No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Freedom in Marriage? Manumission for Marriage in the Roman World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2020
Abstract
This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperial Roman world, arguing that women manumitted for marriage to their former owners experienced a qualified form of freedom. Analysis of a funerary altar from early imperial Rome alongside larger bodies of legal and epigraphic evidence shows that in this transactional mode of manumission, enslaved women paid for their freedom by foregoing certain privileges, including, to varying degrees, the ability to enter and exit the marriage at will and the separation of their property from that of their husbands. Through a close examination of one mode of manumission and the unequal unions that resulted from it, this paper offers further evidence that freedom was not uniform, but varied in its meaning depending on who achieved it and by what means.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Footnotes
I thank my research assistants Luc Radelet and Dora Gao, as well as Liv Yarrow, Tristan Husby, Matthew Perry, Jared Benton, Tara Mulder and Toph Marshall for their feedback on this project. I am grateful too to the Editor, Christopher Kelly, and JRS readers for their engagement with this article and their suggestions. Finally, I owe thanks to Daria Lanzuolo, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and Maria Grazia Granino for assistance in securing and permission to reproduce photographs of the altar. All dates are c.e. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bellen, H. and Heinen, H. (eds). 2001. Fünfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie, 1950–2000. Miscellanea zum Jubiläum. Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 35, Mainz.Google Scholar
Buckland, W. W. 1908: The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Carroll, P. M. 2011: ‘Memoria and damnatio memoriae: preserving and erasing identities in Roman funerary commemoration’, in Caroll, P. M. and Rempel, J. (eds), Living through the Dead: Burial and Commemoration in the Classical World, Oxford, 65–90.Google Scholar
Crook, J. A. 1990: ‘«His and hers»: what degree of financial responsibility did husband and wife have for the matrimonial home and their life in common, in a Roman marriage?’, Parenté et stratégies familiales dans l'Antiquité romaine. Actes de la table ronde des 2–4 octobre 1986, Publications de l’École française de Rome 129, 153–72.Google Scholar
Davies, G. 2010: ‘Viewer, I married him: marriage and the freedwoman in Rome’, in Lovén, L. L. and Strömberg, A. (eds), Ancient Marriage in Myth and Reality, Newcastle upon Tyne, 184–203.Google Scholar
Evans Grubbs, J. 1993: ‘“Marriage more shameful than adultery”: slave-mistress relationships, “mixed marriages” and late Roman law’, Phoenix 47, 125–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans Grubbs, J. 2002: ‘Stigmata aeterna: a husband's curse’, in Miller, J. F., Damon, C. and Myers, K. S. (eds), Vertis in Usum: Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney, Munich, 230–42.Google Scholar
Foreman, P. G. et al. . 2020: ‘Writing about slavery/teaching about slavery: this might help’, community sourced document at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A4TEdDgYslX-hlKezLodMIM71My3KTN0zxRv0IQTOQs (accessed 17 August 2020).Google Scholar
Friedl, R. 1996: Der Konkubinat im kaiserzeitlichen Rom. Von Augustus bis Septimius Severus, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Frier, B. W. 2015: ‘Roman law and the marriage of underage girls’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 28, 652–64 (review of Piro 2103).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graf, F. 2007: ‘Untimely death, witchcraft and divine vengeance: a reasoned epigraphical catalog’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 162, 139–50.Google Scholar
Graf, F. 2014: ‘Victimology or: how to deal with untimely death’, in Stratton, K. B. and Kalleres, D. S. (eds), Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, Oxford, 386–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granino Cecere, M. G. 2006: ‘Altare di Iunia Procula. CIL, VI 20905 (parte epigrafica)’, in Romualdi 2006, 136–8.Google Scholar
Granino Cecere, M. G. 2008: Supplementa Italica Imagines. Supplementi fotographici ai volumi italiani del CIL. Roma (CIL, VI) 3. Collezioni fiorentine, Rome.Google Scholar
Granino Cecere, M. G. 2019: ‘Un messaggio nascosto alla vista, ma per l'eternità’, in Sartori, A. (ed.), L'iscrizione nascosta. Atti del Convegno Borghesi, Faenza, 191–202.Google Scholar
Greene, E. M. 2020: ‘Roman military communities and the families of auxiliary soldiers’, in Brice, L. L. (ed.), New Approaches to Greek and Roman Warfare, Hoboken, NJ, 149–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karras, R. M. 2012: Unmarriages: Women, Men and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages, Philadelphia, PA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleijwegt, M. 2012: ‘Deciphering freedwomen in the Roman Empire’, in Bell, S. and Ramsby, T. (eds), Free At Last! The Impact of Freed Slaves on the Roman Empire, London, 110–29.Google Scholar
