CONUBIUM AMONG CITIZENS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

The sources suggest that a concept of conubium already existed in the early Republic, and that some of its elements were similar to those we encounter in later sources.

In 445 BCE debate erupted about intermarriage between patricians and ple­beians: ‘C.

In one of these laws we demand the right of intermarriage, a right usually granted to neighbours and foreigners - indeed we have granted citizenship, which is more than intermarriage, even to a conquered enemy [...] Was not this very prohibi­tion of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians, which inflicts such serious injury on the commonwealth and such a gross injustice on the plebs, made by the decemvirs within these last few years? [...] They are guarding against our becom­ing connected with them by affinity or relationship, against our blood being allied with theirs [...] If your nobility is tainted by union with us, could you not have kept it pure by private regulations, by not seeking brides from the plebs, and not suffering your sisters or daughters to marry outside your order? [...] That this should be prohibited by law and the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians made impossible is indeed insulting to the plebs [...] For, as a matter of fact, what difference is there, if a patrician marries a plebeian woman or a plebeian marries a patrician? [...] Of course, the children follow the father.^[298]

Dionysius states that the decemviri in the Twelve Tables of 451-50 BCE forbade marriage (epigamia) between patricians and plebeians; epigamia may be a translation of conubium, or at least of the concept as it existed in Dionysius’s own time.^[299] It is likely that patricians and plebeians in earlier periods did in fact marry each other, and that the ban on doing so was only a result of an increasing movement by the patricians to separate themselves from the plebe­ians.^[300] Already for the very start of Roman history, Livy describes conubium as a legal concept that could be shared by different peoples:

Rome had now become so strong that it was a match for any of its neighbours in war, but its greatness threatened to last for only one generation, since through the absence of women there was no hope of offspring, and there was no right of inter­marriage with their neighbours [...] Romulus sent envoys amongst the surrounding nations to ask for alliance and the right of intermarriage on behalf of his new community.^[301]

Of course most of these stories are legendary, so they do not offer real evidence for a legal concept of conubium in this early period.^[302]

It is likely that this episode was constructed later as an element of the ‘Struggle of the Orders’ between patricians and plebeians, possibly on the basis of misunderstood evidence. Forsythe, for example, argues that the idea of a marriage ban between the classes was based on a later obligation for priests to marry by the rite of confarreatio, which Livy might have under­stood as being the result of an earlier limitation on marriage between patri­cians and plebeians.^[303] The class struggle was not limited to Rome, but was considered by later authors to be an element of society in Latium in general.

If we assume that Romans and Latins at this time shared conubium (see below), then it appears that conubium would have been especially important for the nobility as a mechanism by which they created alliances throughout Latium, while not permitting the members of their class to reduce its power by marrying plebeians.^[305] In any case, it is likely that the ban on marriage between patricians and plebeians was lifted shortly after 445 BCE, since there is much evidence for marriage between the two groups in the later Republic.^[306]

4.