Roman marriages

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete comreligiones

Around this time last year SVR hosted a Roman marriage ceremony via the internet. It may be, since I have already been approached, that we will once again conduct such a ceremony come next month. Since last year I have been distracted from posting further on Roman marriages and their ceremonies, or of putting together another contribution to our website on the subject. That will be shortly corrected. As I go over my notes and begin to write an article, I will be posting here in this thread various things related to Roman marriage customs.

In this first post on the subject let us look at those times of year when marriage ceremonies may not be lawfully conducted. It was forbidden to perform marriage ceremonies on the kalends, nones, or ides of each month, or on the following day. Marriages could not take place in the month of May, or during the periods of 13-21 February, 1-20 March, or 5-15 June before the purification of Vesta?s temple (Ovid Fasti 2.557, 3.339, 3.397-8; 5.488-90; 5.621-2; 6.225-34). Days dedicated to
the Manes, or on which the mundus was opened (24 August, 5 October, and 8 November) were prohibited, as were the atri (black days) of unfortunate dates like 18 July (Roman defeat at Allia) or 2 August (Cannae) when "religious law forbade sacred acts" (Macr. Sat. 1,15,22). Other dates, considered unfortunate in a family according to their particular cultus gentilis, would also rule out days on which to hold marriage ceremonies. At one time marriages were predominately held along with spring rites in April, seen perhaps by the Carmentalia of 15 January, when the goddess of childbirth was invoked.

Vadete feliciter in pacem Cererri

Moravius Piscinus
Praeceptior religionis romanae
Flamen Cerealis

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

In ancient Rome marriage arrangements took various forms. Some were no more than a contractual arrangement, while a special type of ceremony, called a confarreatio, involved a solemn ritual. For the most part, marriage involves a family?s property rights, or its patrimony, with a consideration that has to do with inheritance. Roman children were under the authority of their father. At a certain age, usually at fourteen, boys would leave childhood in a ritual donning of the toga libera or toga virilis of manhood and along with his father he would make his first appearance in public as a man by offering sacrifice at a temple. The toga praetexta, with its purple edge, that he wore as a child was offered to Juventus in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. For many men this sacrifice took place around Liberalia on 17 March (Ovid Fasti 3.771-88) Women, however, remained as children until marriage. It was not unusual for a girl of around age sixteen to be given in her first marriage to a man in his late twenties or early thirties. The woman?s husband took over the role of her father, with marriage being more a transmission of parental authority than a bonding. A ceremonial aspect of marriage involved the bride packing her childhood toys that were then carried in her procession. Afterward she would become a matron, wearing a distinctive attire, and was addressed as the ?lady of the house? (domina) even by her husband. Her transition from childhood to adulthood was symbolized most in a marriage ceremony by her husband presenting her with the keys to his house.

An early form of Roman marriage, known as usus, involved the transfer of a father?s authority (manus) over a woman to her husband and did not require any ceremony. The woman was simply given by her father to a man quite literally ?to use,? although the arrangement was usually made with the woman?s consent. All that was required from the husband was a statement of honorable intent to marry (adfectus maritalis) and the man and woman would then cohabit. After a full year of cohabitation the couple were considered married, where as a woman might end the arrangement at any time during that first year by remaining away for three consecutive night. If the woman did remain, she was still regarded to be under her father?s authority, which may have afforded her some protection against her husband. An arrangement of usus involved the payment of a bride?s dowry. Among the poorer classes a woman?s dowry might be no more than her household utensils. A wealthier woman might instead have a dowry of property that would be paid in three annual installments. Upon the death of the woman?s father, his manus was then transferred to her husband, along with control over any property she might have. If the husband should later divorce her, a portion of her property would remain with the husband, another portion with the woman, and a third went to the goddess Ceres. A woman might also be given to a man to use as a concubine (praelex), basically sold to the man without adfectus maritalis, in which the arrangement was not regarded to be a marriage. If in an arrangement of usus the bride was herself given as a dowry, it was still considered to be a legal marriage, although it brought great shame to the woman as she was little more than a concubine in that case. A special situation arose in a usus marriage where a father might put into his will that a daughter would be free of his authority upon his death; she became suae iuris. This form of marriage had certain advantages for a woman, in that she retained a right to manage her own property rather than her husband, and she could initiate divorce. By the end of the Republic the usus had become an obsolete arrangement and was replaced by a more formal form of marriage.

