Talk:Marriage in ancient Rome

Same-Sex Marriage

Why isn't this topic discussed here in its own section? We know that Romans had a pretty liberal attitude towards homosexuality until the Christian era and Juvenal talks about same-sex weddings. Emperor Hadrian had a lover who died by accidental drowning and Hadrian had statues of him made and placed everywhere and encouraged the public to worship him as a god! Even Juvenal who sneers at the notion of two men getting married like a husband and wife isn't embarrassed by homosexual behavior per se.

We know that while there was no institution of same-sex marriage that Romans were able to use the very expansive adoption laws to adopt their adult partners, giving them a property arrangement similar to marriage. (Of course, some very famous Romans adopted their heirs, too.)

Oh my, look, it's elsewhere in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome#Gay_marriage in an article about sexuality that _doesn't talk about the legal arrangements that male-male couples entered into.

(There are depictions of lesbianism in Roman art for sure, but it's not clear if upper class women ever had institutions like Boston marriage, because male writers don't tell us.)

That article I linked to has issues as well, with that heavy reliance on a fad academic theory that words are things. Romans didn't have a term for heterosexual/homosexual as we know it because we (American English speakers, and to some extent others in the English-speaking world) have a notion that a man who has sex with another guy one time is "really" bisexual or gay, whereas the Romans in the time of classical antiquity felt that a straight guy could have sex with a boy or a slave or even get drunk and screw around with another grown man and still be ... straight. Bisexuality by some definition was normative, but so was being the dominant, insertive party. Men who were effeminate, however, had dozens of slang terms attached to them in Latin and Greek. In the Latin world to this day there is a bias of perception that a masculine man, even if he has sex with 'gay' men or men who are crossdressing, is still straight as long as he is the 'top', while the effeminate man is the gay one. This is quite contrary to American culture where there is an archetype of a masculine gay man who is definitely interpreted as homosexual and so in a very essential way. This is a cultural difference, not some sort of biological quirk. Again, take Emperor Hadrian. Americans interpret him as "gay". The love of his life was a man. Case closed. Romans, however, would see him as 'straight', if they had such a word, because his lover was a young slave boy (depicted as pubescent, akin to Apollo, hairless, though he was 19 or so). The persistent rumor that the Greek conqueror Alexander was gay is discussed and dismissed in terms of this paradigm. Alexander and Hephaistion' relationship is not physical. He only has physical relations with a much younger slave boy (with whom he has a very open relationship, unlike the subterfuge with Hephaistion who matched him in age). Plato was Alexander's teacher, and discusses at length in the Symposium his theory that Achilles and Patroklos (the pair Alexander dedicates himself to--during the time of Classical Antiquity there was a shrine to Achilles in Greece) were quite different in age, not the same in age as you might infer from actually reading Homer, and that they were pederastic lovers, not, you know, friends, like again you might infer from a straight reading of Homer. I see Plato's argument with Achilles right there. By Greece's macho code, Alexander was not measuring up. His own mother brought in a female prostitute when he was a teenager to try to 'make him a man', but he only marries eventually as a political ploy.

You see that these cultures may have the same kind of people, but they interpret what is happening differently. Rome is no more devoid of homosexual subculture than Latin America. It is just that some men can go there for sex (or even love) and remain "real men", "straight" while the anglophone world calls those midnight divers bisexual or gay. And again, for Romans, bisexual and top is normative for men, while for Americans, strictly heterosexual is normative (top is not essential to the construction of 'man' consistently or contemporarily, but the expression of heterosexual 'kink', 'masochism', bottoming has for centuries carried some sort of psychological symbolism--a curious matter about US law is that it is completely legal for a man to hire a woman to flog him and abuse him for sexual purposes as long as she does not engage in a sex act with him, whereas hiring a person simply to have sex with you is illegal, and in many places, even stripping is restricted, especially by males).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.180.41.167 (talk) 19:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC) 

You are very much encouraged to contribute if you're willing to proide content you can attribute to published scholarly sources. Do come back after you read both Sexuality in ancient Rome and Homosexuality in ancient Rome in their entirety. Neither article asserts that "straight" men had sex with other men and still pretended to be straight; the articles follow current scholarship in trying to show how the ancient Romans didn't view sexual behavior purely in terms of gay-straight. Eva Cantarella represents a view that in antiquity bisexuality was considered natural. Thomas Habinek argues that Ovid essentially "invented" the idea (or was the first to articulate it thoroughly) that a person might be heterosexual as a novelty. Wikipedia doesn't publish the opinions and feelings of its editors. It presents the current state and history of scholarship on the topic. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

This is your opinion, and the article contains original research exactly at the topic that was discussed here. It should be removed. It represents low quality original research. This is not the proper forum for your activism. The article is about marriage, and there was NO single case of such marriages in Ancient Rome. Sawyersx (talk) 15:24, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Major Changes, December 2008

Since the beginning of this month, this article has undergone major changes, with most of the original article removed or replaced, largely by a single editor.

