Divorce in Ancient Rome

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Divorce was a relatively simple procedure. If a man decided he wanted a divorce he went to a local magistrate to obtain a bill of divorce. Unlike today, where divorce proceedings can sometimes span over a year, ancient Roman couples just had to announce they wanted to separate in front of a group of seven witnesses and it was done. There are no records of divorce being denied or a women getting a divorce. Under Augustus, women had the right to divorce. [Source: BuzzFeed, September 20, 2023]

Lawful divorce was relatively informal; the wife simply took back her dowry and left her husband's house. Roman men had always held the right to divorce their wives; a pater familias could order the divorce of any couple under his manus. We are told that for five centuries after the founding of the city divorce was entirely unknown. It is claimed that the first divorce took place only in 230 B.C., at which time Dionysius of Halicarnassus notes that "Spurius Carvilius, a man of distinction, was the first to divorce his wife" on grounds of infertility. This was most likely the Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga who was consul in 234 and 228 B.C., The evidence is confused. A man could also divorce his wife for adultery, drunkenness, or making copies of the household keys. Around the 2nd century, married women gained the right to divorce their husbands. +

But, according to the historian Valerius Maximus, divorces were taking place by 604 B.C. or earlier, and the early Republican law code of the Twelve Tables provided for it. Divorce was socially acceptable if carried out within social norms (mos maiorum). By the time of Cicero and Julius Caesar, divorce was relatively common and "shame-free," the subject of gossip rather than a social disgrace. Valerius says that Lucius Annius was disapproved of because he divorced his wife without consulting his friends; that is, he undertook the action for his own purposes and without considering its effects on his social network (amicitia and clientela). The censors of 307 B.C. thus expelled him from the Senate for moral turpitude. [Source: Wikipedia +]

Divorce by either party severed the lawful family alliance that had been formed through the marriage; and remarriage might create an entirely new set of economically or politically useful alliances. Among the elite, husbands and wives might remarry several times.[43] Only one spouse’s will was required for any divorce, even if the divorced party was not informed. A spouse who had entered marriage sane and healthy, but became incapable of sound judgment (insane) was not competent and could not divorce their partner; they could be divorced without their knowledge or legal notice. Divorce, like marriage, was considered a family affair. It was discussed and agreed in private, in an informal family gathering of the parties most affected; the husband, wife, and senior members of both families. No public record was kept of the proceedings. Official registration of divorce was not required until A.D. 449. +

Terms for Getting a Divorce in Ancient Rome

Divorces were fairly common in ancient Greece and Rome. Providing legal grounds for divorce was not necessary. A man could divorce his wife simply if he didn't like her anymore. All that was required for a divorce in Rome according to civil law ( usus ) , the least binding of the three types of marriage, was to send a note by messenger, saying "Take your things away." One man reportedly divorced his wife became she went out once without telling him. [Source: People Almanac II]

Edward Gibbon wrote in the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”: Augustus, who united the powers of both magistrates, adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising the license of divorce. The presence of seven Roman witnesses was required for the validity of this solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation had been given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of six months; but if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or levity was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of her marriage portion. [Source: Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence. Part IV, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Vol. 4, by Edward Gibbon, 1788, sacred-texts.com]

The Christian princes were the first who specified the just causes of a private divorce; their institutions, from Constantine to Justinian, appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the church, and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list of mortal sins, either male or female, was curtailed and enlarged by successive regulations, and the obstacles of incurable impotence, long absence, and monastic profession, were allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation.

Whoever transgressed the permission of the law, was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed, her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island, or imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party was released from the bonds of marriage; but the offender, during life, or a term of years, was disabled from the repetition of nuptials. The successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator can demand.

Divorce in the Roman Republic (509–27 B.C.)

