069 - As History of Rome Wedding

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 69, A History of Rome Wedding. So the History of Rome is getting married in a week and a half, and to celebrate, today we're going to set aside the steady march of history and do a short episode focused on Roman wedding customs. Remember also that after today, we'll be going off the air for 4 weeks while we here at the History of Rome do the thing where we get married, and then do the thing where we move to Austin, Texas. When we come back though, we'll do the Rock'em Sock'em Drama of 69 AD, and then move into the Flavian Dynasty on our way to the Five Good Emperors, the decline phase into the crisis of the 3rd century, and the surprising comeback led by Diocletian and confirmed by Constantine. Lots and lots still to come, so please stay tuned.

Today though, we've got weddings on the brain. Yesterday, we finalized the floral arrangements, picked up my suit from the tailor, scrambled for a workable solution to the wedding cake issue, and, gulp, went down to the giant brick building to pay for and sign an official wedding certificate that will formally make us husband and wife once it's signed by the state-sanctioned officiant who will perform the wedding ceremony. As it turns out, weddings are a confusing amalgam of emotion, tradition, and bureaucratic legalese. If that doesn't sound like the Romans, well, I don't know what does.

It goes without saying that we have them to thank for a lot of what we all have to put up with when it's time to get married. As an institution, marriage dates back into prehistory and was codified as a legal relationship as early as Hammurabi's Code in the 1700s BC. There are competing theories about where the institution came from and why it persists, and I'm basically not going to touch any of that with a ten-foot pole, but I'm just going to say that by the time the Romans came onto the scene, marriage was a well-established rock upon which society was based. It was the manner by which property, wealth, rights, responsibilities, and alliances were transferred from one generation to another.

Because all of this formed the bedrock of an enduring culture, as with most of the ancient world, marriage in Rome was not seen as the legal expression of love and commitment, but rather as the practical means to a practical end. The very idea of romantic love was so divorced from the concept of marriage, in fact, that those who stumbled into a union that actually involved romantic love, as with Pompey the Great and Julia, they found themselves the butts of jokes rather than celebrated as models to be emulated. At all levels of society, Roman marriage was about cementing connections between families, ensuring and consolidating property, and creating clear legal lines of succession and inheritance. Love was left to poets and philosophers. Marriage was a serious business.

There were different types of marriage in ancient Rome, but they broke down into two broad categories. Marriages where the bride was transferred as property from her father to her new husband, and those where she technically remained under the authority of her existing paterfamilias. The former category itself broke down into three types, one which was elaborate and formal, a second which was less formal, but involved the ceremonial purchase of a bride by the groom, and one which was a sort of variation of today's common law marriage that only kicked in once a woman had been living with a single man for more than a year. The second category, where the wife was not formally subordinated to her new husband, was known as a free marriage, and in some cases the woman became subordinate only to herself if their father died and had stipulated such freedom in the will.

Roman women, or should I say Roman girls, were eligible for marriage at twelve, and Roman men, or should I say Roman punk teenagers, were ready at fourteen. Most of the time, marriages were set up between boys and girls close in age, but often an older man marrying for the second or third time would choose a much younger wife. Though there was no real legal restrictions to this, or even very strict social taboos, men like Cicero still found themselves made fun of for the huge age discrepancies between themselves and their chosen wives. What really was taboo, though, was for a man to marry a woman older than him, and it was a striking exception that Octavian's first marriage was to the much older Scribonia.

The matches would be arranged by the paterfamiliae, or fathers of the family, of the prospective bride and groom. Though the women of the families did not officially have any say in who would marry their sons and daughters, Roman matrons did exert considerable informal power over the process. Particularly in the case of brides, it was customary for the paterfamilias to consult with the mother of the bride when working up a list of potential candidates for her daughter to marry. The paterfamilias was not, of course, legally obligated to consult with the mother of the bride, but, you know, he did so at his own peril.

In order for a marriage to be arranged and recognized, both the groom-to-be and bride-to-be were required to have something called canubium, or the right to marry. Basically, this meant answering the questions, are they old enough? Are they Roman citizens? And are they presently married to someone else? The Romans had no truck with polygamy as it muddled up inheritance lines, and they did not, except under certain special circumstances, recognize marriage to foreigners. As you will recall, this latter point formed the basis for Octavian's attacks on Mark Antony after Antony took up with the foreigner Cleopatra at the expense of his citizen wife Octavia.

