Weddings in ancient Rome

A depiction of two lovers at a wedding. From the Aldobrandini Wedding fresco

Ancient Roman bulla

Weddings in ancient Rome were a sacred ritual involving many religious practices. In order for the wedding to take place the bride and the groom or their fathers needed to consent to the wedding. Generally, the wedding would take place in June due to the god Juno. Weddings would never take place on days that were considered unlucky. During the wedding the groom would pretend to kidnap the bride. This was done to convince the household guardians, or lares, that the bride did not go willingly. Afterwards, the bride and the groom had their first sexual experiences on a couch called a lectus. In a Roman wedding both sexes had to wear specific clothing. Boys had to wear the toga virilis while the bride to wear a wreath, a veil, a yellow hairnet, chaplets of roses, sex crines, and the hasta caelibaris. All of the guests would wear the same clothes as the groom and the bride. The Romans believed that if bad omens showed up during a wedding it would indicate the couple was evil or unlucky. In order for a marriage to be successful there needed to be no evil omens and everyone must follow the traditional customs.

Clothing

Before the wedding, the boy put away his bulla and toga praetexta, and put on his toga virillis. Boys usually started wearing togae virilles around puberty, or when the boy's parents believed he was sexually mature. The bulla was dedicated to Lares. Arnobius, a 3rd-century CE Christian apologist, describes a practice—which supposedly occurred long before the life of Arnobius—in which Roman girls surrendered their togulae (or "little togas") to Fortuna Virginalis before the wedding. The epithet "Virginalis" is exclusively given to Fortuna by Arnobius. Another, similar practice is mentioned by the 1st-century Roman poet Persius, who describes Roman girls offering their dolls to Venus. In another account by a scholiast of Persius, it is mentioned that this practice occurred an unspecified amount of time prior to the wedding. Pseudo-Acro, a scholiast of the poet Horace, mentioned a custom of girls and boys dedicating their bullae and dolls respectively, although he claims the items were offered to the Lares and makes no mention any connection with the Roman wedding.

The bride wove the tunica recta herself—symbolic of her future duty to weave her family's clothes. For the wedding night, the tunica recta would be tied with a wool belt known as cingulum that represented fertility. It was tied with a knot known as the nodus Herculaneus, or knot of Hercules. This knot may also have symbolized fertility as Hercules had many children. Another possibility is that the belt symbolized chastity. All of the marriage's guests wore the same clothes as the groom and the bride, to prevent evil spirits from identifying the wedding couple. As the wedding was a sacred affair, an improperly dressed bride would be an attack on Roman morality and chaste Roman women. To prove to the gods that the wedding was in good faith, many people had to view the bride in her garb.

Hairstyle

Festus, a 2nd-century grammarian, claims that Roman brides wore a hairstyle referred to within the text as senibus crinibus, an inflected form of either sex crines or seni crines. According to Festus, brides favored the style due to its age; he also stated that it was used by the vestal virgins, although it is unclear if the vestal virgins coopted the style from brides or vice versa. In another passage, Festus mentions that brides adopted yellow-red veil called the flammeum due to its usage by the Flaminica Dialis, the high-priestess of Jupiter and the wife of the Flamen Dialis. Mary Beard, an English classicist, argued that both vestal virgins and brides embodied a liminal state between youthful virginity and adulthood as a Roman matron; Beard proposed that vestal virgins copied bridal attire due to these shared connotations. Furthermore, there were always six vestal virgins during reliably recorded parts of Roman historian—although the 1st CE historian Plutarch records that the number of vestal virgins changed from 2 to 4 to 6 during the regnal period—indicating a possible connection between the six locks likely present in the sex crines and the Vestal Virgins. Martial, a 1st-century Roman poet, mentions a wife adorned with a septem crinibus, an unusual bridal hairstyle that would have contained 7 locks instead of 6. The classicist Laetitia La Follette argued that Martial intended to portray the bride as aberrant and unfaithful. In Miles Gloriosus, a play by the Roman 3rd-century BCE comic playwright Plautus, the author portrays a woman dressed like a standard married Roman woman: her hairstyle is described as having "locks with her hair arranged, and fillets after the fashion of matrons." German classical philologist August Rossbach argued that this passage from Plautus indicated that the sex crines were a typical component of the attire of a Roman matron, and that brides wore the headgear merely because it marked their transition into marriage and matronhood. The fillets mentioned by Plautus, called "vittae," are not supported by any other evidence to be a component of the bridal hairstyle in ancient Rome. Furthermore, it is likely that the crines mentioned by Plautus are not the same cosmetic as the sex crines described by Festus. The 1st-century BCE Roman poet Horace utilizes the same word, "crinis," completely unrelated to Roman brides when he describes the hairstyle of the mythical figure of the Trojan War, Paris.

