Roman Marriage and Motherhood, Part 1

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Roman Marriage and Motherhood, Part 1
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Questions from Last Class

• Common diseases in the ancient world
• Ancient medical literature concentrates on
  chronic and endemic diseases, not on epidemic
  ones.
• Most prominent diseases in ancient lit
• malaria
• tuberculosis

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Malaria

• 3 kinds described
• vivax (most common, long-living)
• falciparum (most dangerous, sickle-bearing?)
• quartan (fourth, quarterly)
• All resulted in fevers recurring every 2-3 days,
  in summer and autumn.
• All were present in Greece by the 4th c. BCE.

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TB

• Affected mostly young adults
• Common in congested urban areas

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Childhood Diseases

• Literature doesnt tell us much about childhood
  diseases, but enteric diseases such as infantile
  viral diarrhea and amoebic dysentery were
  probably what accounted for most of the high
  infant mortality we see in cemeteries.

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Chronic Malnutrition Diseases

• Especially common in childhood
• iron deficiency anemia
• rickets
• bladder-stone disease
• night blindness

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Adult Diseases

• Literature describes these adult diseases
• Chickenpox
• Diphtheria
• Mumps
• Whooping cough
• No definite evidence for measles, rubella,
  cholera. Flu uncertain common cold existed.

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Other Ills

• Leprosy was endemic in the Near East from the
  Bronze Age on, made its way slowly west in the
  Hellenistic period.
• No evidence for syphilis or gonorrhea, but some
  STDs existed genital herpes and trachoma, the
  main infectious cause of blindness.

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More Ills

• Heart disease isnt mentioned much in ancient
  literature, but palaeopathology suggests that
  underlying conditions like artherosclerosis were
  common.
• Some cancers were well-known Galen says breast
  cancer was common.

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Roman Marriage

• Legal requirements for marriage
• legal capacity (conubium) free Roman citizens
• age puberty 12 girls, 14 boys
• consent people sui iuris needed only their own,
  people in potestate needed their patres

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Marriage Contracts

• Outlines the financial agreement between the two
  parties. Protects womens property (dowry).
• Divorce Agreement not necessary to get divorced,
  but helps protect the individuals from later
  charges of adultery.

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Who is a Family Member?

• What we have learned already
• A woman is the beginning and end of her own
  familia
• there was no maternal potestas
• children were only related by blood,
• not legal relationship.

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Emotional Bonds in Marriage

• What can we learn from ancient literature and
  archaeology about the emotional bonds possible
  between husbands and wives?
• Examples
• Letters of Pliny the Younger to his wife
  Calpurnia (and about her)
• The story of Tiberius and Cornelia Gracchus
• The stories of wives whose husbands had been
  proscripted
• Epitaphs of those wealthy enough to commission
  them.

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The Act of Marriage

• Legal capacity, age, and consent were
  requirements for marriage - the wifes entry into
  her husbands house marked the fact of it.
• This is why husbands could have proxies for the
  ceremony, but wives could not.

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Behavior

• Exempla in literature and art show us the Roman
  ideal of wifely behavior.
• Literature
• Lucretia
• Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi)
• Calpurnia (Plinys wife)

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Artistic Representations

• I, Claudia, 71
• Clothing
• fully draped, veiled pious, chaste
• Bearing
• exudes personal dignity
• Face
• beautiful (in youth, at least).
• Female beauty as a virtue.

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Womens Clothing
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Fripperies?

• Clothing, cosmetics, and jewelry were held to be
  of great importance to women.
• The poets portray these as deceptive devices,
  used against men.
• La Rocco in I Claudia argues for the power
  behind physical appearances in ancient Rome.

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Livia

• Politics stood behind fashion trends of the
  aristocracy. Livia used her outward appearance
  as a powerful mode of political expression. Her
  austere garb/hairstyle was in line with Augustus
  reform movement.
• In this way women could have political power
  social prestige.

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Livia contra Kleopatra

• Livias simplicity and austerity were in
  deliberate contrast to the eastern luxury of
  Kleopatra, lover of both Caesar and Antony, who
  had lived in Rome for quite some time.

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Livias Influence Roman Girl with Austere Style
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Effects of Marriage

• Women took the social status of their husband (so
  you wanted to be sure you married up).
• Did husbands of wives not married in manu have to
  provide maintenance for them, according to the
  law?

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Providing Heirs

• Men were especially concerned with their wives
  providing heirs for the familia. This is why in
  early Rome sterility was a ground for a husbands
  divorcing a wife.
• Classical Roman law - no grounds for divorce
  needed.

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Womens Sphere Household
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Male Sphere Public
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Life Cycle Benefits

• Womens authority and position within the
  household increased as she became a mother
  (providing heirs) and a widow.
• Grandmothers were sometimes put in charge of
  grandchildren (seeing to rearing and education).
• Upper-class women were educated so that they
  could educate their children well.

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Miscarriages, etc.

• The fact that in the upper classes it was not
  unusual for girls to marry at 12, two years on
  average before they began to menstruate, meant
  that they were vulnerable to miscarriages and
  problems with pregnancy and childbirth.
• Example Tullia (Ciceros daughter), Calpurnia
  (Plinys wife)

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Mothers and Children

• What evidence do we have for possible emotional
  bonds between mothers and children?
• Laws governing mourning periods
• Literature (Senecas letter to his mother
  Cornelias letter to Gaius)
• Legacies

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Mothers and Wives in Trouble

• Ways to get into trouble
• damage the familias economic health
• (take stuff that doesnt belong to them)
• commit adultery (lose civic rights)
• poisoning (women strangled by male family
• members as punishment)
• abort children
• commit capital crimes (dowry goes to state)

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Divorce

• Withdrawal of consent to marriage.
• Those under their own power could divorce at
  will those not had to get their paters
  cooperation.
• The sending of a declaration of divorce
  terminates the marriage, not the receipt of the
  declaration (protects those whose spouses are
  insane, etc.)
• Marriage by confarreatio (spelt cake) could be
  dissolved by diffarreatio.

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Divorce, continued

• We cant easily detect evidence of divorce in the
  lower classes (hard to see archaeologically, on
  epitaphs, etc.).
• Dissolution of marriage could occur for other
  reasons husband enlists, or if either party
  loses conubium or civitas (committing capital
  offenses, becoming enslaved, etc.)