ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the interplay of asceticism, family life and children in early Christian ideology, and also the first to scrutinise in depth the role of children in the actual family dynamics of the Roman world. It focuses on rhetoric and on the construction of the idea of personal and family continuity on which the ecclesiastical writers of Late Antiquity built. The book discusses continuity both in Roman culture and ideology, and in the earlier studies in family dynamics. It introduces a model of continuity strategies, which connects the ideological continuity discourses with the role of actual children in individual and family strategies. The book explores the interplay between the family discourses of Late Antiquity and Christian/Roman identities. It examines the rise of asceticism influencing family dynamics in Late Antiquity and what difference Christianity made in the history of children and childhood.
