Roman Marriage Research Articles

STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT CURVED HORNS AND GAY MARRIAGE: A NEW READING OF JUVENAL'S SECOND SATIRE

AbstractThis article argues that one of our only pieces of evidence for Roman marriage between cinaedi, Juvenal's second satire, has been consistently misread and in fact describes a marriage between a cinaedus and a sex worker. It begins by providing the context for the passage in question and its traditional reading, and then demonstrates that the critical phrase siue hic recto cantauerat aere refers to financial, not erotic, exchanges. The article finally discusses the implications of this correction, which are far more substantial than one might expect for a contentious ablative.

Institutional Genidentity

Abstract An abbreviated history of marriage helps motivate the question of whether ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage could qualify as stages of the same (token) institution despite carrying significantly different functions, deontological powers, and constitutive rules. Having raised the question of institutional identity over time, I proceed to answer the question by appealing to Kurt Lewin's notion of genidentity. Lewin intends the notion of genidentity to track the spatiotemporal unfolding of different physical and biological processes, such as ontogenesis. I extend the notion of genidentity to the institutional sphere by identifying two ‘re-anchoring mechanisms’ that would describe the conditions under which institutions with different characteristics could nevertheless qualify as the same institution across time. First, formal institutions can be re-anchored by way of a self-amending secondary rule. Second, informal institutions can be re-anchored by leveraging the inherent indeterminacy of the exemplars that indexically define them. I then argue ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage are genidentical in virtue of the actions of a (mostly) informal re-anchoring mechanism.

Indagine sulle origini della paelex: una riflessione ragionata su un ruolo dai profili giuridici sfumati

Abstract Ferdinando Zuccotti in his latest volume analyzed with peculiar accuracy and scientific care, with which he has always conducted his research, the evolution of the concept of paelex typical of archaic Rome as an element for reconsidering new itineraries of investigation without preconceptions on the elements and structure of marriage in dating times. The Author through the lexically ambiguous figure of the paelex, has offered the wedge to open a new perspective and rereading the roman marriage system through the axiom that the ius Quiritium did not contemplate it as the engaged were civilly legitimate spouses consequently to the conventio in manum. From this openness derives the need to review the very structure of conjugal unions in archaic Rome, in the effort to focus with analysis and synthesis on a period on which the sources are particularly scarce, almost non-existent.

Matrimonios ilegales, inexistentes o nulos, desde la legislación matrimonial de Augusto hasta Constantino I

Con el presente trabajo de investigación hemos analizado la importancia de las leyes matrimoniales promulgadas por el emperador Augusto, su idea de romanidad, así como la posterior evolución postclásica ya con Constantino I. En este sentido, se ha demostrado cómo tanto la Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus como la Lex Papia Poppaea nuptialis formaron un solo texto denominado Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea cuya finalidad fue la restauración de la familia sobre la base de las tradiciones para desarrollar una política que favoreciese las uniones lícitamente contraídas y la procreación. Lo anterior nos llevará a reparar en los matrimonios romanos ilegales, esto es, aquellas uniones conyugales carentes del conubium que no producían efectos jurídicos y se consideraban como un matrimonium iniustum. Finalmente, hemos preferido diferenciar entre los matrimonios iniustum inexistentes y los nulos o ineficaces porque presentan supuestos distintos y en las fuentes no existe una diferenciación clara.With this research we have analyzed the importance of matrimonial laws promulgated by emperor Augustus, his idea of romanity, as well as the subsequent post-classical evolution already with Constantine I. In this sense, it has been demonstrated how both the Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus and the Lex Papia Poppaea nuptialis formed a single text called Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea whose purpose was the Restoration of the family on the basis of traditions to develop a policy that favored lawfully contracted unions and procreation. This will lead us to repair illegal roman marriages, that is, those marital unions lacking conubium and, therefore, did not produce legal effects and were considered as a matrimonium iniustum. Finally, we have preferred to differentiate between non-existent iniustum marriages and null or ineffective marriages because they present different assumptions and in the sources there is no clear differentiation.

