The Family in Mesopotamia & Homeric Greece

One of the most important documents of Mesopotamian civilization was the Code of Hammurabi, a document of laws that reveals much about the society that produced those laws. This was a society with a system of strict justice, calling for severe penalties for criminal offenses, and also punishments that varied by class. The Code demonstrates that the society took a serious view of the responsibilities of public officials. Hammurabi was the leader of a strong group that unified the Near East and united the independent city-states of the Akkadian Dynasty. The family is clearly an important division in society as a number of important provisions in the Code address issues of marriage and the family. Hammurabi first of all provided for a form of marriage contract that would be necessary for a man and woman to be married. The marriage union is protected by law so that a man can end a marriage under certain circumstances. The various rulings are directed largely at protecting the husband from a wayward wife, and there is a clear sexual bias in the way the laws are written and a

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from the Greek and Roman era shows that the nature of family has certain elements which carry across class lines but that there are also class differences in the nature of family arrangements. The excerpt from Tacitus shows the nature of family relationships as they serve the greater social and political needs of the upper class. Tacitus here writes about his father-in-law in a glowing way, and it is evident that the way the family is structured still is mirrored in the way the state is structured. The emperor here is the father to the people much as Agricola is the patriarch of his family unit. The emperor has a number of prerogatives which are discussed by Tacitus and which neither he or his father-in-law are going to challenge because that would lose them their positions. In addition, one does not question the patriarch, who has both his own and the family interests in mind at one and the same time. Tacitus sees this as a blessed age, an emergence from a period of darkness and from a time when freedom was lacking. Yet, freedom in his own age is curtailed according to the needs and wants of the emperor: Now at long last our spirit revives. In the first dawn of this blessed age, Nerva harmonized the old discord betwee
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Akkadian Dynasty, Greek Roman, Homer Homer, Trojan War, Anchises Aeneas, Code Hammurabi, , Romulus Remus, Indeed Romans, Historian Livy, nature family, hesiod writes, family unit, culture culture, trojan war, family takes, including issues, blessed age, class family,
Approximate Word count = 1633
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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