Roman girls led sheltered lives and many may have hardly ventured outside their homes until their marriages. Boys were considered to be ready for marriage at the age of 14, but girls were thought to be ready for marriage at 12, and a woman who was not married by 20 was considered a deviant. The emperor Augustus formalized this sentiment by passing a law that heavily penalized any woman over the age of 20 and any man over the age of 25 who was not married.
The Romans allowed marriages between closer family members than we usually do today. It was permissible for first cousins to marry, and from the early empire on, uncles could even marry their nieces. Roman law did not recognize a marriage with a foreigner, a slave, or a freedman. Also, up until AD 217, soldiers were not allowed to marry. It was, of course, common for soldiers to form long-lasting relationships with women and for the two to live together and consider themselves a couple. However, their union was not formally recognized by law. The two great drawbacks to this arrangement were that the soldiers' partners were not subject to inheritance laws, and any children they had were considered illegitimate.
At least among the aristocracy, nearly all marriages were arranged by the parents. The paterfamilias would negotiate with his counterpart in the other family to arrange the marriage. Even if two people somehow met, fell in love, and wished to marry, it was still necessary to have the permission of the paterfamilias; lacking such permission, a marriage could not occur. There were only two ways to get married without the express permission of a paterfamilias. The first was if the paterfamilias were judged to be insane, and the second was if he had been captured in war and had been a prisoner for at least three years.
Marriages were not love matches but rather were seen as political tools and as a way to cement an alliance between two families or political factions. It was extremely common for politicians to marry, divorce, and remarry as their political allegiances shifted or to contract marriages among their children. The desire to use offspring as political pawns led to children being engaged at very young ages, sometimes even as babies. In an attempt to curb this practice, a law was passed stating that to be engaged, the two people had to be at least seven years old.
To symbolize the engagement, the man (or boy) placed an iron ring on the middle finger of the left hand of his fiancee. While conducting dissections of human bodies, Roman doctors believed that they had discovered a nerve that ran directly from this finger to the heart. To make a marriage legally binding was very simple. The only requirement was a public statement of intent. Marriage was viewed as a religious duty whose goal was to produce children to ensure that the family gods would continue to be worshiped.
There were two basic types of Roman marriages. During the republic, almost all were manus marriages. Manus means "hand" in Latin, and this marriage receives its name from the fact that the woman was regarded as a piece of property that passed from the hand of the father to the hand of the husband. In this type of marriage, the woman had no rights, and any property she had was under the control of her husband. She herself was considered the equivalent of a daughter to her husband, and he had all the powers of life and death that a father holds over a daughter. There were two further subcategories of the manus marriage. The first was called coemptio. In this type of marriage, the groom symbolically gave money to the bride's father and "bought" her. The second was called usus. In this type, the man and woman simply began to live together, and on the day after they had lived together continuously for one year, the woman passed into the control of her husband in a manus marriage. Some women who did not wish to lose their independence made sure that each year they spent three consecutive nights away from their husband, and because of this they never came under his control.
The second basic type of marriage was very rare in the republic but became quite common under the empire. It was known as a free marriage, and in it the woman retained all her own property and was not under the control of her husband. If they separated, she could take anything she owned with her.
Just like today, there were many rituals associated with the marriage ceremony. First, the bride dedicated her childhood toys to the household gods, symbolizing that she was making the transition from child to woman. While still a child, she usually would have worn her hair in a ponytail, but on her wedding day, her hair was parted into six strands, which were then tied together on top of her head in a complex fashion, forming a cone shape. It was the tradition that her hair be parted using a bent iron spearhead, and the best spearhead of all was one that had been used to kill a gladiator. Gladiators were sometimes seen as symbols of virility, so perhaps this custom was viewed as a way to ensure a fertile union. The bride then donned a veil of transparent fabric that was bright orange or red, which matched her shoes. Her tunic was white, and she placed a wreath of marjoram on her head.
Before a gathering of friends and relatives, various sacrifices were performed, and the woman declared to her husband, "I am now of your family," at which point their hands were joined. This ceremony was followed by a feast at which the new bride and groom sat side by side in two chairs over which a single sheepskin was stretched. At the feast, it was customary for the guests to shout Feliciter!, which means "happiness" or "good luck." Toward the end of the evening, the bride was placed in the arms of her mother and the groom came and tore her out of her mother's grasp.
All this occurred at the bride's house. The bride, groom, and guests then marched to the bride's new home, the home of her husband. As they went through the streets in a torch-lit procession, the guests threw nuts and shouted Talassio, a traditional Roman wedding acclamation; they also often sang obscene songs. When they reached the groom's house, the couple threw one of the torches, a special one known as the wedding torch, into the crowd of guests; whoever caught it was supposed to enjoy long life. The bride then rubbed oil and fat on the doorposts, and her new husband picked her up and carried her over the threshold. Once inside, she symbolically touched fire and water, indicating that she was now the guardian of the hearth. In the entry hall was placed a miniature marriage bed intended for the spirits of the bride and groom, and after the fire and water ceremony, the new couple went off to their marriage bed.
None of this elaborate ceremony was necessary to make a marriage legal. It was the statement of intent that actually made a marriage legal, but performing some or all of these rituals was common practice.
Usually the wife's family had to provide some kind of dowry, which among very rich families could easily amount to one million sesterces, equivalent to the minimum wealth qualification for a senator. Whatever the sum, dowries were usually paid in three annual installments.
The main duty of the wife was to produce children, and because many were married before they were physically mature, not surprisingly, many young wives died from complications in childbirth. One of the main sources of information on Roman women is their tombstones. Many of these record the sad stories of girls who were married at 12 or 13, gave birth five or six times, and died in childbirth before they reached the age of 20. These tombstones are also the best guide to what Roman men considered the ideal qualities of a wife. Some of the most common positive adjectives and phrases used by husbands to describe their deceased wives include chaste, obedient, friendly, old-fashioned, frugal, content to stay at home, pious, dressed simply, good at spinning thread, and good at weaving cloth.
Conversely, one way that men were praised on their tombstones was to say that they had treated their wife kindly, with the implication that such kindness was not necessary and was unusual. In a matins marriage, the husband could beat his wife with impunity and was expected to do so if she misbehaved. In one famous instance, a man beat his wife to death because she took a drink of wine; all his friends and family approved since her action was seen as a clear sign of immorality. During the republic, regardless of the type of marriage, a husband could kill his wife if she was caught committing adultery. Augustus put a stop to this but still allowed husbands to kill their wives if they were found in the house committing adultery with someone of lower status. A father could kill his daughter if he caught her committing adultery as long as he killed, or at least tried to kill, her lover at the same time.
Divorce was as easy as marriage. All a couple had to do was declare that they were getting divorced, and they were. Augustus passed another law declaring that if a woman was between the ages of 20 and 50 and got divorced, she had to marry again within six months; if her husband had died, she was granted a longer time for mourning but still had to get remarried within one year.
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