INTRODUCTION

During their conquest of Italy, the Romans devised various legal instru­ments to regulate their relations with people who did not possess Roman citizenship. One of the issues that needed regulation was marriage: laws had to be formulated to enable marriage between people from different politi­cal entities, and to lay down rules for the regulation of inheritance in such unions.

It is often assumed that the main instrument devised by the Romans to regulate marriage with peregrini - a term which included Latin and Italian allies, as well as other non-citizens - was conubium or ius conubii, which might be translated as a ‘right to marry each other’. It is usually assumed that conu­bium was a right that could be granted by Rome to non-citizens, and permit­ted them the use of certain legal instruments related to marriage, which were otherwise only available to citizens. The presence of conubium was especially important because of its implications for inheritance law. If a marriage was not concluded legally, any children would not be recognised and therefore would not be the automatic heirs of the parents. This meant that the legality of marriage remained important throughout Roman history. Unfortunately, our sources for conubium in the Republic are extremely scanty; for the Empire there is much more information available, but we cannot assume that conubium in this period followed the same rules as before. Nevertheless, some sources exist that claim to be describing very early Roman history, although their reliability is questionable.

Here I will review the legal possibilities for marriage between Romans and non-citizens in the Republic, especially the idea that conubium with Roman citizens was a privilege granted to people with Latin status. Thus, the rela­tions between the legal framework and the practical side of marriage will become clear. I will argue that many long-standing assumptions about mar­riage between Romans and aliens in the Republic cannot hold; in particular, the idea that Latins enjoyed widespread conubium with Romans seems to me very unlikely. This has important implications for our ideas concerning social relations between Romans and their allies in Italy.

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