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If a daughter could prove the proposed husband to be of bad character, she could legitimately refuse the match. [12] The age of lawful consent to a marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. [13] Most Roman women married in their early teens to young men in their twenties. [14]
In Roman law, the slave had no kinship—no ancestral or paternal lineage, and no collateral relatives. [72] The lack of legal personhood meant that slaves could not enter into forms of marriage recognized under Roman law, and a male slave was not a father as a matter of law because he could not exercise patriarchal potestas. [73]
Roman law regarded the slave as property; slaves lacked legal personhood and therefore could not enter into contracts on their own behalf, including legally sanctioned forms of marriage . Some slaves, however, were permitted or encouraged to form family units—permanent heterosexual unions within which "natural children" ( liberi naturales ...
Since the status of slaves was defined by the lack of legal personhood, ancillae could not enter into forms of marriage recognized in Roman law; however, ancillae like other household slaves might form a heterosexual union (contubernium) [5] that expressed an intention to marry if both partners were manumitted and obtained citizen rights. [6]
Sporus (died 69 AD) was a young slave boy whom the Roman emperor Nero had castrated and married as his empress during his tour of Greece in 66–67 AD, allegedly in order for him to play the role of his wife, Poppaea Sabina, who had died the previous year. [1] [2] [3] [4]
But because under Roman law a slave had no father, freed slaves had no inheritance rights unless they were named in a will. The relationship of a former slave to her patron could be complicated. In one legal case, a woman named Petronia Iusta attempted to show—without a birth declaration to prove it—that she had been free-born.
Ara Pacis showing the imperial family of Augustus Gold glass portrait of husband and wife (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Museo Sacro). The ancient Roman family was a complex social structure, based mainly on the nuclear family, but also included various combinations of other members, such as extended family members, household slaves, and freed slaves.
A depiction of two lovers at a wedding. From the Aldobrandini Wedding fresco. The precise customs and traditions of weddings in ancient Rome likely varied heavily across geography, social strata, and time period; Christian authors writing in late antiquity report different customs from earlier authors writing during the Classical period, with some authors condemning practices described by ...