The five-volume History of Private Life is a comprehensive study created in the 1980s by a group of French, British and American scholars under the leadership of the renowned historians from the Annales School - Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby. The five-volume book covers the entire history of the West from Antiquity to the end of the 20th century. The first volume contains the private life of Ancient Rome, medieval Europe, Byzantium: systems of social relationships that are strikingly different from those known to us. Analysis of the institutions of family and slavery, religion and lawmaking, everyday life and architecture allows us to deeply understand the transformations of both the way of private life and the European mentality, and also highlights the eternal conflict between the private and the public. Translation based on the updated 1999 edition.