Koops, E. 2013: ‘Masters and freedmen: Junian Latins and the struggle for citizenship’, in de Kleijn, G. and Benoist, S. (eds), Integration in Rome and in the Roman World, Leiden, 105–26.Google Scholar
Laiou, A. E. (ed.) 1993: Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
MacLean, R. 2018: Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture: Social Integration and the Transformation of Values, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDougall, E. A. 2014: ‘“To marry one's slave is as easy as eating a meal”: the dynamics of carnal relations within Saharan slavery’, in Campbell and Elbourne 2014, 140–66.Google Scholar
McGinn, T. A. J. 1991: ‘Concubinage and the lex Iulia on adultery’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 121, 335–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGinn, T. A. J. 2002: ‘The Augustan marriage legislation and social practice: elite endogamy versus male “marrying down”’, in Aubert, J.-J. and Sirks, A. J. B. (eds), Speculum Iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection of Social and Economic Life in Antiquity, Ann Arbor, MI, 46–93.Google Scholar
McGinn, T. A. J. 2004: ‘Missing females? Augustus’ encouragement of marriage between freeborn males and freedwomen’, Historia 53, 200–8.Google Scholar
Mattingly, D. J. 2011: Imperialism, Power and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire, Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
Nielsen, H. S. 1997: ‘Interpreting epithets in Roman epitaphs’, in Rawson and Weaver 1997, 169–204.Google Scholar
Penningroth, D. C. 2003: The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, Chapel Hill, SC.Google Scholar
Phang, S. E. 2001: The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C.–A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army, Leiden.Google Scholar
Phang, S. E. 2004: ‘Intimate conquests: Roman soldiers’ slave women and freedwomen’, Ancient World 35, 207–37.Google Scholar
Piro, I. 2013: Spose bambine. Risalenza, diffusione e rilevanza giuridica del fenomeno in età romana. Dalle origini all'epoca classica, Milan.Google Scholar
Rawson, B. 1974: ‘Roman concubinage and other de facto marriages’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 104, 279–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawson, B. 2010: ‘Degrees of freedom: vernae and Junian Latins in the Roman familia’, in Dasen, V. and Späth, T. (eds), Children, Memory and Family Identity in Roman Culture, Oxford, 195–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawson, B. and Weaver, P. R. C. (eds) 1997: The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space, Oxford.Google Scholar
Richlin, A. 2017: Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romualdi, A. (ed.) 2006: Studi e restauri. I marmi antichi della Galleria degli Uffizi, Vol. 1, Florence.Google Scholar
Saller, R. P. 1984: ‘Roman dowry and the devolution of property in the Principate’, Classical Quarterly 34, 195–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saller, R. P. 1987: ‘Slavery and the Roman family’, Slavery and Abolition 8, 65–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheriff, A. 2014: ‘Suria: concubines or secondary slave wife? The case of Zanzibar in the nineteenth century’, in Campbell and Elbourne 2014, 99–120.Google Scholar
Solazzi, S. 1948: ‘La legge augustea sul divorzio della liberta e il diritto civile’, Bulletino dell'Istituto di diritto romano 51–2, 327–51 (= S. Solazzi, Scritti di diritto romano, Vol. 5. 1947–1956, Naples, 1972, 80–104).Google Scholar
Treggiari, S. 1981a: ‘Concubinae’, Papers of the British School at Rome 49, 59–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treggiari, S. 1982: ‘Consent to Roman marriage: some aspects of law and reality’, Echos du monde classique/Classical views 26, 34–44.Google Scholar
Treggiari, S. 1991: Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian, Oxford.Google Scholar
Vallar, S. 2019: ‘Épouse ou concubine de son patron? Enjeux sociaux et juridiques d'un statut’, in Chevreau, E., Doria, C. Masi and Rainer, J. M. (eds), Liber amicorum. Mélanges en l'honneur de Jean-Pierre Coriat, Paris, 993–1008.Google Scholar
Vigneron, R., and Gerkens, J.-F. 2000: ‘The emancipation of women in ancient Rome’, Revue internationale des droits de l'Antiquité 47, 107–21.Google Scholar
Wacke, A. 2001: ‘Manumissio matrimonii causa. Die Freilassung zwecks Heirat nach den Ehegesetzen des Augustus’, in Bellen and Heinen 2001, 133–58.Google Scholar
Weaver, P. R. C. 1972: Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor's Freedmen and Slaves, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiler, I. 2001: ‘Eine Sklavin wird frei. Zur Rolle des Geschlechts bei der Freilassung’, in Bellen and Heinen 2001, 113–32.Google Scholar