Nineteenth-century urban Greek households: the case of Hermoupolis, 1861–1879

Abstract

The structure of nineteenth-century Greek households remains largely unknown. The handful of published articles and books based on quantitative analysis suggest the existence and persistence of many household forms among Greek populations. The most extensive study, and the only one dealing with an urban population, focuses on Athens. In The Making of the modern Greek family, Sant Cassia and Bada argue that an ‘urban model’ had emerged by the 1830s. Adopted from the nikokirei ‘upper-class’ group, households were characterized by equal partibility of parental property among sons and daughters, the generous endowment of daughters at marriage and ‘a tendency towards neolocality’ (the formation of an independent household on marriage). Gradually, this ‘Athenian model’ of property transmission and household organization ‘was legitimized by the church and by popular literature, and eventually became the cultural norm not merely for townspeople but for those in the countryside as well’. The authors are eager to point out that these ‘family forms and patterns of property transmission in Greece, especially in urban areas, are “new” rather than continuations of traditional rural patterns’, implying the ‘export’ of these new forms from the Athenian to other urban and rural populations.