This article now reads as a graduate-level textbook, with much of the simplicity of the original article lost. How can this issue be rectified? EricNau (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

A solution (to this problem in general) might be to make sure that lead sections are clear and uncluttered and as lightly footnoted as possible, particularly in longer articles and in academic/scholarly articles likely also to have general-interest readers. That is, if an 8th-grader comes here looking for info for a social studies project, she should be able to find a good and understandable explanation in the three to four grafs of the lead section. Presumably, whatever points are raised in the lead are amplified and supported within the body. I also think a sort of "tree" approach works for the body: in this case, the subsections could be streamlined and spun into cross-referenced articles: "Augustan legislation on marriage", for instance. It's there for people who want the depth, but not daunting in the general article. This overly detailed approach occurs, I think, when people start tagging "common knowledge" (within the field) as in need of citation, because "common knowledge" statements are often the hardest to provide specific sources for. Such statements represent a patiently built consensus, which is what the article should be providing; and yet if you put together the kind of clear, non-technical overview I think you're asking for, and then list your four or five carefully chosen major sources at the end, your article will get slapped with a "citations needed" tag. I agree with your point more wholeheartedly the more I think about it. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Change needed

This article is full of half truths, because of an overall inability to difrentiate between different time periods in Roman History. If the Roman Government sections were like this we would be writing that the Tribune of the Plebs had veto powers over Diocletian, Constantine and other absolutist emperors. Not to worry change is on the way, and I have some pretty authoritative sources on the topic available. --ScriptusSecundus (talk) 15:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Marriage Ceremony

The article barely mentions the ceremony and its moral-religious importance. I think readers will be interested in what was done, and why, so unless someone else steps in before me, I might add some detail. Apart from the Great Ones (Juno, Ceres and what have you) who should have at least some presence here, we've a couple of minor marriage deities (Domiducus and Domitius) in exile, looking for a home. The religious ceremony probably needs its own section; and if it overgrows its welcome here, it can be hived off into its own article. Haploidavey (talk) 14:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't look like I'm going to get around to this anytime soon, but the following might prove useful to anyone who's raring to expand the section: Hersch, Karen K., The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2010.[1] Haploidavey (talk) 22:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Article is Terrible

Full of half-truths, inaccuracies, inadequate explanations. Only differentiates in the vaguest sense between marriages In Manum and Sine Manu, and doesn't even use these terms. Does not even mention the different types of In Manum marriage.

This page is more disinformative than informative. If not improved drastically it should be deleted, as it promotes only an inaccurate understanding of the whole topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.146.64.127 (talk) 06:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

If you really think the article contains incorrect information, and have sources to back it up, edit the article. Or at least give me the sources so I can edit it.Ewf9h-bg (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio

In 2008, a single edit per this diff and another a few days later added over 16K worth of text, all of which followed copyrighted scholarly sources verbatim. I've removed as much of the offending material as I could, but some might still be lurking in close paraphrasis throughout the article. Some of what I managed to detect had been cited in good faith to entirely different sources (none of them particularly good) by various other editors; so it's not quite as straightforward as your common or garden copyright violation/plagiarism. I applied the Earwig copyvio detector but it completely failed to find the source of the worst copyvios, copypasted from Elaine Fantham's Julia August, Routledge, 2006, p.1 in particular [2]. I'm going to do my best to rewrite, but there's probably more of the same, so any comradely scrutiny would be most welcome. Haploidavey (talk) 20:09, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

And still more copyvio, this time from Parkin, Tim G. (2003) Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History, The Johns Hopkins University Press. Shameless. The whole section on old age and marriage, almost word for word. Haploidavey (talk) 18:51, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

The copyvios described above have been deleted, along with relevant revision history. Haploidavey (talk) 21:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Copied material (not copyvios, this time)

I've copied several sections into this article from Women in ancient Rome, which is better cited and much better written than this one. Some sections here are now too long, or too detailed -- but I plan on trimming those back. Some might also serves as seeds for new articles. Haploidavey (talk) 16:41, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

