ABSTRACT
How was authority exercised within the family, and how did this change over time? If these questions are as interesting for historians of the post-Roman west as for Byzantinists, it is equally true that their importance is matched by the variegated diculty of answering them. Byzantinists and westerners alike have approached both questions by asking how Christianisation altered classical patriarchy.1 In a pair of ne papers, Anne Alwis and Christine Angelidi take the entrée oered by hagiographical texts.
