACE HADRILL

Home is a powerful idea throughout antiquity from Odysseus epic journey to recover his own home nostalgically longed for through his long absence to the implanting of Christianity in the domestic sphere in late antiquity We can recognise the idea even if there is no word for it that quite corresponds to our own the Greek oikos and the Latin domus mean both house and family the essential components of home To attempt a history of the home in antiquity means bringing together two separate if closely related fields of study On the one hand study of the family both in the legal frameworks that define it as institution and the literary representations of it in daily life on the other archaeological study of the domestic setting within which such relationships are played out Ranging across a period of over a millennium this collection looks at the home as a force of integration of the worlds of family and of the outsider in hospitality of the worlds of leisure and work of the worlds of public and private life of the world of practical structures and furnishings and the world of religion