1795
1796

In HBO's "Rome" Niobe is told her husband was killed in Gaul, and sleeps with another man, but he later returns. If she had used "i was told you were dead" as a defence, how would that be dealt with legally, culturally and emotionally?

(self.AskHistorians)

submitted by Logical-Fox-9697

Been curious about that for a while.

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[–]RPO777 1617 points1618 points  (44 children)

This defense would likely not even have occurred to Niobe historically speaking, as adultery in Roman conceptions dealt not with the "criminal" intent of the wife in terms of her faithfulness to her husband, but in the loss of dignity that the husband suffers as a result of the wife's infidelity. Sexual purity was a posession held by the husband, even the rape of a wife would have been dealt with as a loss of dignitas on the part of the husband and a likely legal basis for divorce.

This is not directly on point, but it should be a good way to recalibrate how you think about sexual purity laws as they were conceived of in Roman times:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=mjgl

The paper deals with how Roman law dealt with the topic of rape, and does touch on issues of adultery.

This line is illustrative:

"The various choices of legal charges for rape punctuated the paramount importance of the Roman woman's sexual integrity. "Rape could not be seen as invasion of a right to choose her own sexual partner so much as the destruction of her chief commodity in the exchange which accompanied marriage and which she was not equipped to negotiate., 63

The extreme value of a woman's sexual integrity can be seen in the way raped women were treated by society and their families. Instead of being seen as victims, raped women were seen as sources of embarrassment to their husbands and fathers.6 With the loss of their virginity, unmarried women had little hope for a marriage, and married victims suffered shame and despair.65 The requirement of keeping their daughters and wives untainted for their reproductive capacity was of such utmost importance that some families tried to dispose of rape victims, for they could not be trusted with their primary function, legitimate reproduction.66 Adding to the facile rejection of the raped woman was the fact that the rapist was usually conceived of as a stranger who penetrated the family and the home from the outside.67

Thus the rape victim could be considered the weak point through which the stranger was able to invade the home, and as such, the family might eliminate her to hide evidence of the past and prevent possibility of future encroachments." (Nguyen 11)

Under Roman Republican Law, the pater familias was tasked with determining the punishment for the action, and permitted the killing of both the adulterer and the "unfaithful" wife.

Generally, Roman Law required intent to levy punishment. However, in cases of rape issues, the law was primarily concerned with maintaining the dignity and the rights of the husband or father, who was considered to be the primary injured party--not the woman.

In that legal context, I think it's unlikely if a wife's knowledge of her husband's status of being alive or dead would have mattered in terms of the "injury" that she made to her husband's dignity.

[–]saltydaniel32 288 points289 points  (7 children)

Curious if this there is a class component to this. Did an ordinary Roman worker feel the same “violation of his dignitas” that an upper class Roman elite would? Could this be a distortion caused by the dominance of elite culture in the sources?

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        [–]evrestcoleghost 22 points23 points  (1 child)

        Niobe was married to a centurion of a respected local family with long history of service that had servants on its own so vorenus would very much care about his dignitas

        [–]Llanistarade 233 points234 points  (6 children)

        Do we know in practice how often such extreme sentences were applied to rape victims ? Was it a majority of the cases or more like a rare example ? Taken into account that, I guess, lots of families didn't go through legal process to deal with such shameful scandals.

        [–]RPO777 372 points373 points  (5 children)

        Well, what may be illustrative is Augustus' moral law reforms included amendments to the adultery law.

        Under Republican law, how the family "dealt with" the adultery issue was largely left to the authority of the pater familias, which included broad powers to inflict severe penalties to "transgressors' (which would in this case, include rape victims in the family).

        The Lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis introduced an interesting wrinkle--it levies punishments on fathers and husbands who refuse to punish adultresses.

        If it was common that husbands and fathers exercised their authority under Republican law to severely punish adulterers and unmarried daughters for unpermitted sexual activity, it seems unlikely that Augustus would have felt a powerful need to levy active punishments upon those that did not do so.

        However, modern historians debate a lot about how to understand and interpret the Augustan morality laws, particularly those concerning sexual morality

        Republican law considered sexual morality a matter of private morality, thus sexual issues were largely permitted, boradly , to be dealt with by the Pater Familias--who was the arbiter for morality and honor in private matters.

        But because these were private matters, they were primarily handled under Roman custom, rather than under a set of codified legal principles, and variation between how families handled the matters was not only possible, it was likely.

        TO what extent there was variation in custom and understanding is very difficult to parse out.

        Also, by makiing these matters an issue of public law, rather than private matters, Augustus changed the character of these moral issues into a matter of state policy.

