‘Start with the cage’: coercive control and the Roman husband

Abstract

This chapter investigates domestic violence in the ancient world by making use of the expanded understanding of the abusive relationship between perpetrator and victim offered by the concept of coercive control. Coercive control describes a pattern of behaviour which may include acts of physical violence, but also non-physical emotional, psychological and financial abuse. I offer four case-studies, each of which takes as its starting point a behaviour associated with coercive control: (1) patriarchal entitlement; (2) patterns of abuse; (3) intimate partner homicide; and (4) non-physical abuse. A broader definition of domestic violence allows us better to understand the abuse (physical and non-physical) experienced by victims in the ancient world and encourages greater sensitivity to the experience of modern victim-survivors of domestic abuse and the ways in which these modern readers (including our students) may interpret ancient evidence.