Scholarly Perspectives: The Roman Family

The patriarchal Roman family
Was the widow Pudentilla a materfamilias? In a Roman family did a woman ever have a role corresponding to that of the paterfamilias?
Roman women’s rights, in general
Love & marriage in Rome?
How different were the rights for a woman wed in manu from women sui iuris?
How were widows, like Pudentilla, regarded in Roman society?
With so much pressure on Pudentilla to remarry, both from her deceased husband’s family and her son, how likely was it for Pudentilla to remain an unmarried widow?
Were widows seen as threatening to the family structure?
What happened to the social status of a Roman woman when she married?

The patriarchal Roman family

Johnston, David. Roman Law in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd Ed., 2022. 

Roman law divided free citizens into two classes: those who were independent (sui iuris) and those who were dependent on someone else (alieni iuris). The Roman family was patriarchal: all power was vested in the paterfamilias, who was the senior living male. So, a child (at least as long as he or she was legitimate) was subject to the power of his or her paterfamilias, whether father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. Paternal power (patria potestas) was lifelong, so that in principle a man who had already become a grandfather might still be subject to his father’s power and become independent only late in life . . . Patria potestas goes back at least to the XII Tables (c. 450 BC),  and in the early republic, the powers of the paterfamilias were extreme: a power of life and death over those in the family; power to decide whether newborn babies should be accepted into the family or exposed; power to sell surplus children . . . But paternal power remained significant because of two much more practical considerations: the paterfamilias owned all the family property, and none of his dependants could own anything; everything acquired by them automatically vested in the paterfamilias. Id. at 37-38.

[I]t is clear that the ‘family’ in Roman law was rather different from what we are likely to think of as a family nowadays. It was paternal power that gave it its shape, and relationships traced through the male line (agnatic relationships) which mattered most. Even in a marriage (unless it was with manus), what we think of as the family unit was divided in two. Not only was the property of husband and wife separate, but their family relationships were too: agnatically, the children of a couple were related to their father and to one another, but not to their mother. She, unless she had married with manus, was a member of a different family, agnatically related to its members through her own father. Id. at 50-51.

Was the widow Pudentilla a materfamilias? In a Roman family did a woman ever have a role corresponding to that of the paterfamilias?

Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law & and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1986. 

The father (pater) was head of the familia, the basic Roman social and property-owning unit.  The familia under his control consisted of his children, whether living with him or not; his sons’ children, if any; his wife, if married with manus . . .; and his slaves. Id. at 5.

. . .

At the death of the pater, the children (and wife) ceased to be alieni iuris (subject to another’s control) and became sui iuris (independent). Each adult son became a paterfamilias; no woman ever did – materfamilias in Latin was merely the term used to designate the wife, or strictly the wife in manus, of a paterfamilias. A woman’s children, if legitimate, belonged to the familia of their father; if illegitimate, they were sui iuris. Id. at 6.

. . .

Manus (literally ‘hand’) meant a relationship in which the wife stood in the power of the husband. She was regarded as being filiae loco, in the situation of a daughter, in relation to her husband. She had the same rights of intestate succession as her husband’s children. His power over her, though, was more restricted than that over his children. Id. at 11.

Gardner, Jane F. Being a Roman citizen. London: Routledge, 1993.

Women did not have potestas over free persons, only over property, and could not perpetuate a familia, either by birth or by adoption. It was only by a legal fiction that a woman could be said to be head of a familia; her descent-line stopped with her. Id. at 97.

Roman women’s rights, in general

Gardner, Jane F. Being a Roman citizen. London: Routledge, 1993.

‘In many articles of our law’, said the jurist Papinian at the beginning of the third century AD, ‘the condition of females is worse than that of males’ (D. 1.5.9). Id. at 85.

It will be as well to start by summarising briefly what these restrictions and exclusions amounted to; the reasons for them will be considered later. One group may be described as ‘political’.

Roman women had a disability common to women in most societies and at most periods, indeed in some societies until well into the twentieth century, that is, the lack of the franchise. Women had no part in the comitia, the voting assemblies of the Roman people, which were active until the end of the Republic (though not much longer). Consequently, they had no part in those public activities which formed part of the political aspect of being a citizen. Moreover, they could not serve on criminal court juries. Id. at 85.

Love & marriage in Rome?

Johnston, David. Roman Law in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd Ed., 2022. 