        While legal disputes involving rape or audltery did enter the legal sphere in Republican times, they primarily dealt with the injury that a person levied on a family clan's honor. With Augustus making it matter of personal criminal responsibility, Augustus changed the legal character of how these matters were to be handled. And by levying punishments on Pater Familias that do not adhere to State Policy in such matters, in some ways Augustan law severely curtailed the authority of the Pater Familias in these matters.

        All of which is to say, to what extent AUgust's moral reforms were a reaction to what Augustus saw as "immorality" vs. what Augustus wanted to do to reform the relationship between State and Family honor/morality is debatable.

        Which is a long way of saying "I don't know."

        [–]Llanistarade 37 points38 points  (0 children)

        Very interesting, thanks !

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            [–]donac 53 points54 points  (2 children)

            Different question, but how would this apply to widows? Maybe no one would want poor widows, but what about rich ones? Did that even matter?

            [–]RPO777 84 points85 points  (1 child)

            In Roman culture, there was an ideal that was presented of a woman who married one man for their lifetime, but in actual practice, remarriage by both sexes was extremely common, and broadly accepted.

            Augustus' marriage law reforms went so far as to require remarriage of widows under 50 after a 10 month period of mourning, with a 1 year timer basically starting at that point. Violation of the law included severe penalties for the upper classes, as it would allow the state to confiscate half of the woman's property inherited from her husband.

            In the Republican era, the idea fo the "virtuous Widow" that refuses remarriage certainly existed. Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi Brothers was frequently held up as a Roman ideal. She had a happy marriage that produced 12 children, then chose to remain a widow for the rest of her life, and was well known for her beauty, intelligence and knowledge. Her rejection of numerous wedding proposals is presented as an aspect of her devotion and purity.

            For most lower class women, these would not have been practical concerns, as lacking property or the ability to engage in a trade to sustain themselves, a woman would desperately need to find a husband who could provide for her. So the freedom to choose to remain a young and unmarried widow was mostly an issue of the upper classes. For older lower class women for whom remarriage was not an option, and did not have surviving children who could care for them, the death of a spouse could be catastrophic, where they would be left as beggars surviving only upon the charity of the community.

            But from Augustus' marriage reforms, you can definitely see the idea that remarriage being an accepted and even societally encouraged aspect was something that was well established.

            Sexual relations in the context of marriage was broadly accepted as virtuous, and a woman who had been married prior was not considered undesirable per se (Augustus himself married Livia Drusila, a divorcee).

            [–]Tus3 3 points4 points  (0 children)

            For most lower class women, these would not have been practical concerns, as lacking property or the ability to engage in a trade to sustain themselves, a woman would desperately need to find a husband who could provide for her.

            I thought nearly all women could back then produce textiles; to the point that when women were enslaved in war they were often put to work in textile manufacturing under the assumption that was something all women were capable of.

            Though, maybe textile work could not provide enough income to achieve an acceptable standard of living, despite it still being profitable to force slave-women subsisting only on the bare minimum to make textiles.

            I also thought that Republican Rome had a very large class of land-owning peasantry in which case a peasant widow could also make some money by renting out part of the land she inherited from her husband. Or were you with lower class referring to part of the population even beneath those?

            [–]OneCatch 40 points41 points  (2 children)

            Do we have any indication of whether the woman in question would be despised or otherwise held to be morally in the wrong in such cases, or if it was more a case of the punishment levied on the woman being purely pragmatic?

            To put it crudely, is the sentiment we see more along the lines of "What a whore for letting herself be attacked" or "She couldn't have prevented this but, regrettably, we'll have to punish her anyway to maintain our reputations". Or a different sentiment entirely?

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              [–]mozzarella__stick 117 points118 points  (2 children)

              How does this square with Livy's version of the story about the rape of Lucretia? After she's raped, her husband and father (father in law?) both reassure her that she's not culpable for what happened and are horrified when she ends her own life to ward off scandal being attached to her name. How would Romans in Livy's time have understood their reaction to Lucretia's actions? 

              [–]RPO777 167 points168 points  (1 child)

              I'm a little unclear on what you think is incongruous between Livy's telling of the Rape of Lucretia to this Roman custom?

              So for the benefit of those who don't know what we're talking about, Livy is a historian from 1st century BCE-1st century CE who wrote a lot about Roman history.

              The Rape of Lucretia is a story that is relayed by Livy regarding the transition of Rome from a monarchy to a Republic in the 6th century BCE, so about 500+ years before Livy's time.

              While the historiocity of the Rape of Lucretia is debatable, how Livy tells the story as it was understood by 1st century Romans may illuminate how Romans thought about honor, chastity and rape.

