ABSTRACT
This chapter offers in admiration and gratitude to a pioneering woman scholar. Averil Cameron’s work on gender history has been undertaken at a time when major social changes in gender roles and family structures have prompted major changes in scholarship. The Christian, Augustine of Hippo, is exceptional in that the authors have so much of his work. A decade later, writing Confessions, Augustine described a Milan in which the Life of Antony found admiring readers, Bishop Ambrose praised virginity and supported ascetic communities, and some serious-minded people thought that marriage was incompatible with Christian commitment. When Augustine had to defend the patriarchs of the Old Testament against charges of lust, he argued that they were polygamous only because it was their duty to beget children, and polygamy was appropriate for that early stage of human history.