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Merge

I created an article titled Weddings in Ancient Rome. I didn't know this article existed until after I created it. Should the articles remain separate or should we merge them? Ewf9h-bg (talk) 23:53, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The two articles appear to have different scopes. While there's some overlap, the topic on Roman marriage might become a bit cluttered by merging the one on weddings into it. I suggest using "main article" at the top of an abbreviated wedding section in the marriage topic—and by "abbreviated", I don't mean that the section that already exists should be shortened, merely that it should be much shorter than the wedding article. P Aculeius (talk) 13:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Opposse merge There is a lot of content here and there is more from many sources that can be added. I don't see a need for a merge. The wedding is only a small part of any marriage and is a notable topic in itself.★Trekker (talk) 13:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Oppose merge As per the comments above, the articles have sufficiently different scope and content to remain separate; merging them would just bloat the marriage article. --LordPeterII (talk) 13:35, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

References

The is a mixture of reference styles that I started to fix, but realized it was too much work.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 19:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

The opening paragraph is based on single source while other academic sources indicate that only one legal wife was permitted in ancient Rome, but in the same time there was no restriction on the number of concubines. In the words of Betzig (1992) "Mating was polygynous, marriage was monogamous". It is in fact well known that, in ancient Rome, members of the aristocracy often fathered children with their slaves. These children were brought up with, and in the style of, legitimate children, freed young, and given wealth, position, and paternal affection. Of course, only men were allowed to have extramarital relationships. So all in all "strictly monogamous" is misleading or at least have different meaning than the one we use today.. Gilisa (talk) 10:03, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

@Gilisa: Then just be bold and change it! I don't habe access to that source you linked, but if you do, feel free to change the opening paragraph citing this source, and rephrase it in a way that you would deem more accurate. The change sounds sound to me, so consider that a mini-consensus :) –LordPickleII (talk) 10:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

it is true that Marriage in ancient Rome is monogamous for female only ie., a woman can only have one spouse at a time because of Augustus' Adultery laws, whereas Male's sexual activities with his slaves, mistress etc are not included in Adultery legislations. The statement a man cannot have a wife and a concubine at the same time is not clear whether it existed before sixth century Justinian or not. It is clearly said in the already cited works of Schiedel and in the acclaimed work of Judith, the Women and the law in the Roman Empire. The institution of marriage in Ancient Rome is monogamous for wives that co existed with male polygyny. But specifying this has been met with reverting the changes and flagging as disruptive edits even when the relevant sources are cited. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 15:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

No, marriage was monogamous even if men were not punished for having sex with other women. Cheating is not illegal or punishable in todays US marriage system either but the marriage as a legal institution is still only between two people.★Trekker (talk) 17:14, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: Roman Women

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 16 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Clementine Johnson (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Branskk (talk) 01:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Lead

@അദ്വൈതൻ: you keeps POV editing and removing relevant information from the lead section while reinserting references in the lead, despite being told over and over that that is not needed. You also refuse to engage in any conversation on your talkpage, would you please at least respond here? (Pinging other editor also involved @Haploidavey:). ★Trekker (talk) 23:42, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

@അദ്വൈതൻ: User StarTrekker has already mentioned you here. Please read and respond to this message. Thank you. SeanTVT (talk) 12:30, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Marriage is Monogamous with Male polygyny

Marriage in ancient Rome is monogamous for female only ie., a woman can only have one spouse at a time because of Augustus' Adultery laws, whereas Male's sexual activities with his slaves, mistress etc are not included in Adultery legislations. The statement a man cannot have a wife and a concubine at the same time is not clear whether it existed before sixth century Justinian or not. It is clearly said in the already cited works of Schiedel and in the acclaimed work of Judith, the Women and the law in the Roman Empire. The institution of marriage in Ancient Rome is monogamous for wives that co existed with male polygyny. Check the sources and do the relevant edits. Do not make wikipedia a propagandist tool. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 10:40, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

It is actually very clear, a man can not have a wife or a concubine at the same time. No such arangement has ever been attested. The fact that male infidelity was not illegal does not change the fact that legal marriage was between two people only.★Trekker (talk) 14:26, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

