Marriage in ancient Rome

This form of prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male resource polygyny[a] in Greco-Roman civilization may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of democratic and republican city-states.

Early Christianity embraced this ideal of monogamous marriage by adding its own teaching of sexual monogamy, and perpetrated it worldwide and became as an essential element in many later Western cultures.

According to Livy, Romulus and his men abducted the Sabine maidens but promised them honorable marriage, in which they would enjoy the benefits of property, citizenship, and children.

Matrimonium, the root of the English word matrimony, defined the role of wives as mothers (matres) who would produce legitimate children, as eventual heirs to their parents' estates.

The Romans considered marriage a partnership, whose primary purpose was to have legitimate descendants to whom property, status, and family qualities could be handed down through the generations.

[7] Walter Scheidel believes that Greco-Roman monogamy in marriage may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of the democratic and republican political systems of the city-states.

According to Livy, Romulus and his men abducted the Sabine maidens, but promised them an honorable marriage, in which they would enjoy the benefits of property, citizenship, and children.

[8] Under Roman law, the oldest living male, the "father of the family" (pater familias), held absolute authority (patria potestas) over his children and, to a lesser extent, his wife.

After arranging his daughter's first two marriages, Marcus Tullius Cicero disapproved – rightly, as it turned out – of her choice to marry Dolabella, but found himself unable to prevent it.

[18] Early Roman law recognized three kinds of marriage: confarreatio, symbolized by the sharing of spelt bread (panis farreus);[19] coemptio, "by purchase"; and by usus (habitual cohabitation).

[26] Following the collapse of the Republic, laws about marriage, parenting, and adultery were part of Augustus' program to restore the mos maiorum (traditional social norms) while consolidating his power as princeps and pater familias of the Roman state.

[29] The new legislation formalized and enforced what had been considered a traditional, moral duty to family and the State; all men between 25 and 60 years of age, and all women between 20 and 50 were to marry and have children, or pay extra tax in proportion to their wealth.

[31] These laws were poorly received; they were modified in 9 AD by the Lex Papia Poppaea;[clarification needed] eventually, they were nearly all repealed or fell into disuse under Constantine and later emperors, including Justinian.

[32] In the case of Roman citizen men, it is not clear whether the condition that a man is not able to have a concubine at the time that he has a wife pre-dates or post-dates the Constantinian law;[33] ie., whether concubinage existed concurrently with marriage for men in Ancient Rome has been debated in modern scholarship and the evidence is inconclusive: it was not until the sixth century CE, after centuries of Christian influence, that the emperor Justinian claimed that “ancient law” prohibited husbands from keeping wives and concubines at the same time.

[7] According to Walter Schedule, conditions in the Ancient Rome are best defined as prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male resource polygyny; powerful men had a principal wife and several secondary sexual partners.

[7] A married man's sexual activities with slaves, prostitutes, or other women of low status were not, in legal terms, adultery, and he could not be prosecuted under Augustus Laws.

The Flamen Dialis and pontifex maximus presided, with ten witnesses present, and the bride and bridegroom shared a cake of spelt (in Latin far or panis farreus), hence the rite's name.

[45] According to the historian Valerius Maximus, divorces were taking place by 604 BC or earlier,[46] and the early Republican law code of the Twelve Tables provided for it.

[47] Valerius says that Lucius Annius was disapproved of because he divorced his wife without consulting his friends;[48] that is, he undertook the action for his purposes and without considering its effects on his social network (amicitia and clientela).

[52] Divorce by either party severed the lawful family alliance that had been formed through the marriage, and remarriage might create an entirely new set of economically or politically beneficial partnerships.

[54] The duration may allow for pregnancy: if a woman had become pregnant just before her husband's death, the period of ten months ensures that no question of paternity, which might affect the child's social status and inheritance, would attach to the birth.

The marriages of Fulvia, who commanded troops during the last civil war of the Republic and who was the first Roman woman to have her face on a coin, are thought to indicate her political sympathies and ambitions: she was married first to the popularist champion Clodius Pulcher, who was murdered in the street after a long feud with Cicero; then to Scribonius Curio, a figure of less ideological certitude who at the time of his death had come over to Julius Caesar; and finally to Mark Antony, the last opponent to the republican oligarchs and to Rome's future first emperor.

Remarriages thus created a unique blending of the family in ancient Roman society, where children were influenced by stepparents and some instances where stepmothers were younger than their stepchildren.

Although prohibitions against adultery and harsh punishments were mentioned during the Republic (509–27 BC), historical sources suggest that they were regarded as archaic survivals and should not be interpreted as accurate representations of behavior.

[65] Adultery was sufficient grounds for divorce, however, and if the wife was at fault, the wronged husband got to keep a portion of her dowry, though not much more than if he had repudiated her for less severe forms of misconduct.

[66] As part of the moral legislation of Augustus in 18 BC, the Lex Iulia de adulteriis ("Julian Law concerning acts of adultery") was directed at punishing married women who engaged in extra-marital affairs.

[67] A wronged husband was entitled to kill his wife's lover if the man were either enslaved or infamis, a person who was perhaps technically free and excluded from the standard legal protections extended to Roman citizens.

"[71] A gynocentric view in the late 20th to early 21st century saw love affairs as a way for the intelligent, independent women of the elite to form emotionally meaningful relationships outside marriages arranged for political purposes.

[72] It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state and, by extension, himself, in the role of paterfamilias to all Rome.

"[74] Augustus himself, however, had frequent recourse to his moral laws in choosing to banish potential enemies and rivals from Rome, and the effect of the legislation seems to have been primarily political.