Greek Influences on Roman Dowry Law

ABSTRACTClassical and Hellenistic Greek laws and dowry practices were generally more progressive and provided more protections for wives than early Roman marriage law and practice. Roman dowry law then witnessed a series of significant developments over the course of the republic, beginning with the time when the Romans were coming into increased contact with Greek culture. Changes in social attitudes towards the conditions for women in marriage, their ability to control their dowries, and their right to own property, seem to have been responsible for these transformations in Roman family law. As Romans became increasingly Hellenized, their dowry and marriage practices in general came to resemble patterns prevailing in the Greek world, perhaps as a result of individuals’ emulation of Greek laws and customs. The shift from the overall predominance of marriage in manu to marriage sine manu may therefore be explained partly by influences from the Greek world.

ПРАВОВОЕ ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЕ НА ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОЦЕССЫ В ДРЕВНЕЙШИХ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВАХ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ РИМСКОГО БРАЧНО-СЕМЕЙНОГО ПРАВА)

ПРАВОВОЕ ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЕ НА ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОЦЕССЫ В ДРЕВНЕЙШИХ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВАХ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ РИМСКОГО БРАЧНО-СЕМЕЙНОГО ПРАВА)

The Sponsa and the Sponsa Christi: Variations of the Late Roman Marriage Plot

During the later Roman Empire competition among elite men to contract advantageous marriages increased sharply, which led to an increased valorization of the engagement. Merely the possibility to be able to contract an engagement which would, hopefully, lead to marriage, required a substantial down-payment. This paper argues that such increased competition for the right sponsa, combined with changing dowry customs, should form the backdrop for scholarly discussions of the emergence of the sponsa Christi as well as of other kin-related celibate forms of life such as celibate marriages.

A emergência do homem de desejo: sobre o curso Subjectivité et vérité, de Michel Foucault

O artigo tem como objeto principal o curso de Michel Foucault no Collège de France, Subjectivité et vérité, ministrado em 1980-1981 e editado em 2014. Pretende-se mostrar de que maneira e mediante quais argumentos Foucault chega à afirmação de que a relação entre sujeito e verdade na experiência antiga dos aphrodisia é da ordem da incompatibilidade. Na pederastia grega os atos sexuais e seus prazeres foram considerados obstáculos para o acesso à verdade e para a constituição do sujeito ativo. No entanto, o confisco da experiência sexual legítima no interior da reconfiguração do matrimônio romano, bem como a suspeita crescente em torno dos atos e prazeres, provocaram dois processos: a subjetivação dos aphrodisia, o que resultou em uma relação constante do sujeito com sua experiência sexual; e a objetivação do desejo, no sentido de que ele deixa de ser somente um elemento intempestivo e incontrolável situado ao lado da natureza, passando a ser algo problemático e objeto de conhecimento. Ainda que na Introdução aos dois últimos livros de Histoire de la sexualité Foucault escreva que pretende fazer a história do homem de desejo na cultura pagã antiga, o artigo sugere que não é propriamente nessa formação histórica que pode ser identificada sua emergência, e sim no monaquismo cristão dos séculos IV e V, objeto de seu livro inacabado Les confessions de la chair. Pelo menos no domínio da experiência sexual, o homem de desejo não teria surgido na erótica masculina grega ou no matrimônio romano, mas na sexualidade solitária do monaquismo cristão.

The Quaker Cunning Folk: The Astrology, Magic, and Divination of Philip Roman and Sons in Colonial Chester County, Pennsylvania

Although popular culture has awarded Massachusetts the distinction of being recognized as America's "witchcraft capital," it was Pennsylvania's earliest practitioners of the mystical arts who quietly fostered the archetype of the American "cunning man." Much like their European brethren, these hybrid practitioners of the occult arts often paired the esoteric worldview of the Renaissance magus with the practicality of the traditional sorcerer.

