Download HUM 203 • Myers

HUM 203 • Myers
Roman Family Law
I.
Origins: The Law of the Twelve Tables, 450 B.C.
A. Early days of the Roman Republic
B. Created a system that specified penalties for crimes, allowed for civil lawsuits, and
codified the rights of male heads of families.
C. Laws regarding families included:
1. A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed.
2. If a father surrenders his son for sale three times, the son shall be free from his
father.
3. A child born after ten months since the father's death will not be admitted into a
legal inheritance.
4. Females should remain in guardianship even when they have attained their
majority.
a. If a man is raving mad, rightful authority over his person and chattels
(property, including women, children and slaves) shall belong to his agnates
(male descendants) or to his clansmen (more distant relations).
5. (Marriages) should not take place between plebeians and patricians.
► The family is the most important thing according to Roman law.
► Much of Roman law is concerned with protecting the rights of the paterfamilias.
II.
Paterfamilias: The formal head of the legally recognized family. The oldest surviving
male family member. His authority over his descendants lasted until his death.
A. Absolute power over his household may have been necessary in the early days of the
Roman Republic when the state had no regular courts or police force and did not
involve itself in private morality.
B. If any member of the family behaved in any way that he considered improper, he had
the power to banish, sell into slavery, or kill the offender.
C. As long as the paterfamilias was alive, he owned all the property of the extended
family, including his male children and their households.
D. Sometimes a father would allow his adult son to rule his own family.
E. Upon the paterfamilias's death, each of the sons became rulers of their own [extended]
households.
F. The only thing that kept the paterfamilias from abusing his power was reputation. If
he was too harsh with his family, everyone would know and he would be ruined.
III.
Women: Property of the paterfamilias until they were of marriageable age, usually around
16.
A. When Augustus became concerned that the upper classes of Rome were not producing
enough children, he reformed Roman law to encourage, and even force men to marry.
He wrote: "If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do
without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot live comfortably
with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation
rather than for our contemporary pleasure."
IV.
Marriage: The purpose of marriage was to produce children who would carry on the
bloodline of the paterfamilias.
A. Arranged by the woman's father (with the approval of the paterfamilias, if necessary)
and the potential husband, who was most likely to be around 30.
B. As a wife, a woman was expected to be modest, chaste, obedient, hard working,
industrious, and virtuous.
C. She was expected to produce and raise children.
D. Her household chores included spinning, weaving, cooking, ordering the slaves, and
teaching the children during their first few years.
E. It was the Roman ideal that affection between the husband and wife should develop
after marriage.
F. Faithfulness in marriage was expected of husbands, and required of wives. Augustus's
laws said that fathers could kill daughters and their partners in adultery, and husbands
could kill the partners under certain circumstances and were required to divorce
adulterous wives. Augustus had to banish his own daughter Julia for adultery.
V.
Children
A. Sons were preferred over daughters. One old law states that fathers had to raise all of
their sons but only their first daughter.
B. Girls did not have their own names, instead, they had the feminine form of their
father's first name followed by the rest of the father's name in the possessive form.
For example, Augustus's wife Livia Drusilla was the daughter of Marcus Livius
Drusus.1
C. Right after a child was born it was laid at its father's feet and if the father took it into
his arms, it was his and became part of the family. Otherwise the child would be
disowned and left on the street to die or to be taken by slave traders.
1
If a family had two daughters, they could be distinguished as major and minor. Marcus Antonius's daughters were
Antonia major (grandmother of the emperor Nero) and Antonia minor (mother of the emperor Claudius). If a family
had more than two daughters, they were distinguished by ordinal numbers: Cornelia Quinta, the fifth daughter of a
Cornelius. The epithets of major and minor also served to distinguish between daughters and mothers of the same
name, e.g., Agrippina the Younger and Julia the Younger, respective daughters of Agrippina the Elder and Julia the
Elder.
Note: Some of this handout comes from http://bama.ua.edu/~morin002/