The coemptio formalized the arrangements of a usus. This form of Roman marriage involved a written agreement (tabula legitima). The agreement was made between those who held authority over the bride and groom, thus either between the two fathers, or else between the husband and bride?s father. It involved a legal contract that provided for the dowry and other arrangements. Around the signing of the agreement a ceremony grew, since it involved making a sacrifice with the gods called to witness and auspices were taken to see if the gods approved of the arrangement. Unlike in the augury of the cultus civile where auspices were taken on behalf of the state only under the authority of Jupiter, private auspices were regarded to come from Picumnus, Pilumnus, Feronius, Vesta or other deities (Fest. 197a; Non. Marc. 518.). Birds that were not considered as auspices in state augury, such as swans or doves, could be regarded as auspices in private auguries (Serv. Ad Aen. 3.241). The direction from which birds flew could have the opposite meaning in private auguries than is generally stated for state auguries (Gell. 7.6 quoting Nigidius Figulus). Each family kept their own books on auspices, with their own traditional form of private augury. The bride would be called forward to give her formal consent. The groom would have to purchase his bride, paying for the transfer of the manus from her father. This nummus usus later became a token payment of a single copper coin to the bride?s father, although there is also mention of aurei, or coins given by the groom to the bride that she would later deposit in the lararium of her husband?s house. A coemptio required five witnesses to sign the agreement before it could be considered a legal contract and a legitimate marriage.

A still more formal form of marriage was the confarreatio. This involved a religious ceremony that required the presence of ten witnesses, including the Pontifex Maximus, flamen Dialis and his wife, the flamenica Dialis. Its name is derived from that portion of the ceremony where the bride and groom were seated together and shared a special far cake. Both bride and groom had to remain seated together throughout the ceremony. Otherwise, if the groom would rise from his seat during the ceremony, the rite was negated, the wife saying, ?The king has departed from his arrangement (Serv. Ad Aen. 4.374).? The ceremony was concluded with a solemn prayer and sacrifice. Unlike all other forms of Roman marriage, divorce was not allowed when a confarreatio had been performed since it was a sacred bond that was contra ius to willingly separate. Where Tellus was invoked for a coemptio, and Ceres played a prominent role in common forms of marriage, Juno was invoked to safeguard the vows of a confarreatio so that the couple would ?everafter be intermingled like the abundant clouds.? This sacred ritual was considered to be ?superior and certain unto posterity extended? (Serv. Ad Aen. 4.339, 4.374). Even on the death of one partner, the survivor was still bound from taking a new spouse by a confarreatio. In the case where the flamenica Dialis would die, her surviving spouse would have to resign from his office as flamen Dialis since it was required of this priest of Jupiter to be married, and married by a rite of confarreatio, which he could not repeat with another partner.

Valete
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

A clarification, a husband received the authority of manus over his wife's property, and in a sense over his wife as well. But manus was not the same as the patria potestas that included the ius vitae necisque that a paterfamilius held over his household. A father retained his potestas over his daughter even after she married. When a woman's paterfamilias died she would become free of his potestas and his manus then transferred to her husband. If her husband then died she would receive the authority of manus over her own property. However she also had to have a male member of her father's family become her "tutor" to help guide her in the use of her manus. Such matters of authority, inheritance, and property were concerned only in a family, never in a gens. There was never any legal status of a gens in Roman law or customs. The authority of a father with regard to potestas and manus could pass to his sons when they became the new paterfamilias, and manus might pass to one of the brothers of a paterfamilias under certain circumstances, but transfer of authority and property never passed from one family to another within the same gens.

