Hidden in Plain Sight: Expositi in the Community

• Type of Material: Conference Paper
• Authors: Judith Evans-Grubbs, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2007-06-15
• Publisher: Emory University Libraries
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: 2007 author(s)
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027290
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Secrets de familles, familles secr`etes: mémoire et identité familiales
• Conference or Event Name: Vth Roman Family Conference
• Keywords: Roman law; children in antiquity; imperialism; patria potestas; infant abandonment; slavery
• Research Categories: Law; History, European

Abstract

Using legal, papyrological, and literary sources of the Roman imperial period, this paper looks at the fate of abandoned newborns (expositi) who were picked up and reared by someone other than a parent, usually for future use as slaves. Particular attention is given to the legal conflicts that ensued when, as sometimes happened, parents attempted to recover a child they had abandoned years before. The possibility of conflict was augmented by the peculiar characteristics of the Roman paternal power (patria potestas), which held that a paterfamilias (whether a birth father or a slavemaster) maintained legal power over children and slaves even after abandoning them.