"This book bridges a gap between two traditional disciplines. Since the 1970s, there has been a remarkable outpouring of work on women in antiquity, but women in late antiquity (3rd-6th centuries AD) have been far less studied. Classicists have been more concerned with the first two centuries AD, and theologians have been interested in New Testament, rather than patristic teaching about women or its social and cultural setting. Women in Late Antiquity offers an introduction to the basic conditions of life for women: marriage, divorce, celibacy, and prostitution; legal constraints and protection; childbearing, health care, and medical theories; housing, housework, and clothes; and the general assumptions about female nature which were discarded at need. Christian and non-Christian literature, art, and archaeology are used to exemplify both the practicalities of life and the prevailing 'discourses' of the antique world."--BOOK JACKET.