Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children

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Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Bryan - 04-20-2013

Here's the situation:

A Roman man (circa 100 BC) gets himself a female slave as a spoil of war. She ends up as his concubine and bares him children, to include sons. Would these sons be considered citizens? Or would he have to free her and marry her first?

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Nathan Ross - 04-20-2013

The children of a slave would be slaves. A freed slave (freedman, or freedwoman in this case) would gain citizenship - officially a sort of limited citizenship called Junian Latin status, which in practice was a technical distinction but forbade military service among other things - and the children of a freedperson would be full citizens.

So, if the father freed the mother after the birth of the children, both mother and children would be freedpeople. I'm not sure if the father would have legal paternity of the children, or if he would be their patron instead - in effect this would be the same, although it might effect inheritance rights...

If the father freed the mother before the birth of the children, the mother would be a freedwoman and the children full citizens. If the father now married the mother he would have paternity over the children.

However, soldiers were not officially permitted to marry - this prohibition may not yet have been in force in 100BC, I'm not sure. So if the man was a soldier he would have to keep the woman on as his concubine, as you put it... If the children were born after her manumission they would be citizens anyway, but he might not be regarded as their legal father... Origo castris, perhaps...

But if the father retired from the army, freed the woman and then had children, they'd be full and legal citizens and the official sons and heirs of the father.

It's complex, but that's how I understand it. Others might know more...

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Epictetus - 04-20-2013

Yes, I think you are right, Nathan. In a nutshell: the status of the child depended upon the status of the mother, not the father.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Frank - 04-20-2013

Quote:The children of a slave would be slaves.

The children have the status of the mother. So in this case slaves.

Quote:So, if the father freed the mother after the birth of the children, both mother and children would be freedpeople.

IIRC, the children are born as slaves and remain slaves. The father has to free them separately.

Quote:However, soldiers were not officially permitted to marry - this prohibition may not yet have been in force in 100BC, I'm not sure.

This law was not canceled until Septimus Severus (193-235 AD). However, higher officers were allowed to marry, most propably including centurions.

Quote:So if the man was a soldier he would have to keep the woman on as his concubine, as you put it... If the children were born after her manumission they would be citizens anyway, but he might not be regarded as their legal father... Origo castris, perhaps...
But if the father retired from the army, freed the woman and then had children, they'd be full and legal citizens and the official sons and heirs of the father.

This was a general issue with the concubinate, also with a free peregrine woman. Children born during the concubinate were no romans, so they could e.g. not inherit the roman father. But soldiers could ask for a special permission which gave all his children citizen rights after dismissal.

In our case he could free the children and adopt them or not. They would stay freedmen, but now they are romans (Iunii) and can inherit as every roman.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Nathan Ross - 04-20-2013

Quote:the children are born as slaves and remain slaves. The father has to free them separately.

Ah yes, quite true - and this would be difficult, as slaves were not allowed manumission until they were 30 years old! So the free father and the freed mother would have slave children... Hmm, Roman life was a strange business indeed... :unsure:

Quote:This law was not canceled until Septimus Severus (193-235 AD)

The OP mentioned 100BC, and I wasn't sure when this prohibition was introduced. Phang, I think, estimates it was some time during the early Principiate (if it ever truly existed as a actual law). During the earlier republic it would have been unworkable, as the citizen soldiers of the militia-style legions would have had wives anyway - the wives were just banned by custom from the military camp. Possibly in the post-Marian legion there was already an official ban on marriage, but it's not certain.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Bryan - 04-20-2013

Didn't Cato the Elder marry the daughter of a slave? And weren't the descendants of this union citizens? (Cato the Younger)

Who could gift a slave with full citizenship?

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Frank - 04-20-2013

Quote:Didn't Cato the Elder marry the daughter of a slave? And weren't the descendants of this union citizens? (Cato the Younger)

Who could gift a slave with full citizenship?

The emperor could do so and IIRC some republican magistrates, too (consul, censor?).

I guess this woman was fred before he married her, because Cato could not marry an "item". And the kids of a fredmen (fredwoman?) were full roman citizens.

