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THE GREEN BAG
MARRIAGE IN OLD ROxME BY R. VASHOX ROGERS, K. C. AMONG the early Romans, as with the Hindoos and Greeks, marriage was a religious duty which a man owed alike to his ancestors and to himself. Believing that the happiness of the dead in the world be yond the Styx depended upon their proper burial here and on the periodical renewal by their descendants of prayers and feasts and offerings for the repose of their souls, it was incumbent upon a man above all things to perpetuate his race and keep alive his family cult. Marriage was not so much to provide an heir to property as to provide one who could carry on the domestic re ligion. They considered that if the funeral repast ceased to be offered the dead immediately left their tombs and became wandering shades revisiting the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous with their meanings, disturbing the living with their reproaches, and calling down diseases on men and bar renness on the land with their curses. So soon as the proper relative or descendant renewed the sacrifice, the feast, and the libation, they crept back to their tomb, at rest once more, their divine attributes re stored, at peace with man again. In the house of every Roman, as well as in the home of every Greek, stood an altar bearing a few ashes and some glowing coals from which to kindle the fire in honor of the ancestor (the worship of the dead was the worship of ancestors). It was the imperative duty of the master of the house to keep up this sacred flame. An extin guished one was an extinguished family. The Roman law sought to prevent any family becoming extinct. In Rome, in Greece, in India, it was the son's duty to pour out the libations on this altar, to offer there sacrifices to the manes of his father and his other ancestors; to neglect this was parricide, and the parricide was multiplied
as many fold as there were forefathers in the family. Only the nearest relative could perform the funeral obsequies; the funeral meal, spread at stated intervals, could be shared by no stranger to the blood. Hence the intense longing for a son. Manu, the Indian law-giver, wrote, "By a son a man gains heaven: by the son of a son he obtains immortality: by the son of a son of a son, he rises to dwell in the Sun." Any son would not do to fitly perform the functions and mysteries of the family re ligion, he had to be a son bom in lawful , wedlock. (The Ancient City, F. de Coulanges. B. II, c. III.) Every Roman thought he was bound to marry. "On your word of honor have you a wife?" was the question put by the Cen sors to each Roman citizen. If he answered "Nay," the Censors weighed the circum stances of his case and if they deemed the man negligent of his duty they imposed a fine upon him called uxorium. "The ancient law compelled all adults to marry," says Dionysius; and Cicero in his treatise "De Legibus," had a law forbidding celibacy. In Rome there were three classes of women: the citizen, the alien, the slave. A Roman citizen could marry only the daughter of a Roman citizen; marriage with any other was deemed impossible in the good old days. "Si qua voles aftc nubere, nube pari," said Ovid. The very object of matrimony was to produce a race of citizens; therefore both father and mother had to belong to that class. Hence the great care taken of the purity of the Roman women, and the broad distinction between the conduct of the man and the matron. Marriage between Roman citizens and women of foreign birth with whom they had not what was called the connubium (the right of intermarriage) became in time not uncommon : yet such unions were not jtistae