Bridal hair could also be adorned with an infula and a wreath. She also wore a yellow hairnet dedicated to the lares; yellow was significant in Roman weddings because it was the color of the flammeum. Her hair was also dressed by the hasta caelibaris ("celibate spear"), who had symbolic power to the Romans. The usage of the hasta displayed the husband's authority over his bride and protected against a troubled marriage. The bridal couple also wore chaplets of roses. The bride's clothes were similar to a priestess' clothing.

Organization

A groom encourages his demure bride while a servant looks on (wall painting, Casa della Farnesina, ca. 19 BCE)

Romans giving their wedding vows

The Roman engagement was known as sponsalia. In the sponsalia, the maiden was promised to the groom by her father or her tutor. The promise could be made directly to the groom, but was usually made to the groom's father. As part of the engagement, the groom would place an engagement ring known as the annulus pronubus on the bride's ring finger. This finger was chosen as it was believed that a vein known as the vena amoris connected it directly to the heart. During the sponsalia the bride's family would pay the groom dowry.

To promise his daughter to the groom, the bride's father told the groom's father: Spondesne Gaiam, tuam filiam (or Gaiam, Lucii filiam), mihi (or filio meo) uxorem dari? Di bene vortant! Spondeo, Di bene vortant! However, the bride's father could cancel the wedding at any time. For a wedding to take place, the bride and groom, or the father in each family, needed to consent. Augustus decreed that if the bride's father did not agree to the marriage, he must provide a reason. Marriage between children was also outlawed. The youngest marriageable ages were fourteen for men and twelve for women. The Romans never practiced polygamy, so both parties had to be unmarried; and the bride and groom could not be related.

The groom chose the wedding date; however, he could not choose any day of the year, as many were considered unlucky. June was the preferred month, as it was the month of Juno, the god of childbirth and marriage. Before the wedding, the bride's family sought the protection of the gods by performing small sacrifices and giving coins to Lares.

The wedding took place at the house of the bride's father. There was a large feast, at which the attendees were served a special cake, a mustaceum, made with grape juice. Augustus limited the cost of these feasts to one thousand sesterces.

By evening, the groom pretended to take the bride by force from her mother's arms, so the household gods would not think the bride was willingly leaving them. The Romans believed the only bride of value was a virgin who had to be stolen from her family. Because of this, the Romans simulated the bride being abducted from her family. The tradition dictated that the bride cry out in pain as she was herded along the route to her new house. As the bride was taken to her new home, guests sang the Hymenaeus and carried a whitehorn torch, a spina alba, to honor Ceres. When the procession reached the groom's house, the groom entered first; the bride then entered after smearing the doorway with sheep's wool covered in oil and fat, as bride would have no gods protecting her until she arrived at the groom's house. When the bride arrived at the house of the groom, she may have spoken the words "Ubi tu Gaius ego Gaia". The bride was officially taken in to her husband's family by fire and water, an act symbolic of life. To visualize the consummation of marriage, the groom broke a loaf of bread over the bride's head. Sheaves of wheat could also be thrown at the bride.

Once at the groom's house, the married couple relaxed on a richly ornamented couch or bed called a lectus or genialis, and had their first sexual experiences together. As soon as the couple entered either the bedroom or the groom's house they were considered married.

Customs

Hymen, god of marriage

The bride was the focus of the wedding, and because of this her face was painted red. It was believed that if the betrothed couple were unlucky or evil, omens would appear at the wedding. However, if no omens appeared, that too could indicate that they were unlucky or evil. In Rome, it was believed a happy marriage was possible only if you followed all of the customs and had no evil omens. The gods of the Roman wedding were Juno, Venus, Hymen, and occasionally Terra.