CATULLUS 61: EPITHALAMIUM AND COMPARISON

Similes are a prominent feature of epithalamia, with poets comparing the bride and groom to characters from myth or to elements of the natural world. Catullus wrote two epithalamia (61 and 62), together with two other poems with marked epithalamian characteristics (64 and 68). This paper examines the question of why similes are so important to the genre of epithalamium, concentrating on Catullus 61, which is particularly rich in its deployment of comparison. The paper argues that comparison is crucial to the themes of Roman marriage: similes locate the human institution of marriage between the poles of myth and nature, and they afford a vehicle for considering the way marriage links together the disparate terms of male and female.

Active methodologies for problem-based learning of Roman Law: inheritance, dowry and economic regime of Roman marriage

With the accomplishment of the writing that follow we pretended to investigate what the current importance of applying the learning through problems in the teaching of Roman Law, against the traditional theoretical and magistral classes. Influencing in the reach of the methodological requirements emerged with the new plans of study Law Degree, under the EHEA; as well, in the development of a set of skills in students, that will be very helpful once time they finish and face the difficulties of today's labor market, because they are the true protagonists of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, with the implementation of this first case about the economic regime of marriage compared with other unmarried partners as concubinage, dowry and the role of women, forms of servitude or inheritance, we approach the students to casuism roman jurisprudence completing the ideas seen in the previous practice; in this way, they will understand that the important thing is not to give the solution to case proposed but legal reasoning, through discussions in groups and personal work, getting a deeper knowledge of applicable rules and institutions.

EHEA, competences and learning of Roman Law through the case method (I): double marriage

With the accomplishment of the writing that follow we pretend to investigate what the current importance of applying the case method in the teaching of Roman Law, against the traditional theoretical and magistral classes. Repairing, especially, in the reach of the methodological requirements emerged with the new plans of study Law Degree under the EHEA; as well, in the development of a set of general and specific skills in students, that will be very helpful once time they finish the Degree and face the difficulties of today's labor market, because they are the true protagonists of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, with the implementation of this first case on double roman marriage, lack of testament and legitimate heirs, we try to approach the students to casuism roman jurisprudence; in this way, they will understand that the important thing is not to give the solution to case proposed but legal reasoning, through discussions in groups, getting a deeper knowledge of applicable rules and institutions.

ARMING OR CHARMING: OBSEQUIUM AND DOMESTIC POLITICS IN ROMAN NORTH AFRICA

Scholarship to date has dealt mainly with the legal aspects of Roman marriage and its place within Roman society, most of which tends to focus on the disempowerment of women. This article, while not denying the disadvantages women suffered under these conditions, focusses on the mechanics by which women could achieve their aims within the boundaries of marriage and how the concept of obsequium could have been understood and implemented by both partners to the marriage contract.

