The Roman Family

Author: Stell, R., (2005), “The Roman Family: Some notes for re-enactors”, first published in The Imperial Courier, Volume 1, Issue 4, THE RMRS, pp.5-8.

Head of the familia The paterfamilias has absolute power (patria potestas) over all members of his family and household; collectively his familia [1]. He had the power of life and death over his wife, children and slaves; a power enshrined in Roman law from the 5th-century BC. From the 2nd-century BC, however, this began to change. The paterfamilias still had the legal right, but in practice fathers who killed their sons were frowned upon and recourse to family council, or consilium, was advisable.

Studies of patria potestas from the Republic to the Empire suggest a gradual lessening of the legal power of the paterfamilias to punish or control, and parents were probably rarely as harsh as the law allowed them to be. Yet, the tradition remained and was idealised by historians and moralists. The right of patria potestas, however, only applied to Roman citizens. It was unique to Roman culture and it should be borne in mind that non-Romans may have had quite different attitudes and family structures. It is also worth noting that these customs or traditions were more likely adopted and pursued by upper class, patrician, families than by ordinary Romans.

The paterfamilias was typically the oldest living male in each family. Thus, the grandfather would always be paterfamilias and his eldest son could not be the same to his children until his father’s (the grandfather’s) death. Of note, there being no formal age of majority [2] in ancient Roman law, in theory a child could become the head of the familia. Regardless, the paterfamilias had total power over all members of his familia (unless formally released from this obligation) even if they were adults with children of their own. Put simply, a son could not overrule his paterfamilias unless it could be proved that the father was insane.

The structure of the Roman family has long been thought of as several generations living in the same house. It is more widely accepted that, while sons and their families remained under the control of the paterfamilias, as each son married, he left to form his own familia, thus becoming a paterfamilias in his own right. Roman families, it seems, did not live in multi-generational households. Even so, sons were only released from their father’s potestas on the latter’s death, or if they had been emancipated [3].

With the paterfamilias’ death, his children became sui juris (legally independent). If this applied equally to the deceased’s wife and daughters, then the son was not legally responsible for his mother and sisters. In practice, however, in the patriarchal Roman society men were deemed of higher status and were expected to assert control over their female relatives.

Becoming paterfamilias brought with it rights and responsibilities:

• The paterfamilias had complete control over all property including slaves. A son subject to his father’s potestas could not own or inherit anything.

• Until the 4th-century AD, fathers had the right to choose whether to raise or expose their children.

• The father’s consent was needed for his children’s marriages to be valid. Until the 2nd-century AD a father had the right to veto his children’s marriages, but it was considered to be unacceptable for a father to end a happy marriage.

• Recruits had to be officially freed of their father’s potestas before they could join the Roman army.

The Roman upper echelon, the patrician class, were somewhat pre-occupied with the survival of their familial name or gens. Although freedmen might adopt their former master’s name, only a true heir ensured the gens continuation. This was frequently achieved through adoption whereby a family without a male child might adopt one from another family. In the latter family’s case, this may have suited them as it reduced the number of children sharing an inheritance. The survival of patrician class was considered so fundamental that the Emperor Augustus enacted laws penalising upper class Roman men who did not marry or produce children. Significantly, Augustus’ legislation of 18 BC and AD 9 was not repealed until AD 320 when the Emperor Constantine I came to power.

Marriage and the role of women In pre-classical Roman law, adult Roman women fell under the manus, or control, of their husbands. A wife was regarded as either cum manu or sine manu. These terms did not define two different sorts of marriage but rather two different matrimonial property regimes. The former, cum manu, was the more traditional arrangement for venerable patrician or priestly families, but it largely fell out of favour by the 1st-century BC. If a bride was cum manu, then her dowry and property became her husband’s until either it was returned on her husband’s death or the couple divorced. The husband’s dominance over his wife may seem inequitable to modern eyes but remember that, in the patriarchal Roman society, Roman women were held to be legally, socially, and emotionally inferior to men. We must not envisage Roman marriage as anything like the partnership of equals expected today; any Roman woman without a paterfamilias had to be married or have a guardian (tutor) [4].