The Roman wedding was designed to ensure the legitimate transfer of the bride, who was expected to lack prior sexual experience, into a legal marriage. In Rome, the ideal bride was both frightened and joyful about the marriage. Depictions of the Roman wedding emphasize the misery and fear of the bride, literary accounts sometimes describe the tears and blushes beneath the bridal veil and artistic portrayals depict brides with turned town faces or eyes. Catullus, a 1st-century BCE Latin poet, describes the bride as "eager for her new husband," but also as sobbing because "she must go." In an epithalamium by the 4th-century CE poet Claudian, the bride is explicitly commanded by Venus to love her husband despite her initial fear of the wedding: Venus instructs her, "whom you now fear you will love." The imagery of a suffering bride may have exaggerated for artistic purposes, although it is also possible that real Roman brides did indeed feel significant discomfort as the wedding marked a transitory period in their lives in which they were separated from the family figures. However, marriage was a pivotal time in the lives of Roman women; there was tremendous social pressure to become married and women were raised with this pressure surrounding them. Thus, it is possible that Roman women in reality faced little sadness at the thought of the wedding ceremony as it was a normalized aspect of Roman culture. Little attention was paid to the autonomy or will of the bride in Roman wedding rituals. Catullus instructs the bride to avoid displeasing her husband, stating "You also, bride, what your husband seeks beware of denying, lest he go elsewhere in its search." In another section of the Carmina of Catullus, a bride is told to obey their husband as her father has arranged the marriage, and that rightful ownership of their virginity is split in thirds between their father, mother, and themselves. The ideal groom was supposed to be sexually experienced, and eager for the wedding to take place.

Since the bride's purpose was to legitimately reproduce, mocking the bride was equivalent to attacking the Roman family structure. For the same reason, the bride had to follow all traditions perfectly; if she did not, the children of the marriage would be illegitimate. The validity, or connubium, of a Roman wedding was partially determined by the bride's suffering, so Romans expected to see the bride make a public display of her fear of the wedding. Roman weddings often were staged kidnappings. This tradition may have been meant to emulate the Rape of the Sabine women. Until the Servian constitution, many weddings were illegitimate. The Servian constitution made all Romans citizens, and therefore, all of their marriages were now legal. Many patricians opposed the intermarriage of their members with the plebeians, and in 450 BC a law was passed prohibiting such marriages; however, it was repealed by the lex Canuleia in 445 BC. Some patricians did not believe plebeian marriages were legitimate, as many religious practices were exclusive to the patricians. The Patricians believed that plebeian marriages were equivalent to sexual promiscuity.

In ancient Rome, the bride's family was expected to provide a dowry. All of the bride's property became her husband's property, or that of her husband's father. Occasionally the bride retained some of her possessions.

Depictions in art and literature

The fresco in the Villa of the Mysteries

In the ancient city of Pompeii some of the frescoes in the "Villa of the Mysteries" may depict Roman weddings. However, it possible that they depict a woman being introduced into the Cult of Dionysus, a beauty pageant honoring Dionysus, or some combination of these. Depictions of weddings in ancient Rome generally allude to the Roman gods. Literary evidence for ancient Roman weddings is heavily biased towards the weddings of the upper-classes, with depictions of the weddings of the poor or rural folk excluded from the literary record. In Roman literature, a bride is usually portrayed as a grieving woman who needs to be persuaded or forced to marry. Literary evidence suggests that some of the most significant components of the Roman wedding were the veiling and the leading: the woman was said to "nubere viro," meaning "to put on a veil for the husband," and men were said to "ducere uxorem," meaning "to lead the wife." The wedding ceremony itself was called nuptiae in the Latin language, derived from the verb "nubere" (meaning "to veil"). This emphasis on the leading or veiling of the bride indicates the Roman wedding was primarily focused on the bride, a potential explanation for the comparative lack of information regarding the Roman groom.

The oldest Roman description of wedding practices derives from the play Casina by Plautus; in the play, he recounts a fictional tale of an elderly Athenian Lysidamus who attempts to begin an affair with the slave girl Casina by marrying one his own slaves to her. His wife uncovers the plot and attempts to fool Lysidamus by disguising one her male slaves, Chalinus, as Casina. In order to remain effectively disguised, Chalinus remains quiet, explaining this silence as a form of bridal modesty or an expression of grief over the loss of their original family. It is possible that the play accurately reflects at least some aspects of Roman slave weddings, primarily the possibility of their existence. However, Plautus explicitly calls slave weddings a rare event within the text. Furthermore, Plautus is considered a generally unreliable source for accurate descriptions of Roman society due to the strong Greek influence on many of his plays. Catullus is the only Roman author to describe a type of special shoes used as a bridal adornment.