<i>Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence Theresa Tinkle Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence. By Marilynn Desmond. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. 206. $57.95 (cloth); $21.00 (paper). Desmond opens her study of medieval erotic violence with reflections on an academic panel on sadomasochism (S/M) entitled "Safe, Sane and Consensual S/M: An Alternate Way of Loving" that was part of a women's studies conference in 1997 (1). The panel title provoked controversy at the time: journalists decried the scandalous topic; politicians worried about its presumed queer agenda; feminists expressed anxiety about nonconsensual sex; and academic administrators called for an ethics investigation. This anecdote frames the author's interest in the similarly scandalous aspects of medieval Ovidian literature, which in her reading constructs feminine masochism and masculine sadism. On the day I sat down to read this book, a local news headline made the topic seem particularly timely. According to the Ann Arbor News, a University of Michigan law student had decided that prostitution was the best way to come up with her next tuition payment, and she had agreed to exchange sex for money in a local motel. Once there, she had also agreed to being struck on the buttocks with a belt, but, she later claimed, her sex partner crossed a line when he slapped her face. She filed a police complaint alleging he violated their implicit contract. The media entered the fray, as did academic administrators calling for ethics investigations (it turned out the man is a member of the university faculty) and feminist commentators. The various responses closely resemble those arising from the 1997 panel. Other recent stories about academics and S/M hint that such narratives may be more common than university administrators would like and suggest that questions about effective consent to S/M are as much a concern now as they were in 1997 (see, for instance, the commentary on a case reported in New Mexico, http://dankprofessor.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/sadomasochistic-posing-professor-found-fit-to-teach, [End Page 568] 12 December 2008). Erotic violence is obviously an important topic with a kind of currency few academic tomes achieve. S/M can, of course, encompass a wide range of behaviors, not all of which raise legal or ethical questions or fit the psychiatric standards for paraphilia (as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-IV]). Desmond's opening example locates S/M in the social context of modern love relationships, where a liberal middle-class "emphasis on safety and communication" seems both possible and reasonable (1) and where consent appears unproblematic. From her perspective, modern S/M is closer to erotic role playing than to a distressing psychosexual fixation on painful pleasures. Indeed, that is her point. She uses the conference panel to foreground the performative aspects of S/M—that is, the staging of apparent sexual violence between consenting partners, complete with scenarios, scripts, props, and costumes, all of which apparently function to contain if not preclude actual violence. S/M appears paradoxically nonviolent, remote from the disturbing ambiguities of consent that trouble some modern feminists. Desmond posits that such modern performances of S/M worry many commentators because they simultaneously reveal and mask the erotic violence occurring elsewhere in the culture: the "structural violence" against women evident throughout the culture, manifest in the widespread toleration of domestic abuse as well as in the symbolic violence of compulsory heterosexuality (4). The author derives Western culture's pervasive erotic violence from the institution of marriage, which, she argues, structures the roles of dominance and submission that constitute heterosexual desire. In other words, Desmond represents S/M as the normalized sexual orientation of married heterosexuals, the cultural origin to which modern (queer) S/M performances endlessly refer. The historical argument offered in support of this claim is shaky. Desmond posits a decisive cultural shift between Roman marriage (not based on erotic desire, not violent toward women) and Christian marriage, "an institution that structures eros" and "simultaneously becomes an institution that both elicits and regulates violence...

The Orsini: A Family of Roman Baroni in Context 4: WHEN A WOMAN "TAKES" CHARGE: MARIE-ANNE DE LA TRÉMOILLE AND THE END OF THE PATRIMONY OF THE DUKES OF BRACCIANO

In the waning decades of the seventeenth century, the last duke of Bracciano, Flavio Orsini (1620–1698), made the rather unusual choice of marrying the French widow Marie-Anne de la Tremoille (1642?–1722). Despite Marie-Anne's failure to produce Orsini heirs, her life in Rome included choices quite similar to those of other Roman aristocratic mothers. She was a true mater litigans, demonstrating a litigious energy lacking in the embattled Orsini dynasty. She exploited her French connections to bolster Orsini incomes, but also Romanized her French family through a Roman marriage and through the advancement of her clerical brother's career. While the marriage between Flavio and Marie-Anne was renowned for its difficulties and Marie-Anne maligned for her usurpation of Orsini property, this article demonstrates the extent to which Marie-Anne's ability to act as a matriarch counterbalanced Flavio's floundering dynastic loyalties and his ambiguities about deciding the future of the Orsini family.

The Marriage Revolution in Late Antiquity: The Theodosian Code and Later Roman Marriage Law

Although much scholarly work has already been done on Roman marriage law, most of it deals with the classical era, and little has been done to explore the remarkably radical changes to marriage law in Roman law in late antiquity, that is, during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. The Theodosian Code provides a unique and valuable source of information, despite the limitations evident in any legal text, on a wide range of legal issues pertaining to marriage: the necessity of marriage, the choice of marriage partner and consent to marriage, marriage payments, adultery and divorce, remarriage and inheritance, and even the marriages of slaves, soldiers, and clerics, and same-sex marriage. The extent of the changes revealed even demands new questions about the influence of Christian ideology on later Roman law.