Valete
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

One misconception about confarreatio is that this solemn rite was reserved for patricians alone. In 450 BCE an addition was incorporated into the Twelve Tablets that banned intermarriage between patricians and plebeians. This law greatly angered many Romans, not only plebeians but patricians as well, because intermarriage had been occurring all along, and what the law threatened to do was disinherit all patrician children born of a plebeian mother. In 445 the lex Canuleia overturned this provision of the Twelve Tablets. The argument Canuleius offered (Livy IV.3-V.6) in support of the new law is very instructive on what the distinction between patricians and plebeians was not. For one thing he says if the decimviri passed a law banning intermarriage between plebeians and patricians why did they not go firther and also prohibit intermarriage between the rich and poor? The counter argument given by a group of patricians is also instructive, "because no plebeian has the auspices, and that is the reason that the decimviri had forbidden intermarriage, lest the auspices should be confounded by the uncertain standing of those born to them (Livy IV.6.2-3)."

The distinction between patricians and plebeians was never ethnic in nature. We know that some patricians (Valerii and Claudii) were Sabine in origin, and that not all of the Latin patricians were from Rome (the Iulii for example). The distinction did not indicate a division among rich and poor, as Canuleius indicates, and where we find plebeians among the wealthy landed aristocracy. The distinction could not have originally been a political division since the former kings were not considered to be patricians, a point emphasized by Canuleius, and the very first consul of Rome, L. Iunius Brutus, was a plebeian, as were twenty other consulships in the early Republic held by plebeians (Cassius, Minucius, Tullius, Genucius, et cetera). The fact that plebeians had held the consulship really told against the patrician argument. Obviously they could not have been consules if they could not take the auspices. The claim made by some patricians that they alone could take auspices greatly angered plebeians, as Livy wrote, because it implied that the gods hated plebeians. It was really a slur meant solely to insult plebeians and everyone knew that it was a false claim. What is also interesting is that the patricians never claimed that plebeians did not marry by a confarreatio rite, or that the confarreatio was specifically a patrician rite. What is known as a fact is that confarreatio rites were conducted when patricians did marry plebeians, and there is nothing to even suggest that plebeians did not conduct confarreatio rites when they married.

The idea that a confarreatio was a rite reserved for patricians is a modern misconception based on some false assumptions. It began with Mommsen's assumption that it represented the only legitimate form of marriage between Roman citizens that was based on his other false notion that originally only patricians were citizens. This idea was really reflective of political considerations in his own day over voting rights. Other interpretations that plebeians represented an earlier proletariat and were the poorer classes is also reflective of 19th century social conditions and has no bearing on ancient society. Later 19th century racist theories that attempted to interpret the distinction between patricians and plebeians along ethnic lines assumed that the confarreatio was a cultural distinction. One aspect about a confarreatio that gave rise to these fallacious notions is that the flamen Dialis and his wife had to be present at the ceremony in order for it to be considered a valid ceremony. The flamen and flamenica Dialis themselves had to have been married by a confarreatio rite, and both had to be offspring of parents married in a confarreatio. The flamen Dialis was reserved for patricians alone. But that does not preclude him from being present at a confarreation between plebeians or an intermarriage between plebeians and patricians, and in fact since confarreatio rites are known to have been conducted in the latter case the flamen Dialis would had to have been present.

The three forms of Roman marriages - usus, coemptio, and confarreatio - existed prior to when the Twelve Tablets were written in the fifth century. By the end of the Republic usus and coemptio had mainly fallen into disuse, and confarreatio was rare. For a long period towards the end of the Republic there was no one filling the office of flamen Dialis, so a legitimate confarreatio could not be performed. That however did not preclude confarreatio rites from being conducted anyway. The distinction that is made between a legitimate and an illegitimate confarreatio in itself implies that the ritual was carried on even when the flamen Dialis was not present. In the later forms of nuptiae, elements of all three traditional forms were adopted into marriage ceremonies. Some of the marriage traditions that continue to this day are based on early Roman marriage ceremonies as they were adopted into the later nuptia rites of matrimonium.