              Lucrecia was a prominent wife of a Roman Aristocrat, Collatinus. Lucrecia is presented in accounts as an ideal Roman woman, who was raped by the last King of Rome, Tarquin. According to Livy, Lucrecia states that she was raped, and in defense of her, Brutus (the ancestor of Caeser's assassin) states "it is the mind that sins, not the body, and where there has been no consent there is no guilt."

              But Lucrecia extracts an oath from Brutus that he would avenge her rapist, then commits suicide.

              So in this story, I think the key to understanding it is I think Livy presents Brutus as mistaken in his statement.

              It is mindful that Lucretia is presented as the Roman ideal wife, thus her actions should largely be interpreted as virtuous.

              Lucrecia's suicide represents, most commonly interpreted, as a rejection of Brutus' commentary. Brutus is saying that there was no guilt for Lucrecia, so she need not considered her and her husbands' honor besmirched, in effect.

              But what should we make of Lucrecia's suicide in this account?

              Lucrecia is presented as taking her proper role as a defense of her husband's honor as first and foremost concern (as should a virtuous woman in this Roman context). Lucrecia deems her continued living as an unbearable stain on her husband's honor and "does the right thing" and kills herself.

              If we were to understand Brutus as being correct in his statement, the subsequent suicide of Lucrecia is difficult to square with his statement, particularly if we take LIvy's presentation of Lucrecia as an ideal Roman woman to be correct.

              Seen from a Roman lens, Lucrecia is provided with temptation by Brutus, to act as if nothing was wrong and that she did not in fact represent a stain on her husband's honor. But the righteous Lucrecia correctly (in Livy's view) sees that her continued living is unacceptable for her husband's honor and does the right thing by extinguishing this shame for her husband by sacrificing her own life willingly.

              [–]h3lblad3 9 points10 points  (6 children)

              pater familias

              This seems to mean "father of the families"

              Can you explain what exactly a pater familias is insofar as the household goes? Is it the man of that specific household, or is it someone that governed multiple households/families?

              [–]RPO777 30 points31 points  (2 children)

              In Roman conception of society, there were 2 guiding principles. Law (Juris) and custom (Mos Maiorum).

              Certain aspects of life were considered public, and governed by law. Certain aspects of life were governed by custom/tradition.

              Romans took Mos Maiorum very seriously, and certain types of severe breaches of Mos Maiorum were considered to be permissible to be punished severely, up to and including death.

              However, while law was primarily governed publicly through the officers of the law and the Roman courts, most matters of Mos Maiorum were governed by the Pater Familias--the head of the family.

              There is an interaction of law and tradition here, because the Pater Familias is a legally recognized status that is defined in Roman law, and the Pater Familias' legal powers were shaped and partially defined under Roman law.

              The Pater Familias was a Roman Citizen who was the oldest male member of his household. Males of majority that became independent would establish their own households, although the Pater Familias of a clan of extended family would maintain certain legal rights of authority and tradition over even his adult children, but the Pater Familias would generally maintain extensive legal authority over the women of his household.

              The power of the Pater Familias is analogous to a judge or legal officiant in the power of law--the Pater Familias has the power to interpret Mos Maiorum, and under the powers of Mos Maiorum to make determinations on behalf of the family,

              Most relevantly here, the Pater Familias had a responsibility to maintain the honor (Dignitas) of the family, which included seeing the virtue (virtus) of the family be properly upheld, which included maintaining the sexual morality of the household.

              In theory, the Pater Familias' authority over the family included the power, under Mos Maiorum, to put to death members of his household, although in practical terms, these were rarely exercised.

              More commonly, the Pater Familias would be in charge of arranging marriage contracts for the women of his family, as well as conducting religious ceremonies on behalf of the family, and disposing of family property.

              Interestingly, wives were generally not part of the household of their husbands--their husbands were not their Pater Familias, but their fathers, or older brothers were.

              THere were 2 types of ROman marriage, Cum Manu and Sine Manu. Cum Manu marriage was more common the early Republic but became exceedingly rare by the late Republic. Cum Manu marriage signed over the legal rights of the wife so she became under the authority of her husband as the Pater Familias. Sine Manu marriage had the wife remain under the legal authority of her original birth family as their pater familias.

              Sine Manu marriage permitted broader authority for the woman to maintain control over her property and legal rights idenepdent of her husband, and may have been a reason for its greater popularity, particularly as divorce became more common in Roman society in the late Republic.

              Thus, the Pater Familias' legal authority was broad, but often did not extend to their wives, but to their children and sisters (rarely their wives or their mothers, as they usually remained under the authority of their birth families).

