The Marriage Ban
Cloak and Stola
Marriage was a Privilege …
A Roman man could only have one wife at a time, either an uxor, whose children would inherit his social status and his wealth, or a concubine, whose children would inherit the social status and wealth of their mother.
Not allowed to Slaves …
And a man who was a Roman slave could not have a wife of either type. If his master and her master allowed it, he might register a contubernalis relationship, which gave him no rights at all. How could it? By Roman law, a slave was not only not a citizen; a slave was a “thing”, a “talking thing” but still a thing. No rights to physical integrity – a slave could be whipped or killed, including the worst kind of death of all – crucifixion. No rights to modesty or sexual integrity – a slave, male or female, could be prostituted, or required to “entertain” the owner or anyone else the owner indicated.
Or Soldiers in the Roman Legion …
Now, Augustus, First Citizen of Rome, who would become known as the first Roman emperor, has made a decree. The non-officer citizen soldiers of the Roman Legion are not allowed to have an uxor. And if they take a foreigner as a concubine, their children will not have Roman citizenship. But these men are not slaves. They don’t come from the noblest families, but they don’t come from poverty either. They are well-paid. And they are in possession of one of the greatest assets in the ancient world – Roman citizenship.
And Twenty Years is a long Time to Wait to Start a Family.
The soldiers of the Roman legion don’t sign up for four years or eight. They sign up for twenty. That’s a long time to risk death without starting a family. So they didn’t. Like soldiers do, they found loop-holes and pulled strings. This is the story of how that might have looked for the soldiers and support staff of the century assigned to the garrison at Capernaum during the first century AD.
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