Free Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz

government in which aristocratic landowners wielded immense political and economic power but seldom tried to establish themselves as rulers outside formal political channels.
    Furthermore, Rome had a highly effective and disciplined army and an extensive empire that required professional administrators. These, along with such massive public works projects as road and bridge building and a systematic code of laws, gave precedence to the central government over local notables. The great landowning families could not compete for ultimate power until the second century B.C., when the destruction of small farms and the overextension of the army so destabilized the Roman state that aristocrats and military upstarts could again seize the day.
    Although in Rome there was greater political inequality among free men than in Athens, Roman women had greater freedom than their Athenian counterparts. There were several reasons for this. For one thing, the continued prominence of the aristocracy fostered the comparative freedom of upper-class Roman daughters and wives. In addition, the extended absence of men in prolonged service in foreign campaigns gave Roman wives in property-holding families a chance to manage their own affairs for years at a time, amassing their own wealth and even gaining political influence. 7
    In Rome, as in all states of the ancient world, marriage and inheritance were the main methods of conveying and administering private property. As in Greece and other agricultural societies, where childlessness was reason enough for a man to divorce his wife, the Romans believed that a central purpose of marriage was to produce legitimate children. For upper-class Romans, marriage determined which children would inherit the family property and name. It also created close links between families and occasionally between men who successively married the same woman. 8
    Today too, many people believe that procreation should be the main purpose of marriage. But they would be shocked by the Roman version of this idea. Romans believed that children were brought into the world for the sake of the family and were allowed to live only with the father’s permission. When the Romans talked about “raising” a child, for example, they meant something different from us. Traditionally a Roman father picked up a newborn to signal his consent that the child live as a member of the family. If he did not, the child was left to die of exposure or to be adopted by someone else.
    A letter that one husband sent his pregnant wife in Roman-ruled Egypt illustrates the prevailing consensus that it was fine to let inconvenient children die. After offering his “heartiest greetings” to his family and telling his wife not to worry if he came home from Alexandria later than those he was traveling with, the husband writes: “I beg and beseech you to take care of the little child, and as soon as we receive wages I will send them to you. If—good luck to you!—you bear offspring, if it is a male, let it live; if it is a female, expose it.” Right after this casual sentence of death, he adds that a mutual friend had passed on his wife’s message to remember her on his journeys, and he fondly responds: “How can I forget you? I beg you not to worry.” 9
    Rome was, at least in its early history, a patriarchal society in the literal sense. Power lay with the oldest male in the household. Sons as well as daughters remained under their father’s power until he died. So did their sons and daughters. A man gained the rights of a father only after his own father died. The word familia encompassed everyone under the patriarch’s authority or attached to his household. It even included slaves and freedmen who bore the family names of their former owner. 10
    This patriarchal definition of the family had the curious effect of excluding the head of the household, the paterfamilias, from membership in the family. Men were not in families; they ruled over them.