Valete optime
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

A preliminary to any Roman marriage was the engagement ceremony called a Sponsalia. This took place at the house of the bride. Both families would draw up an agreement on the bride?s dowry, generally to be paid over three annual installments. In some forms of Roman marriage the groom would also pay a ?bride?s price,? that later came to be represented by two or three copper coins, called aurei (Juvenal VI.200). The Coemptio involved a ritual purchasing of the bride using bronze and scales. Later when the bride would actually enter into her husband?s house, she would present these coins as offerings to her husband?s Lares, thus becoming a member of the groom?s family. The bride would give her consent to the arrangement, and then both parties would sign a document of intent, called a tabula legitima (Juvenal II. 119; VI.25-7). At this time the bride and groom would be joined by holding hands, the groom placing an iron ring (anulus pronubis) on the bride?s finger as a pledge of fidelity (Juvenal II.27). Afterward there was a betrothal dinner. The intended bride would say, ?Nubo,? meaning, ?I veil myself,? to signify she was promised to a man and would become a matron. At that time she became known as a sponsa, pacta, dicta, or a ?hoped for? sperata (Plautus Trinion II, 4.99). It is the Sponsalia that most corresponds to modern marriage ceremonies.

Valete optime
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

There was another ceremony, occurring about a week after the Sponsalia, where the bride (nova nupta) was taken from her mother?s house and led in procession (domum deductio) to the house of her groom (novus maritus). On the eve of her wedding procession a bride offered her toga praetexta to Fortuna Virginalis (Arnobius 2.67) while her toys and other children?s attire were offered to her family?s Lares and Penates, or else to Venus. ?We will lay them on the hearth in homage to our Lar familiaris, so that he may grant my daughter a happy marriage (Plautus Aulul. 386 f).? At dawn an auspex nuptiarum would take the auspices for the marriage, and sacrifices would be offered. With favorable auspices, the tabula legitima was then signed by five witnesses for a coemptio, ten were needed for a confarreatio. A Pronuba, or matron only once married, would join together the right hands (dextrarum junctio) of the bride and groom. The bride would be embraced by her mother or friends before departing, and then there was a ritual enactment of the groom seizing his bride from her mother, evoking the legend of the rape of the Sabine women by Romulus? followers.

For the procession, the bride was dressed in a traditional costume. She wore a white robe with a purple fringe, or else one decorated with ribbons. It was called a tunica recta as it was vertically woven in an old style, and had no hem (Juvenal 2.124; Pliny H. N. 8.48 Festus p. 364, 24). Beneath her white tunica recta she was bound with a girdle (corona, zona, or cingulum) that the groom would later untie. The cingulum was tied into a special ?knot of Hercules? to ward of the evil eye and also to ensure the bride?s fertility (Festus p. 55, 18). The bride wore a special hairstyle called a tutulus. This consisted of her hair being divided into six locks, fastened by fillets (vittae), and drawn up into a cone shape (meta) similar to the hairstyle worn by the flamenica Dialis (wife of the priest of Jupiter). Her hair was parted using a bent iron spearhead (hasta recurva, or hasta caelibaris), and for some, for good luck the spearhead had to be one previously pierced into a gladiator (Ovid Fasti 2.560). The bride?s head was then covered by a flammeum, a veil of red-orange or else a bright yellow (Pliny H. N. 21.8), and her shoes would be in a matching colour (Catullus Carmina 52.10), fashionable among patricians being the red, upturned, pointed toes of Etruscan styled shoes.

The bride was led in procession by a young boy who carried a torch of Ceres, preferably one made of whitethorn (spina), or otherwise of pine, while two other boys, gemelli, supported the bride?s arms (Pliny H. N. 16.18). The bride or her friends would carry distaff and a spindle with wool (Pliny H. N. 8.48). Another boy, a camillus, would carry a covered vase, the cumera or cumerum, that held her utensils and toys of childhood (crepundia), along with five candles (Plutarch Quaest. Rom. Init). Outside the bride?s house would be standing her friends teasing her timidity with bawdy songs, called fescininnae. The groom?s friends would do the same near his house, teasing the groom, and along the way others would join in with more fescininnae (Ovid Fasti 3.675; Livy 7.2; Horace Epist. 2.1.145; Macrobius Saturn. 2.4; Catallus Carmina 61.27; Pliny H. N. 16.22; Virgil Geor. 2.385). Along the route of the procession walnuts were handed out to the crowd while the fescininnae were sung (Pliny H. N. 15.86). It is not clear whether walnuts were tossed to the gathered spectators as tokens of good fortune for the bride and groom, or used to chase away hecklers intent on lewd displays while offering their own fescininnae. The walnut signified the bride?s fertility to produce sons, and their use probably began as a sign of good fortune in a marriage. We also hear of the walnuts being thrown at certain youths, with lewd taunts to chase them away. In the Epithalamium Catullus refers to them as ?sluggish boys? used as concubines and worthy to receive only walnuts. Servius said that the walnuts the ?signified that the loitering boys were to be scorned (ad Virg. Eclog. 8.29,30).? The bride?s procession was a public affair, the entire community joining in a ruckus celebration, with shouts of ?Talassio? to wish them well.