Mythological Group Portraits in Antonine Rome: The Performance of Myth

This article reexamines a series of Antonine mythological group portraits frequently identified as imperial commissions. Drawing on new archaeological evidence as well as sources for their findspots and restoration histories, I argue that they were private portraits suitable for the commemoration of married couples in house and tomb. The sculptures juxtaposed idealized divine bodies based on Greek statue types of Ares and Aphrodite with descriptive portrait heads of Antonine elite couples. In so doing, they offered patrons an unusual yet compelling means by which to represent the affective qualities of Roman marriage through reference to Greek myth and art. My analysis of the monumental groups in Mars-Venus format complements recent scholarship on single-figure mythological portraits to offer a fuller picture of the transformation of classical Greek imagery in Roman private art.

Notas sobre la configuración de las uniones de hecho en Roma

At present, unmarried unions in Rome are generally stable, and not merely sexual relationships, in which the partners do not wish to marry according to the legal code, and which in order to be recognised as such have to fulfil certain requirements contained in case law. To introduce the topic of unmarried unions in Rome, we begin by outlining the main characteristics of Roman marriage. After this, we examine the factors that lead to the formation of unmarried unions, in some cases because marriage is prohibited by law, in others because it is the choice of the couple. Lastly, we set out the Roman Law principles currently in force in Law 1/2001, which regulates unmarried unions the Valencian Autonomous Region.

Avulsa a Latere Meo: Augustine's Spare Rib — Confessions 6.15.25

In A.D. 385, after more than a decade together, Augustine parted from his in many ways mysterious first partner, ‘la mère d'Adeodat’. The woman (hereafter ‘Anonyma 1’) was taken away from him. She returned to Africa vowing never to have sexual relations with another man, and left the child with Augustine. But he was unable to tolerate celibacy and took another woman (henceforth ‘Anonyma 2’) to while away the two years until his marriage. In the meantime he still missed his first one, and the wound left by the separation failed to heal. Many scholars have cited and discussed Augustine's description of the episode, but few have commented on the language, which is highly significant, or its implications for Augustine's biography. This article will begin with a selective commentary on Conf. 6.15.25 and continue with a reinterpretation of a key text in Augustine's marital theology. It will then trace some of the broader legal and historical issues raised by Augustine's account in the Confessions to make some new suggestions about the chronology, constraints, and nature of his relationship with Anonyma 1. This study, it is hoped, will be of general interest to Romanists for the insight into the ambiguities of Roman marriage and quasi-marital relationships provided by Augustine's Confessions.

Avulsa a Latere Meo: Augustine's Spare Rib —Confessions6.15.25

In A.D. 385, after more than a decade together, Augustine parted from his in many ways mysterious first partner, ‘la mère d'Adeodat’. The woman (hereafter ‘Anonyma 1’) was taken away from him. She returned to Africa vowing never to have sexual relations with another man, and left the child with Augustine. But he was unable to tolerate celibacy and took another woman (henceforth ‘Anonyma 2’) to while away the two years until his marriage. In the meantime he still missed his first one, and the wound left by the separation failed to heal. Many scholars have cited and discussed Augustine's description of the episode, but few have commented on the language, which is highly significant, or its implications for Augustine's biography. This article will begin with a selective commentary onConf.6.15.25 and continue with a reinterpretation of a key text in Augustine's marital theology. It will then trace some of the broader legal and historical issues raised by Augustine's account in theConfessionsto make some new suggestions about the chronology, constraints, and nature of his relationship with Anonyma 1. This study, it is hoped, will be of general interest to Romanists for the insight into the ambiguities of Roman marriage and quasi-marital relationships provided by Augustine'sConfessions.