by Megan Worley

Created on: December 06, 2008

Marriage in Ancient Rome was less of a romantic affair and more of an alliance between two families. This was especially true of the people that inhabited the upper classes. Class was also important in that most people never married outside of their class. To make a marriage between a man and woman legal nothing more was required than cohabitation. This meant that marriage was not the result of a written contract and more about just an oral agreement.

The minimum age for a woman to be married was the age of twelve, as soon after puberty struck as possible. For males the age was fourteen, however males were often much older than the women they married. Men, especially those who occupied the upper classes, usually married in their mid-twenties. Parents began searching for an appropriate match for their daughter. Daughters were expected to go along with their parent's choice with no argument. While some daughters were allowed to have some say in their husbands those in the upper class were much less likely to have any say at all. Women in the lower classes also did not marry as early as upper class women, usually waiting until their late teens. They did not have to worry about the politics between powerful families and so marriage was much less urgent.

Daughters were more expensive than sons because upon marriage they required a dowry. The main purpose of the dowry was to provide for some of the expenses of the household the daughter was entering into. The traditional items that were included in the dowry were land, slaves, jewelry, clothing, and other household items. Having a large dowry was important for the standing of upper class women; an inadequate dowry could drop their social status down a notch.

Once a woman was married she gained a certain amount of power that she would have lacked under her father's control. As a wife the woman oversaw the entire household and was in charge of the children and any slaves the family might own. She was in charge of whatever the family business might be and she gained many rights that unmarried woman were rarely granted.

The function of most marriages, aside from bringing two families together, was to produce children. Children at the time were necessary as heirs and for the lower classes as laborers, especially if the family owned property. This was also a time of high child mortality so raising a child into adulthood became a serious burden.

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