A cum manu marriage also meant the woman passed from the potestas of her father to the control (manus) of her husband. Equally she passed from her father’s familia to that of her husband. This meant in manus marriages left the woman with only the same inheritance rights as her children while at the same time having no legal power over her own children. By the 1st-century BC, therefore, many patrician women were marrying sine manus thereby remaining in the legal control of their paterfamilias. Although in either circumstance she was still subject to male dominance, with this latter form of marriage she retained the rights of a daughter. This may not seem advantageous but on her father’s death she became legally independent and had the right to own property and dispose of it as she wished. Conveniently for families desperate to protect their gens, this shift to sine manus marriage also had the effect of keeping a woman’s property securely within her natal family rather than handing it to another.

Beyond the matrimonial property arrangements, the Romans had three forms of marriage ceremony: confarreatio, coemptio, and usus. Confarreatio was the ancient patrician form of Roman marriage, which was especially necessary at the nuptials of those whose children were intended to be vestal virgins or flamens of Jupiter. The name originated in the bride and bridegroom sharing a cake of spelt (far or panis farreus), in the presence of the pontifex maximus [5], flamen dialis [6], and ten witnesses. This form of marriage could only be dissolved by another equally solemn ceremony, which was called diffarreatio. In later republican times, confarreatio became obsolete except in the case of the most sacred priesthoods-the flamines and the rex sacrorum. Confarreatio was the most solemn of the three forms of marriage, but in later times the ceremony fell into disuse, leaving just the two, coemptio and usus. Coemptio (convenire in manum) was the acquisition of manus by a formal purchase, the mancipatio (Gaius, 1. 113-14). In contrast, usus was year by year cohabitation, which implied coming into the manus of the husband unless, to avoid this legal consequence, the wife absented herself for three nights (usurpatio trinoctii) (Gaius, 1.111).

Age gap The difference in ages between husbands and wives was often pronounced. For example, until the 2nd-century AD soldiers could not be legally married. More accurately, the state did not recognise such marriages as legal and thus had no responsibility caring for families and could uproot husbands and fathers and post them to wherever needed in the Empire. Wives and children would be left to cope as best they could. Marriages were recognised on the soldier’s discharge but for many they married later in life. Tombstones frequently depict a visibly older husband and younger wife.

The letters of the prolific authors Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the younger) and Marcus Tullius Cicero reveal that strong bonds could exist between husbands and wives, but Roman marriage was based on the need for legitimate children to continue the gens. A younger wife had a better chance of bearing children to perpetuate a family name, which may explain the visible age gaps. The qualities valued in a marriage were affection and concord (caritas et concordia) rather than love. Inscriptions on tombstones reveal that couples strove for or were proud to achieve “bene concordantia matrimonia”.

Children Patrician marriages were often made for political or financial reasons, and divorce to make a more advantageous match was not uncommon. Children from patrician families might expect their parents to divorce and remarry, perhaps several times.

Such children may have had slaves, nurses and pedagogues (teachers) to raise them, but nonetheless there was an ideal of parental affection. Citing infant exposure [7], some have suggested that Roman parents were at best ambivalent towards their children, but this could not be further from the truth. Funerary monuments often show mothers nursing children and fathers teaching them. The ideal Roman parent’s role was to instil discipline and insure the moral welfare of their children. As with marriage, love was not the cornerstone of the relationship, but the commemoration of beloved children on tombstones shows many parents cared deeply and were bereft at the loss of a child.

Treating children harshly was not deemed comparable with good parenting. While slaves might be beaten or whipped, it was argued that children should not be chastised in this manner. To do so was thought psychologically harmful and, moreover, a punishment fit for slaves was simply not suitable for the freeborn. The ideal was to guide children “by means of encouragement and reasoning…not by blows nor by ill-treatment” (Plutarch, Moralia, De liberis educandis (“The Education of Children”), 12).

Pietas, the virtue of affection, compassion and duty was an obligation of both parents and children. It was pietas for children to respect their parents and their parents’ wishes while parents had a duty not to neglect their children and provide them a fair inheritance. In this way pietas tempered patria potestas.

Even the poor and slaves needed childcare arrangements to allow them to work. Nurses or childminders, commonly slaves themselves, often cared for the children of slaves alongside those of their masters. It was not unusual, therefore, for freeborn and slave children to be raised together. Moreover, as evidenced from tombstones honouring them, slave children (or foundlings) were frequently adopted by the freeborn members of a household. Those children of slaves not so adopted were often cared for by fellow slaves who raised them and acted as their family.

