Sep 18, 2025 at 4:45pm - 6:15pm | 402 Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th St.
*4:15-4:45 pm: Coffee and cookies in Cohen Hall 2nd Floor Lounge. All are welcome.
Speaker:
Jordan Christopher, Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Archaeology, Loyola Marymount University
Abstract:
Both Republican Rome and Zhou China were clan-based societies, wherein individuals understood themselves prominently as members of large familial groups that shared senses of achievement and honor. This paper compares the Roman gens and the Zhou zu 族 to highlight the cultural differences inherent in these two conceptions of extended kinship groups. Drawing on Nicola Terrenato and C.J. Smith’s exploration of the Roman gens from ancient ideology to modern anthropology, this paper highlights the gens as a cornerstone of Roman social organization and political power. In parallel, it then explores the approaches of scholars like Robert H. Gassmann on the Zhou zong as central to maintaining social order and continuity in Zhou China, illustrating how ancestral veneration and familial duty shaped social norms and hierarchical structures. Once outlined, these clan structures are compared, highlighting the rigidity of such groups as zong and zu compared to the gens and the smaller familia, and how Roman familial flexibility enabled it to work with and develop the frameworks of citizenship that defined Roman society, whereas the familial structures of early China retained rigidity that reinforced a set social hierarchy through the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods. This comparative study not only enhances our understanding of Roman and Zhou social structures but also contributes to broader discussions on the role of kinship in historical socio-political organization.