Roman Marriage

[Marko_Markoko]

I used to have a copy of Sanctuary of Ice, but I no longer do. However, I do recall a section therin that discussed three different kinds of Roman marriage. One was where husband and wife become each other's slave, and I forget the other two. Anyone recall that which I speak of?

[WolfOfCampscapel]

Yep. SoI, page 26.

• custom - if a woman lives in a man's home for a year, never being away for three or more consecutive nights, then the two are married
• coemption - "a form of mutual slavery where each spouse buys the body of the other, then emancipates the other"
• confarreation - marriage by contract, signed in the presence of ten witnesses, and ceremonial eating of sacred cake under the supervision of a priest

... it also says that "Hermetic marriages usually take place soon after the fifth day of September. The fifth day of autumn was Jerbiton's wedding anniversary."

[BoXer]

comment withdrawn

[Timothy_Ferguson]

@BoXer

comment withdrawn

Co-emption is flagged as being non-Hermetic. I'd agreed with BoXer's comment that its conceptually problematic. I wrote SoI when research was much more difficult and I lacked electronic sources on Roman law.

[BoXer]

Well to be fair I should then say that I withdrew my hastily posted comments after I read the section on coemption a bit further. I was basing my criticism of SoI's accuracy on the first couple subsections of the linked (below) reference document and a bit of my own understanding of the overtly patriarchal nature of Roman society.

However, upon further reading, this elaboration presented itself and vindicated the SoI interpretation of mutual figurative purchase and emancipation....

...We are informed that in coemption, the formula was not the same as in other mancipations, § 123, but we are not informed what it was. Even in Cicero’s time many advocates were ignorant of the legal effect of a coemption because they were ignorant of the precise terms of the formula in which it was concluded, De Orat. 1, 56. The word itself may suggest a conjecture that it was a conveyance of the husband to the wife as well as of the wife to the husband; and this is supported by Servius on Georgics, 1, 34, and Isidorus, 5, 24, no great authorities, but who quoted apparently from Ulpian: ‘An ancient nuptial form wherein husband and wife made a mutual purchase, to bar the inference that the wife became a slave.’ Plutarch informs us that the wife asserted her equality by the terms, Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia, Quaest. Rom. 28: ‘Where thou art master, I am mistress.’ Boethius on Cicero, Topica, 3, 14, quoting from Ulpian, says: ‘The man and woman interrogated one another. He asked her if she wished to be mother of his household; she answered, Yes. She asked him if he wished to be father of her household; he answered, Yes. And thus the woman passed into the hand of the man, and was called the mother of his household, with the status of filiafamilias.’ According to Cicero, the wife was only called materfamilias when subject to hand: Genus est uxor; ejus duae formae; una matrumfamilias, eae sunt, quae in manum convenerunt, altera earum quae tantummodo uxores habentur, Top. 3, 14. Gellius says the same, 18, 6, 7: Tradiderunt matremfamilias appellatam esse eam solam quae in mariti manu mancipioque aut in ejus, in cujus maritus manu mancipioque esset. Boethius (in Cic. Top. 3, 14) further limits the title to a wife who has become subject to manus by coemption: Quae autem in manum per coemptionem convenerant, hae matresfamilias vocabantur, quae vero usu et farreatione, minime, ibid. However this may have been, in one sense the name was a misnomer, for a wife subject to hand was not sui juris (materfamilias), but alieni juris (filiafamilias): and that materfamilias denoted a woman sui juris, whether married or unmarried, as opposed to a filiafamilias or woman alieni juris, appears from Ulpian (4, 1): Sui juris sunt familiarum suarum principes, id est paterfamiliae itemque materfamiliae. (See Muirhead’s Roman Law, App. B.)

If the wife was subject to the power of her father, she required his sanction before she could make a coemption with her husband. If the wife was independent of parental control, she required the sanction of her guardians, who under the old law would have been her nearest agnates.

oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?op ... #a_2006121