Slaves and the familia All the slaves belonging to a household were part of the familia [1]. Roman society approved of a master’s restraint and a slave’s obedience, but the latter was ultimately achieved with the threat of the whip. A slave’s loyalty was expected and even those who were freed remained part of the familia with bonds to their patron and their former fellow slaves. The slave’s role in Roman society was somewhat complex, and worthy of a more detailed discussion elsewhere. Suffice to say, in Roman law slaves were the property of their masters, had no kin and could be parted from or sold separately from their relatives. Even so, the historian and author Pliny (the younger), like many Roman masters, was evidently fond of his slaves and distressed by their deaths. Although legally without kin, he enabled his slaves to make wills provided they left their possessions to other members of the familia.

Once accepted into a familia, however, many slaves formed family-like ties and there are many references on tombstones to fellow slaves being referred to as “brother”. The bonds formed in slavery were strong and slaves were proud of their relationships. As an example, take the woman who recorded a long and firm relationship thus: “Nicepor my fellow freedman lived with me for twenty years”. Despite the years together after manumission, she would not have been married while enslaved. The closest slaves could get to marriage was to form a “contubernia” [8] a type of common law marriage that was not legally recognised. From their tombstones we know that many slaves, and ex-slaves who could legally get married, continued to refer to their fellows, or spouses in the case of the latter, as “contubernalis”. To confuse things further, many slaves who were not and could not be married referred to their “husband” or “wife”.

We do know that such relationships relied on the goodwill of the slave’s master who, remember, had the right to break up a slave family. Slaves were property such that the children of slaves belonged not to their parents but to their parent’s master. If the slave owner manumitted (freed) the parents, he was under no obligation to free children born into slavery.

Freedmen, women and their families Freed men and women received Roman citizenship on manumission, taking the nomem, or name, of their former master. For example, Catilius and Catilia might be a man and a woman freed by their former owner Catilius. Freedom and citizenship also conferred the right to legal Roman marriage (iusta nuptiae) and any future children were automatically citizens. There are also many examples of men marrying their freed slaves and particularly of freedmen purchasing a fellow slave in order to free and then marry her.

This article has only just scratched the surface of the intricacies of Roman families. Much more could be said about the relationships between Roman men and women, whether as part of the familia or in marriage, of the bonds with children, and often complex relationships with slaves. It is hoped, however, that your interest has been piqued enough to delve into and explore Roman society further.

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Endnotes:

1. In Roman law, familia refers to the paterfamilias (the male head of the household), his legitimate descendants and their wives, all persons adopted into his family and their wives, and all slaves belonging to the household. ▲

2. In today’s UK the legal age of majority is 18 years old, although there are certain lawful exceptions. ▲

3. Emancipation could be realised through a formal ceremony, but it is unclear what this ceremony entailed. Emancipation also could be attained by binding a son to a creditor, although this could be done only three times after which the son was legally free. Sons were often emancipated when adopted into another family (one usually without sons). By so doing families reduced the number of children sharing any inheritance. For the purpose of inheritance, kinship was passed through the male line. From the 2nd-century BC onwards, however, the relationship between mothers and children were recognised such that fathers and mothers were encouraged to pass on an inheritance to their children. ▲

4. According to Augustus’ laws, however, any woman who had borne three children was released from the restrictions of male guardianship. ▲

5. Pontifex (Latin: “bridge builder”, plural pontifices), a member of a council of priests in ancient Rome. The ponitfex maximus, or “Chief Priest”, was therefore the chief administrator of Roman religious law. The role was quickly identified with and assumed by the emperors; a sound political move forever linking the emperor with Roman state religion. ▲

6. The Flamen Dialis was the high priest of Jupiter. The term Dialis is related to Diespiter, an Old Latin form of the name Jupiter. There were 15 flamines, of which three were flamines maiores, serving the Archaic Triad, the three original deities worshipped on Rome’s Capitoline Hill namely Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus. According to tradition the flamines were forbidden to touch metal, ride a horse, or see a corpse. ▲

7. Infant exposure, or abandonment, was the practice of leaving an unwanted child either to die (from hypothermia, starvation, dehydration or animal predation) or be found, raised and possibly adopted by someone, perhaps a couple, unable to conceive. ▲

8. From Latin contubernium an assimilated form of com “with, together” + taberna “shop, inn, tavern”, although originally meaning “hut, shed, rude dwelling”. In the Roman army it meant “tent-companion, comrade” but in a more general, domestic sense it meant a household or company (of people) or, in this case, a marriage of slaves. ▲