Patterns of Roman Marriage

The subject of marriage among Romans is a complex one fraught with many problems. Part of complexity is due to fact that Rome itself was marked by vast social, political, and economic changes within twelve centuries of its existence. There can be little doubt that these changes were reflected in institutional character of family and marriage. Adding to problematic nature of Roman marriage is quality of data available prior to second century B.C. For this span of time there is very little reliable testimony concerning marriage practices. Nevertheless, for period with which this article principally deals (the first centuries before and after Christ) there are at hand writings of Roman historians and biographers who more than adequately document imperial family, its antecedents, its collaterals, and its affinals. Regrettably, though, there never were social scientists who thought it worthwhile to record and transmit marital alignments of the man on street, for thought itself would have repelled an educated person in ancient Rome. As a result, very nature of evidence limits us to socially, politically, and economically dominant oligarchies which successively controlled capital city of Roman realm. There is also available a wealth of legal commentary on marriage practices. It mainly consists of excerpts from Classical jurists1 incorporated in codification of Justinian (Mommsen and Krueger 1954) and legal tracts most recently and conveniently edited by J. Baviera (I964). It should be noted that all of primary sources have been critically scrutinized again and again by each new generation of Classical scholars. Of these sources, jurists are more concerned with establishment of legal principles of marriage as they relate to family than they are with description and analysis of actual marriages. Whereas jurists are a repository of legal precedent and discussion, literary sources (especially writings of historians and biographers) furnish most of detailed material for reconstructing genealogies, since they record actual marriages and give other evidence for stemmata of most notable citizens of Rome.2 In this paper we propose to show that within complex and sometimes confusing welter of marriage, divorce, and remarriage among JulioClaudians, there is an identifiable structure. The sources of data upon which

Ancient history · Genealogy · Sociology · Classical Studies and Legal History · Conflict of Laws and Jurisdiction · Demography · History · Legal principles and applications

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