But beyond these technical requirements that answered the question, can I marry this man? Or can I marry this woman? There was the social requirements. Should I marry this man? Or should I marry this woman? In the upper classes, this was especially important. But up and down the line, Roman mothers and fathers fretted over finding the right match for their children. That husband or that wife who would elevate their social status, or bring in a particularly large dowry, or gain them entrance into a prominent family.

In the early days, you'll recall that there were all kinds of rules about who could marry who, with patricians and plebs not allowed to intermarry. When those restrictions were lifted, it became a really big deal for a plebeian family to hook one of their daughters up to a patrician man, or to bring a patrician daughter into their house. On the other side, though, the patricians were never particularly excited to be sending one of their own off to join a plebeian family, or to be bringing in some commoner into their distinguished line. But practical economics trumped aristocratic snobbery, as the cross-caste unions usually proved to be economic windfalls for many impoverished patrician families.

After all the centuries of intermarriage, by the time of the late Republic and early Empire, the most important thing was not necessarily whether a candidate was patrician or pleb, but how distinguished their ancestral line was. For the upper classes, it was all about counting the offices held by your ancestors. If you were a young man from a distinguished family, who could point to, say, 4 consul ships and 16 praetor ships held by your various ancestors, then you were looking pretty good. Bonus points were given or taken away depending on how recently such offices were held. So if the young bride's father had been a consul, then that would be a pretty sought after young woman. But if her family was still clinging to the one consul ship they had held in 436 BC, well, people were just going to roll their eyes at that.

Over the course of the Second Punic War, most of the upper class men who could point to distinguished lineages were wiped out, and Rome saw the arrival of the novus homo, which led to the wholesale intermingling of lines. The young man who sought to be the first in his family to reach the consul ship, sought a bride who would connect him into a prominent, if depleted, aristocratic family. And that same aristocratic family was looking for men of merit, and more importantly, men of wealth, who would help maintain the family's place at the top of the food chain. A perfect example of this is Gaius Marius, a young Poblian man of talent and ambition, whose marriage into the ancient but floundering Julian line took his career and their political status to the next level.

The lower classes worked in much the same way, but instead of playing in the VIP room, they played at the dollar tables, not that the competition was any less fierce. No one was trying to find the perfect match to raise the whole family up from where they had been previously, politically, economically, and socially. One of the overriding goals of a Roman man was to outdo the accomplishments of his ancestors, and marriage was another tool in his kit to help him accomplish this ever-present goal.

Beyond the lineage stuff and the economic stuff, character actually played a pretty large role in the selection of brides and grooms. Roman society centered around public praise and public shame. So the serious young man who seemed to be a natural leader of men was more prized than the lazy man who seemed to be a natural drinker of drink. The former would create maximum praise, the latter maximum shame. For the women, it was all about being a dutiful, obedient, and loyal wife. Outspoken, uninhibited women were looked upon with suspicion, as again, the former would bring much praise, the latter much shame.

As I think continues to be the case today, physical beauty was more highly sought after in women than in men. A pretty girl from a nobody family could catch the eye of some rich aristocrat, and suddenly find herself elevating her family well above their rank as a result of a marriage proposal. For the man from nowhere, though, good looks were not his ticket to the top, but rather his promise. If he thought well, and spoke well, and carried himself well, and possessed an ambition to succeed in public life, he might just find himself skipping ahead of men with better pedigrees but worse habits.

Once a marriage was arranged, it was time to announce the happy news. One way a new couple could signal their intention to marry was to simply appear in public holding hands. But often, a formal engagement party was thrown by the paterfamilias of the bride, with the groom-to-be seated as the guest of honor. At this party, the couple formally announced their consent to be wed, and the final details of the dowry, if there was one, were worked out between the two paterfamiliae. As a visible symbol of the engagement, brides-to-be would often be given engagement rings, which they would wear, as they do today, on the ring finger of the left hand, believed to be linked directly with the heart. So I suppose I can't say that it was all business.

