Providing an introduction to women's lives in late antiquity (3rd - 6th centuries AD) when Christianity became the dominant religion, this book ranges across both the Pagan and the Christian culture. It should be of interest to classicists, ancient historians and theologians, and scholars of patristics or life in the early Church, theologians and scholars of patristics interested in the same period; ancient historians and scholars in women's studies. In this study, Dr Clark offers an introduction to the basic conditions of life for women: marriage, divorce, celibacy and prostitution; legal constraints and protection; child-bearing, 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 ancient world.