It is not actually very clear, a man can not have a wife or a concubine at the same time in Ancient Rome. It is actually only very clear, a man can not have a wife or a concubine at the same time from the time of the emperor Justinian in sixth century. See the already cited sources and instances from Ancient Rome. Also, it is because of the legality that the marriage ended in monogamous for wife before Justinian and monogamous for both husband and and wife since Justinian because of his statement. Without legal purviews then what do you mean by marriage being monogamous in the first place? Legality is the factor not infidelity. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 15:30, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Unless any evidence can be found that a man could have more than one legal concubine or one concubine and a wife at the same time (no such thing has ever been attested as far as I'm aware) it should not be regarded as true. Just because legislation is not attested until Justinian it doesn't mean it didn't exist either in writing or de facto.★Trekker (talk) 17:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

There are various notable occurrences of this, including the famous cases of the emperors Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, and Vespasian. Suetonius wrote that Augustus "put Scribonia (his second wife) away because she was too free in complaining about the influence of his concubine". Because of this presence along with no laws prosecuting husband for his sexual activities with slaves, mistress etc the already cited source states about the resource polygyny, ie., wealth meant the more powerful men had a principal wife and several secondary sexual relationships. But these facts are deliberately edited out the wikipedia page making it a propagandism. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 14:48, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

None of those cases are using 'concubine' literally. Livia was not Augustus concubina legaly nor was Antonia Caenis Vespasian's concubine legaly until his wife died. No one is arguing that Roman men were faithful spouses, they weren't, but that didn't change that marriage was between the wife and husband only. Your problem is that you don't understand the difference between polygyny as a legal part of marriage and 'polygyny' as a term to describe a mating strategy.★Trekker (talk) 18:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Antonia Caenis was legally Roman emperor Vespasian's contubernalis, and later his wife. Concubinage in the case of slave is Contubernalis. Later become his wife after death of Flavia.

It's not about being faithful or not, it's about point that which is still in contention that a concubine existed along with wife in pre Constantinian Laws. This contention is worthy of mentioning in the article. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 20:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Literally none of that is true.★Trekker (talk) 21:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

There are sources too for what just said about Caenis. Check the sources cited before reverting the changes in the article. Edits with relevant citations aren't supposed to be simply revert because the person choose to. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 22:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Those sources are misinformed and wrong. A Roman senator was not legaly able to marry a freedwoman and the emperor doing do would have been utterly unthinkable.★Trekker (talk) 22:37, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

StarTrekker is correct. Roman marriage was essentially monogamous, for a man could have only one wife at a time for the purpose of breeding legitimate children, and intended to be lasting (provided that affectio maritalis persisted). OCD⁴ sv "marriage law, Roman". Ifly6 (talk) 11:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The section attributed to Grubbs in notes is wildly misinterpreted. What is really being referred to is note 70 on page 303 – (not |pages=) the original location is page 170 – which references Sent. Pauli. 2.20.1. The original statement on page 170 is No one shall be granted liberty to keep a concubine in his home while he is married... Both [Constantine's rescript and Paul's juridicial statement] represent the classical Roman legal position: concubinatus was an alternative, not a supplement, to iustum matrimonium. (Emphasis on the contrasting of alternative and supplement.) Ifly6 (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The same page continues to read "Cod. Just. 5.26.1 does appear to leave the door open for a married man to keep a concubine somewhere besides his home. Opinions vary as to whether Constantine intended to prohibit married men from having concubines altogether [Beaucamp

1990, 17]"2-51

As it is evident by now, there is no misinterpretation.

Ie., This statement is ought to be in the article.



In the case of Roman citizen men, it is not clear whether the condition that a man is not able to have a concubine at the time that he has a wife pre-dates or post-dates the Constantinian law; ie., whether concubinage existed concurrently with marriage for men in Ancient Rome has been debated in modern scholarship and the evidence is inconclusive: it was not until the sixth century CE, after centuries of Christian influence, that the emperor Justinian claimed that “ancient law” prohibited husbands from keeping wives and concubines at the same time. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 17:28, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

While we're here: I fear our article Concubinatus is potentially misleading in the last section, which was quoted above:

Suetonius wrote that Augustus "put Scribonia [his second wife] away because she was too free in complaining about the influence of his concubine".

The implication of taking that from Kiefer in an article on concubinatus is that Suetonius uses that term, but he uses paelex, a more pejorative term with connotations of luring away (cf pellicio), not of legal standing. (dimissam Scriboniam, quia liberius doluisset nimiam potentiam paelicis)[3] Without access to the full text of Kiefer, I fear we may be quoting his translation a little out of context or even incorrectly paraphrasing him. How should we handle it? NebY (talk) 15:24, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

References