The Private Life of the Romans. Harold Whetstone Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ upon arbitrary and cruel punishments by custom. Custom, not law, obliged the pater familiās to call a council of relatives and friends (iūdicium domesticum) when he contemplated inflicting severe punishment upon his children, and public opinion obliged him to abide by their verdict. Even in the comparatively few cases where tradition tells us that the death penalty was actually inflicted, we usually find that the father acted in the capacity of a magistrate happening to be in office when the offense was committed, or that the penalties of the ordinary law were merely anticipated, perhaps to avoid the disgrace of a public trial and execution.

33 So, too, in regard to the ownership of property the conditions were not really so hard as the strict letter of the law makes them appear to us. It was customary for the Head of the House to assign to his children property, pecūlia ("cattle of their own"), for them to manage for their own benefit. And more than this, although the pater familiās held legal title to all their acquisitions, yet practically all property was acquired for and belonged to the household as a whole, and he was in effect little more than a trustee to hold and administer it for the common benefit. This is shown by the fact that there was no graver offense against public morals, no fouler blot on private character, than to prove untrue to this trust, patrimōnium prōfundere. Besides this, the long continuance of the potestās is in itself a proof that its rigor was more apparent than real.

      34 Extinction of the Potestas.—The patria potestās was extinguished in various ways:

      1. By the death of the pater familiās, as has been explained in §19.

      2. By the emancipation of the son or daughter.

      3. By the loss of citizenship by either father or son.

      4. If the son became a flāmen diālis or the daughter a virgō vestālis.

      5. If either father or child was adopted by a third party.

      6. If the daughter passed by formal marriage into the power (in manum) of a husband, though this did not essentially change her dependent condition (§35).

      7. If the son became a public magistrate. In this case the potestās was suspended during the period of office, but after it expired the father might hold the son accountable for his acts, public and private, while holding the magistracy.

FIGURE 4. LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA

35 Manus.—The subject of marriage will be considered later; at this point it is only necessary to define the power over the wife possessed by the husband in its most extreme form, called by the Romans manus. By the oldest and most solemn form of marriage the wife was separated entirely from her father's family (§28) and passed into her husband's power or "hand" (conventiō in manum). This assumes, of course, that he was suī iūris; if he was not, then though nominally in his "hand" she was really subject as he was to his pater familiās. Any property she had of her own, and to have had any she must have been independent before her marriage, passed to him as a matter of course. If she had none, her pater familiās furnished a dowry (dōs), which shared the same fate. Whatever she acquired by her industry or otherwise while the marriage lasted also became her husband's. So far, therefore, as property rights were concerned the manus differed in no respect from the patria potestās: the wife was in locō fīliae, and on the husband's death took a daughter's share in his estate.

36 In other respects manus conferred more limited powers. The husband was required by law, not merely obliged by custom, to refer alleged misconduct of his wife to the iūdicium domesticum, and this was composed in part of her cognates (§25). He could put her away for certain grave offenses only; if he divorced her without good cause he was punished with the loss of all his property. He could not sell her at all. In short, public opinion and custom operated even more strongly for her protection than for that of her children. It must be noticed, therefore, that the chief distinction between manus and patria potestās lay in the fact that the former was a legal relationship based upon the consent of the weaker party, while the latter was a natural relationship antecedent to all law and choice.

      37 Dominica Potestas.—The right of ownership in his property (dominica potestās) was absolute in the case of a pater familiās and has been sufficiently explained in preceding paragraphs. This ownership included slaves as well as inanimate things, and slaves as well as inanimate things were mere chattels in the eyes of the law. The influence of custom and public opinion, so far as these tended to mitigating the horrors of their condition, will be discussed later. It will be sufficient to say here that there was nothing to which the slave could appeal from the judgment of his master. It was final and absolute.

      

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      THE NAME

      REFERENCES: Marquardt, 7–27; Voigt, 311, 316 f., 454; Pauly-Wissowa, under cognōmen; Smith, Harper, and Lübker, under nōmen.

      See also: Egbert, "Latin Inscriptions," Chapter IV; Cagnat, "Cours d'Epigraphie Latine," Chapter I; Hübner, "Römische Epigraphik," pp. 653–680 of Müller's Handbuch, Vol. I.

38 The Triple Name.—Nothing is more familiar to the student of Latin than the fact that the Romans whose works he reads first have each a threefold name, Caius Julius Caesar, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Publius Vergilius Maro. This was the system that prevailed in the best days of the Republic, but it was itself a development, starting with a more simple form in earlier times and ending in utter confusion under the Empire. The earliest legends of Rome show us single names, Romulus, Remus, Faustulus; but side by side with these we find also double names, Numa Pompilius, Ancus Marcius, Tullus Hostilius. It is possible that single names were the earliest fashion, but when we pass from legends to real history the oldest names that we find are double, the second being always in the genitive case, representing the father or the Head of the House: Marcus Marci, Caecilia Metelli. A little later these genitives were followed by the letter f (for fīlius or fīlia) or uxor, to denote the relationship. Later still, but very anciently nevertheless, we find the freeborn man in possession of the three names with which we are familiar, the nōmen to mark the clan (gēns), the cognōmen to mark the family, and the praenōmen to mark the individual. The regular order of the three names is praenōmen, nōmen, cognōmen, although in poetry the order is often changed to adapt the name to the meter.

FIGURE 5. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

39 Great formality required even more than the three names. In official documents and in the state records it was usual to insert between a man's nōmen and cognōmen the praenōmina of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, СКАЧАТЬ