When we think about marriage in classical Rome, it is best to jettison our modern preconceptions.  First, it was essentially a secular rather than a religious matter.  It depended not on any kind of formality but on the intention of those marrying (Urbanik 2016). The law of marriage was ‘founded on a purely humanistic idea of marriage as being a free and freely dissoluble union of two equal partners’ (Schulz 1951: 103). Second, it was not invested with the emotional and affective ties that we associate with marriage.  At least among the upper classes of Rome, the object of marriage was to have children, and children with the measure of its success . . . Marriages were typically arranged for a couple by their families and scant regard was paid to their own personal inclinations. ‘To marry for love at Rome was to engage in a socially deviant form of behaviour’ (Bradley 1991: 127). Our sources attest a high incidence of divorce and serial marriage. Marriage was simply not regarded as permanently binding until the death of one’s spouse. Id. at 40-41.

How different were the rights for a woman wed in manu from women sui iuris?

Johnston, David. Roman Law in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd Ed., 2022.

In early Rome, marriage was “with manus”: this meant that the wife ceased to belong to her own family, became a member of the husband’s family, and became subject to the paternal power of her husband or his paterfamilias. By the time of the late republic, however, this form of marriage was rare. The ordinary form of marriage by then and subsequently . . . was without manus, in which the status of the wife was unchanged. If she was independent, she remained so; if she was subject to the power of her own paterfamilias, she remained subject to it. Id. at 41.

. . .

Marriage (when without manus) had no effect on property. Women who were independent would have their own property within marriage . . . Id. at 42.

Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law & and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1986. 

Manus (literally ‘hand’) meant a relationship in which the wife stood in the power of the husband. She was regarded as being filiae loco, in the situation of a daughter, in relation to her husband. She had the same rights of intestate succession as her husband’s children. His power over her, though, was more restricted than that over his children. Id. at 72.

. . .

A wife in manu had no property of her own, and anything given or bequeathed to her was absorbed in her husband’s property. Any property a woman (sui iuris) owned before entering a marriage with manus went to her husband, but was reckoned, Cicero tells us, as dowry, and so presumably was liable to be returned at the end of the marriage. Id. at 72.

. . .

Women sui iuris could have property of their own. Although it was entirely theirs, they sometimes chose to have the administering of some, or all, of it done by their husbands . . . Id. at 72.

. . .

A man sui iuris was head of a familia or potential familia, and answerable to no one for his disposal of the property. A woman’s familia consisted solely of herself, and there was usually another familia with a claim on the property. Id. at 76.

. . .

A woman sui iuris could herself bring a suit. Id. at 76.

How were widows, like Pudentilla, regarded in Roman society?

Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law & and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1986. 

Although divorce and re-marriage were frequent, divorcees were not entirely approved of; widows, however, although lacking ritual purity and therefore not suitable for inclusion in the celebration of certain cults, seem to have attracted no disapproval in society at large by re-marrying, in contrast to the attitude that developed in the Christian empire.  Id. at 51.

With so much pressure on Pudentilla to remarry, both from her deceased husband’s family and her son, how likely was it for Pudentilla to remain an unmarried widow?

Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law & and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1986. 

Statistics are lacking on the incidence of remarriage, but the young or youngish widow who never remarried, like the woman who never married at all, was probably a relatively rare phenomenon in Roman society, which appears to have suffered from the chronic shortage of marriageable women. Id. at 56.

Were widows seen as threatening to the family structure?

Gardner, Jane F. Being a Roman citizen. London: Routledge, 1993.

The ownership of property by legally independent women (mainly, in the nature of things, widows) was a potential threat to the economic stability of a family group. Part of the

property of the familia, on which it depended for very survival, was now in the hands of the widow (as one of those who inherited a share automatically), and she had divided personal loyalties—both to members of her marital familia, especially her children, and to her own blood kindred in her family of origin. Id. at 93.

. . .

Widows, other than those of independent means, were largely dependent on their late husbands’ generosity, but generally were not preferred to the latter’s children or blood relatives. Whether in marriage with manus or in free marriage, one way, it would seem, of preventing dispersal of property, via women, beyond the group of those who would inherit by right of legal kinship would be to arrange marriage only within the gens (roughly ‘clan’), the group next in line of succession to the agnates. Id. at 95-96.

What happened to the social status of a Roman woman when she married?

Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law & and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1986. 

A married woman was regarded as having taken on the social status of her husband. In a society as stratified as that of the Romans this was a matter of some importance. Id. at 67.