Divorce and Adoption as Roman Familial Strategies (Le Divorce et l’ adoption ‘en plus’)

Abstract

Abstract This remark and this chapter follow on from a study on ‘familial behaviour in the Roman aristocracy between the second century BC and the third century AD’ (Corbier 1987). That study sought to compare Roman behaviour with the behaviour of other aristocracies which, in other centuries and other social contexts, were even more clearly directed towards the same ends: biological reproduction, transmission and extension of patrimony, diversification and expan¬sion of symbolic capital. To attain these objectives, aristocratic Roman society seems to have enjoyed an infinitely greater freedom than its medieval and modern successors, from whom the Church energetically devoted itself to removing two trump cards that could be used in the game against Time and Chance: divorce and adoption. In the Roman context, however, the meaning and use of these two cards were radically different from our own, which makes our interpretation and understanding of them difficult.