Although a formal ceremony was not required to legalize a marriage, a wedding was as good a time as any to throw a party, so the happy occasion was often celebrated with a ceremony and reception held at the father of the bride's house. When picking out a day for the ceremony, the superstitious Romans studiously avoided the calends, nones, and ides of any given month, which, for example, would be the first, fifth, and thirteenth of September, and refused to marry in the unlucky months of February and May. June was considered to be the best month within which to marry, which may be the origin of the old, a June bride, expression. Once they successfully navigated the luck and unluck of the calendar, the families would set the date and send out invitations. For these types of aristocratic weddings, ten people were required to attend to fulfill the witness requirement.

On the day of the wedding, the bride would ritually give away all her childhood toys and clothes, and then be dressed by her mother in a single-piece, floor-length white gown with a ceremonial knotted belt believed to bring good luck, that only her new husband could undo. Her hair would be parted by a ceremonial spear-tip, be separated into six locks, and then topped by a floral veil. The groom, his family, and other guests would arrive in the father of the bride's home, and after the auspices were taken one more time to ensure that all was well metaphysically, the parents of the bride would hand her over to the groom.

During this ceremony, the bride and groom would stand before a priest, holding hands, and they would exchange vows that usually included the line, Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia. Gaius being a name that held some particular luck for these types of occasions. After the vows were exchanged, the couple would offer a sacrifice to Jupiter, in the form of either a pig, or, as most of us are now used to, some type of cake. Following the signing of the paperwork and exchange of presents, the guests would sit down to a meal and prepare themselves for the upcoming wedding procession.

The procession was the key to the whole shebang, and served as the ritual transference of authority from the father of the bride to the husband. The bride would be guided out of her father's house by three boys, and would lead the guests on a walk to her new husband's home. One of these boys would bear a torch that signified her father's authority over her, lit from the paterfamilias' hearth. As the procession wound through the streets, the train would grow larger and larger, as the general public, often just for the fun of it, joined in the march. Along the way, onlookers would throw nuts, a symbol of fertility.

At some point in all of this, the groom would split off from the party, and hurry ahead to his house, where he would formally greet his new wife into their home. When she arrived at the threshold, some more rituals were performed, including the ceremonial snuffing out of the torch and tossing it to the assembled guests, and then the bride would carefully step through the door. The Romans were particularly superstitious about doorways, though, and just as often as not, the husband would pick up his new wife and carry her inside, so that she did not trip on her way in, which would have been a sign that the gods did not approve of the union.

Once inside, the general public would go about their business, while the wedding guests would continue to feast and celebrate. When the time came, the couple would head off to a ceremoniously decorated wedding bed, and consummate the marriage. Though not legally required, consummation on the night of the wedding was expected, and signaled that the two now held between them a contract of fidelity. The next morning the bride would emerge from their room, and begin her new life as a matron in her husband's family. Though affection and kinship kept her tied to her old family, legally she was now the property of her husband.

It goes without saying that the very, very soon-to-be Mrs. History of Rome does not subscribe to this theory at all. Even in jest. I'm serious. Make that joke around here sometime.

So that's how the Romans got married. The modern Western world still holds to some of the traditions or variations thereof, and everything that I just described actually seems pretty similar to everything that I'm planning on doing in a few weeks. The engagement ring, the white dress, the veil, the offering of cake, the throwing of rice, the tossing of a bouquet. Like so much else in our culture, because that's how the Romans did it, is the answer to the question of why we do all of the crazy things that we do when it's time to get married.

So that's it for now. I'll see you all again in four weeks from the new head office in Austin, Texas. I want to thank everyone for their well wishes on the wedding and the move, and to those of you who have donated money, I want to say that none of it would have been possible without you. I haven't touched a dime of the money that has come in, and it's been sitting in a honeymoon fund that has, in the past few months, been renamed the Moving Fund. To those of you who have thought about donating but maybe haven't gotten around to it, well, we're about to pick up and move across the country, and technically neither one of us has landed a job yet, so yeah, now's the time. ThehistoryofRome.typepad.com. Jupiter smiles on all of you.