2 - The Demographic Shape of Secular Singleness

Summary

For a variety of reasons, it is often presumed that the ancient Mediterranean world of Roman Corinth was a culture of near universal marriage. Peter Laslett, for example, classified household composition in traditional Europe into four broad categories based on geographical region: the West, the West/central, the Mediterranean, and the East.¹ The Mediterranean household in Laslett’s typology (including Greece and what was Roman Corinth) was characterized by high proportions of both male and female marrying and a low proportion of solitary households.² From her extensive analysis of Roman sources, Susan Treggiari also has concluded that there was a strong cultural disposition toward marriage and it was rare for a man to reach age sixty without having married, at least among the propertied classes.³ The case has been further bolstered by later studies and some demographic modelling from the same period.⁴