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 MARRIAGE IN OLD ROME

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Book II, ch. II; Johnston, The Private thing not deserving the name of nuptiae and Life of the Romans, ch. III.) as being mere matrimonia (relationships en As Roman citizenship spread so did the tered into by men and women for the sake right to intermarry. In the early days a of making the latter mothers, but no better patrician could not marry a plebeian; the than the mating of the beasts of the field children of such a union were only plebeian and involving none of those features that and were not under the power of the father; characterized the patrician marriage). Hav but after various struggles this wall of par ing no domestic altars they did not worship tition was broken down, and the Lex Catm- ancestors, so they could have no sacred leia in 442 B.C. conferred the connubium union before the hearth. That there was on the plebeians. There was a further ex laxity among many of the plebeians in their tension of this right to intermarry when a marital relations is extremely probable; the century later Rome admitted the Latin ceremony of confarreation was forbidden cities, which it had subdued, among its them; most likely coemption was not at citizens. Still later, citizenship and the con- that time introduced or even thought of, nubinm were given to freedmen. In 80 B.C. so that there was no way for them to con the Italians generally received the right of tract a marriage save by the simple inter intermarriage by the Lex Julia et Plaatia; change of consent and the living together this made the marriages of Roman citizens as man and wife for at least a year; this and foreigners of those places lawful in coming together was doubtless accompa each country, but it gave the husband no nied by customary social observances as has power over the wife. She did not become been well nigh universal. But no formal a Roman citizen because he was one. She ceremony, religious or civil, took place. remained a peregrina, and was only natu This union, called usus, did not give the rally, not civilly, a member of his family. husbands the power called mantis, nor even During the later days of the Republic and grant to the father the despotic authority in the time of the Empire citizenship was and control named patria potestas. Livy conferred upon men in various parts of the says, " Patricii qui patrcm circ possunt," world. Soldiers who had served for a cer men who knew their own fathers, men tain time and had allied themselves to for called father's sons; for plebeians unad eign women had their union converted into mitted into citizenship were only reckoned legitimate marriages, and at length, in A.D. as mother's sons. (Enc. Brit. s. v. Roman 212, Caracalla bestowed the once rare privi Law, Vol. XX, p. 674; The Ancient City, lege of citizenship on all the inhabitants of F. de Coulanges, B. IV, ch. II.) The aristocratic objection to the plebeian the Roman empire, and with it the connubium; after this any man might marry alliances that they not being citizens had any woman, unless special rules prevented. not the right of connnbinm — the first essen Augustus, by his Lex Julia dc tnaritandis or- tial to justac nuptiae — was removed by their dinibus. forbade senators to marry freed- admission into the ordinary rights of citi women, but all other citizens were allowed zenship by Servius: the other objection, that to many them (owing to the scarcity of not being patricians they could not marry by the only ceremony known to them, was women) unless they were prostitutes, pro curesses, condemned criminals, or actresses. gotten over by the introduction of the civil In the discussions on the law introduced ceremony of coemption. In the time of by the Tribune C. Canuleius, in the year of Servius there was introduced a new way of the City 309, to allow of the intermarriage acquiring ownership or authority over mov able things, called "mancipation." In the of patricians and plebeians, the patrician ora presence of a certain number of witnesses tors chose to decry plebeian unions as some