Are you sure that Cato the Elder, an aristocrat, married the daughter of a slave? Thats against all social rules!

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Bryan - 04-21-2013

Frank wrote:

Are you sure that Cato the Elder, an aristocrat, married the daughter of a slave? Thats against all social rules!

Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, 24.

Different translations present different aspects, but basically the father of the bride was either a slave or freedman in Cato's household.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Nathan Ross - 04-21-2013

Quote:Who could gift a slave with full citizenship?

Apparently any slave manumitted before a magistrate, or the emperor, gained full citizenship. Only those freed privately or by will gained the limited Junian Latin rights. Robert Knapp (Invisible Romans) points out that we have no literary or inscriptional evidence distinguishing a Junian Latin from a full citizen, so in practice there may have been no difference - although those joining the army were supposed to be of 'free birth', and the property of a freedman defaulted back to his patron if he died without issue.

Quote:Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, 24.

Different translations present different aspects, but basically the father of the bride was either a slave or freedman in Cato's household.

This is a very unusual case. It seems the father of the bride, Salonius, was a freedman clerk of Cato's. The man's daughter must have been born before his manumission, and so remained a slave. Strangely, Cato asks Salonius if he has found a husband for his daughter yet - but surely if the girl was Cato's property the father would have had no say in who she married anyway? But in this case it certainly looks like Cato simply freed the girl himself and married her, although she was certainly under 30 at the time... But the 30-yr-old thing may have been an Augustan innovation actually (Lex Aelia Sentia?)

Anyway, the children of the marriage were born after the mother was freed, so would have been full citizens from birth.

The Lex Iulia de Maritandis Ordinibus of 18BC made it illegal for senators to marry freedwomen. So Cato's marriage to Salonia would not have been permitted under the Principiate.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Judy - 04-21-2013

Even this got complicated. Example the famous trial in Herculaneum regarding Justa. she was the daughter of a freedwoman but the timing of it was challenged by the domina who wanted the girl back as a slave for her children. Jay Diess and his wife wrote a book on this trial. He is also the author of a great book about this city...Herculaneum's Hidden Treasures. So I bet he has all the details down.

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Sean Manning - 04-21-2013

Outside of the army, inscriptions suggest that the rules about who could enter into what sort of marriage-like relationship with whom were often broken in the Roman world. Nathan Rosenstein suggests that soldiers' marriage was a non-issue before the late first century BCE, because most men spent their late teens and early twenties in the army and married in their late twenties when they were less likely to be conscripted. If he is correct, Augustus' law against soldiers' marriage was another "return to the mores maiorum."

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Robert Vermaat - 04-23-2013

Quote:the domina who wanted the girl back as a slave for her children.

The bitch! :o How did the trial end?

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Nathan Ross - 04-23-2013

Quote:How did the trial end?

With a bang ;-)

[Image: tumblr_m671m5bMAe1rubozqo1_1280.jpg]

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Michael Kerr - 05-09-2013

Hi, my question, has nothing to do with the children of slaves but with the legal status of the children of a Roman citizen who lives in a foreign land like pre Claudian Britain, my aplologies for my poor scenario.
A retired centurion tries his hand as a trader and moves his family to Britain before the invasion of Claudius. His daughter marries a Belgae warrior and has children to this man and the children have never set foot on Roman soil but have lived all their lives in Britain and as far as they are concerned they are Britons. What would be the legal status of these children in regards to the Romans?
Would the Romans recognise these children as Roman citizens?

Regards
Michael Kerr

Slaves, Concubines and the Legitimacy of Children - Epictetus - 05-09-2013

I glanced through Sherwin-White's Roman Citizenship. As far as I can tell, in your example the children would be citizens, as long as the centurion's wife was a citizen. It can get extremely complicated, but as a general rule of thumb citizenship depended upon the family, not the geography.

For instance, we have some pretty good evidence of Romans living and working in the Greek east before it came under Roman control. They were recognised as Romans outside of Roman territory. Your example would be basically the same thing.