La donna, il diritto e il patrimonio nella testimonianza libaniana

Abstract

In this study about the role of Antiochian imperial women I aim at investigating the interrelationship between law and society and at analysing the way social changes lead to birth of new laws, in the period marked by a gradual replacement inside the Mediterranean world. Leafing through the numerous pages dedicated to Antiochene society in the 4th century by an author such as Libanius, who has always set himself up as a strenuous defender of the Hellenic tradition and champion of the ancient civic ideal, and who was influenced less than anyone else by the attraction of the new ideas of Christianity, a pattern emerges thanks to which we can understand the degree of consideration to which women being was held in Late Antiquity, coinciding with a new morality of the couple, which tended to make marriage a conjugal community.