Augustan legislation on marriage

With the aim of promoting marriage and procreation among Roman citizens and repressing adultery and nonmarital sex, Emperor Augustus enacted three

Family law 141 relevant laws: the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus (18 bce), which prohibited intermarriage between senatorial families and ex-slaves, and between all citizens and disreputable persons such as prostitutes; the lex Iulia de adulteriis coer­cendis (17 bce), which punished adultery as a criminal offense; and the lex Papia Poppaea (9 ce), which supplemented and complemented the other two laws.

To encourage marriage and childbearing, Augustus ordered all male citi­zens between the ages of twenty-five and sixty, and all female citizens between the ages of twenty and fifty, to be married. He punished those who disobeyed by disabling them from receiving inheritances or legacies from those beyond the sixth degree of kinship. Widows were also required to remarry within two years of their husbands’ death, and divorcees within eighteen months of divorce. Those who had not married by that time were punished with inheri­tance penalties and restrictions. Married couples without children could receive only half of any such legacies. Those married with three children, and especially the wife in such marriages, were rewarded with certain privileges (ius liberorum).

The lex Iulia de adulteriis made it a public crime to commit certain sexual offenses, especially adultery, i.e., sexual relations between a married woman and a man other than her husband. Illicit sexual intercourse with a non­married woman or a widow of honorable status was called stuprum. A father could kill his daughter and her lover if he caught them in the act of adultery. Guilty adulterous parties were banished to various islands, and part of their property was confiscated. Husbands were required to divorce adulterous wives.