Arriving at the groom?s house, decorated with garlands and flowers, the bride would conduct a little rite by which she blessed his house. This consisted of the bride wrapping filaments of wool around the doorposts, and using a branch of arbutus to anoint the door hinges three times with lard (adeps suillus) or wolf fat (adeps lupinus) (Ovid Fasti 6.155-6; Servius ad Aen. 4.19; Pliny H. N. 28.9). This rite is seen in Ovid?s story of Janus and Cranae (Ovid Fasti 6.101-30). Janus says, ?For lying with me, take control of the hinge; have this prize for your lost virginity.? He then gave her a bough of whitethorn, or hawthorn, ?to drive dreadful harm from doors.? After the marriage ceremony, the whitethorn carried in the bride?s procession would likely be hung over the door. Other such charms are known to have been placed over the windows of children. In becoming a bride, one duty of a wife was to protect her husband's house, often with magical formulae as may have been spoken in this house blessing. The bride was then carried over the threshold by pronubi, these being male friends of the groom who were only once married, seeing to prevent her foot from knocking the threshold or stumbling, as that would have been regarded as a bad omen.

Valete
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete

Inside the groom?s house would then be conducted other ceremonies. If a confarreatio was being conducted then there would be made the sacrifice of a sheep. The couple would be seated together on the sheepskin thrown over two chairs and their heads veiled (Servius ad Aen. 4.374). The couple would have to remain seated throughout the remainder of the ceremony, otherwise the marriage was abrogated. Carried along with the bride in the domum deductio were special spelt cakes (far) and mola salsa that would be shared by the bride and groom as they sat (Servius ad Virg. Eclog 8.82). Juvenal mentions maestaceum being distributed later in the evening to wedding guests and this may refer to the same spelt cakes shared by the bride and groom (Satires 6.201). A special formula prayer was said over the couple, and another sacrifice was made to conclude the ceremony

A coemptio was a less formal ceremony, exemplifying more of the traditional relationship between husband and wife, than that it was a sacred religious bonding. The husband would receive his new bride inside his house by offering her tokens of fire and water. The feet of the bride, and perhaps the groom as well, were washed in this water (Servius ad Aen. 4.104). The bride would have to touch the tokens of fire and water as a sign of her acceptance, and reply in the formula, ?Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia (Plutarch Quaest. Rom. 1.c).? The bride would then place her spindle and distaff on the sheepskin, and in return the groom would give her the keys to his house. After this, members of the household, even the husband, would always address the woman as ?Domina,?recognizing that she ruled inside the house. The groom then gave a wedding dinner, the coena nuptalis, to his guests. At the end of the meal, matrons, who had been married only once before, would conduct the bride from the table to the lectus genialis that was set up in the atrium of the house. This was the wedding bed, decorated with flowers, often with saffron-dyed sheets and violets after the wedding of Jupiter and Juno. The guests would bid the couple good night, returning the next day for another day?s entertainment given by the groom, while the bride and women performed religious rites. It was on this following day that the bride sacrificed to the Dii Penates of the house, and to the Lares of her husband?s family (Cicero De Repubilica V.5). She would then place her bride?s price into her new lararium as an offering, signifying her acceptance into her new family. In all, the wedding week beginning in the bride?s house then moving to and concluding with the sacrifices she made to the Lares of her husband, signified her transition from one family to another. Not only did she give up her childhood in her mother?s house, she accepted as her own, and was accepted amongst, the ancestors of her husband?s family.

Valete optime
Moravius Piscinus