              [–]Less-Feature6263 3 points4 points  (0 children)

              Late reply but I just want to say that "Pater familias" in latin means "Father of the family". The ending in -as is an archaic form of the singular genitive, while the classical form is -ae. In classical latin the correct form should be "Pater familiae" but it is not, since the term had very old legal connotations that were perfectly explained in the answer to your comment and didn't follow the normal evolution of Latin.

              So since familias is singular it didn't imply any kind of power over households other than your own.

              [–]gmanflnj 2 points3 points  (1 child)

              What made a woman less able to produce legitimate offspring if she’d lost her virginity? Surely after some time you’d know any children weren’t fathered by the rapist? Trying to understand their mindset and struggling tbh.

              [–]w3hwalt 14 points15 points  (0 children)

              It's not about what makes logical sense. This was a cultural belief, that women's worth was found in their virginity before marriage and their sexual fidelity after. Perhaps the practice started with wanting to ensure paternity, but in the period we're discussing, the matter was entirely cultural.

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                [–]Satibarzanes 105 points106 points  (0 children)

                The show handled emotional aspect of that sort of situation pretty well: Vorenus reacts with anger (even rage), both when he first suspects that Niobe has been unfaithful and when that suspicion is eventually confirmed. This is consistent with what we know of Roman culture: Roman sources emphasize the passions experienced by men who believed that wives had engaged in adulterous relationships, which was not only emotionally wounding, but also something that men perceived as an attack against their honor and the honor of their households. I’m not sure that someone in Niobe's position would have been able to ameliorate her husband's rage much by arguing more forcefully that she had believed he was dead; I suspect that Vorenus would have still felt that his honor had been directly attacked.

                Niobe’s eventual suicide likewise fits what we know of Roman culture, since it illustrates a fundamental tension between (1) what the law permitted Vorenus to do in this kind of situation, and (2) a wife's potential worry about what he could potentially do extra-legally.

                Legally speaking, what Vorenus could *not* do was kill anyone. This would have been true even had Niobe been married to him cum manu (a somewhat archaic form of marriage at that time, which had the legal effect of transferring a woman from the legal power, or potestas, of her father to the legal power of her husband). While much has been made of the power of a paterfamilias to kill people in his potestas if he deemed them guilty of a moral offense, that kind of behavior was rare in practice (though common in Roman literary reminiscences about “the good old days”), and typically invited condemnation.

                (Since the context here is the late Republic, before Augustus' marriage laws, he would have had two legal options. First, he would have had grounds for a legal action for iniuria—loosely, “injury”—against Niobe’s lover if he really wanted to pursue things in court, which would have allowed him to secure a financial penalty. Second, he would have had the option to divorce Niobe while keeping some of her dowry for himself; husbands in this period were able to retain a portion of the dowry on divorce if the marriage had produced children, and were also probably able to retain an additional portion if a wife had committed a moral offense like adultery.)

                The problem from the perspective of somebody like Niobe was that, while the law was all well and good and in theory would have prevented Vorenus from resorting to violence, she couldn't necessarily count on that in practice. This was a world in which there was no public prosecutor, so unless she had relatives who were able and willing to step in in the event that Vorenus attacked her (or her child) in a rage, the law wasn't necessarily much of a deterrent. So, in the show, her suicide becomes her way to vindicate her honor, and to ensure that Vorenus wouldn't harm the child she had with her lover.

                Now, just for fun, let's imagine that Niobe was able to calm Vorenus down to the point that murder was no longer on the table, and he did take legal action against her and her lover. How would that play out, if we assume that they both tried to make the case that they had sincerely believed Vorenus to be dead?

                Roman lawyers recognized that this sort of situation could arise, which is hardly unexpected given the information technology of the day, and in fact a case preserved in Justinian's digest involves precisely these kinds of circumstances (48.5.12.12—a decision by the lawyer Papinian). Papinian's view seems to be
                that intent and belief mattered. For that reason, had Vorenus prosecuted the lover and the lover made the case that he had believed Vorenus to be dead and the marriage to be dissolved, it's not *completely* impossible that a judge would have sided with the lover.

                Things would have been more complicated for Niobe. Had Vorenus divorced Niobe and retained a portion of her dowry for "moral offense", she could have attempted to sue to recover it by arguing hat she shouldn’t be treated as an adulteress because she had sincerely believed her husband to be dead. How a claim like this on Niobe’s part would have been adjudicated is anybody’s guess. Mine is that it probably wouldn’t have gone in her favor, since Romans had pretty strong views about the sexual conduct of women that would have biased any judge against her. Broadly speaking, honor for women was tied closely to their ability/willingness to guard their sexual virtue, whether married or not. A woman who wanted to be seen as “respectable” had to be very careful not to place herself in situations in which she could be suspected of having extramarital sexual relationships, even when single, and even if legally independent (i.e. not in the legal power of her father).