20120225-lamp 488px-RGM_117-1.jpg Classic Rome loved to recur in thought to the legendary days of old where she could see an ideal image of herself, an image which every day became less and less like the reality. But even in those times the Roman marriage had never been indissoluble. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

In the marriage cum manu of the first centuries of Rome, the woman placed under the man's authority could in no wise repudiate her husband, while on the other hand the husband's right to repudiate his wife was inherent in the absolute power which he possessed over her. In the interest, no doubt, of the stability of the family, custom had, however, introduced some modifications into the application of this principle,

Until the third century B.C. as we see by specific examples which tradition has preserved this repudiation was in fact confined to cases in which some blame attached to the wife. A council held by the husband's family then solemnly condemned her. The Twelve Tables have probably handed down a scrap of the formula of this collective sentence which permitted a husband to demand from his wife the surrender of the keys that had been entrusted to her as mistress of the house from which she was now to be ejected without appeal: claves ademit, exegit. In 307 B.C. the censors deprived a senator of his dignities because he had dismissed his wife without first having sought the judgment of his domestic tribunal.

Augustus' Moral Legislation and Divorce

Along with attempts to restore the old Roman religion, Roman Emperor Augustus (ruled 27 A.D.–A.D. 14) wished to revive the old morality and simple life of the past. He himself disdained luxurious living and foreign fashions. He tried to improve the lax customs which prevailed in respect to marriage and divorce, and to restrain the vices which he felt were destroying the population of Rome. But it is difficult to say whether these laudable attempts of Augustus produced any real results upon either the religious or the moral life of the Roman people. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

In attempt to boost the declining birth rate Augustus offered tax breaks for large families and cracked down on abortion. He imposed strict marriage laws and changed adultery from an act of indecency to an act of sedition, decreeing that a man who discovered his wife's infidelity must turn her in or face charges himself. Adulterous couples could have their property confiscated, be exiled to different parts of the empire and be prohibited from marrying one another. Augustus passed the reforms because he believed that too many men spent their energy with prostitutes and concubines and had nothing for their wives, causing population declines.

Under Augustus, women had the right to divorce. Husbands could see prostitutes but not keep mistresses, widows were obligated to remarry within two years, divorcees within 18 months. Parents with three or more children were given rewards, property, job promotions, and childless couples and single men were looked down upon and penalized . The end result of the reforms was a skyrocketing divorce rate.

In passing these laws Augustus was prompted by the same impulse that had made him withdraw from the husband's administration any part of the dowry which was invested in land in Italy. In both cases his concern was to safeguard a woman's dowry the unfailing bait for a suitor so as to secure for her the chance of a second marriage. It turned out, however, as he ought to have foreseen, that his measures, comformable though they were to his population policy and socially unexceptionable, hastened the ruin of family feeling among the Romans. The fear of losing a dowry was calculated to make a man cleave to the wife whom he had married in the hope of acquiring it, but nothing very noble was likely to spring from calculations so contemptible. In the long run avarice prolonged the wealthy wife's enslavement of her husband.

While progressively lowering the dignity of marriage, this legislation succeeded in preserving its cohesion only up to the point where a husband, weary of his wife, felt sure of capturing, without undue delay, another more handsomely endowed. In these circumstances, the vaunted laws of Augustus must bear part of the responsibility for the fact, which need surprise no one, that throughout the first two centuries of the empire Latin literature shows us a great many households either temporarily bound together by financial interest or broken up sometimes in spite of, sometimes for the sake of, money.

Increased Divorce Rights for Women in the Roman Empire (31 B.C.–A.D. 476)

During the Ancient Greek era, a Roman matron, mistress of her own property in virtue of her sine manu status, was certain, thanks to the Julian laws, of recovering the bulk if not the whole of her dowry. Her husband was not free to administer it in Italy without her consent, nor to mortgage it anywhere even with her acquiescence. Duly primed by her steward, who assisted her with advice and surrounded her with obsequious attention this "curled spark" of a procurator whom we see under Domitian always "clinging to the side" of Marianus' wife the wealthy lady dispatched her business, made her dispositions, and issued her orders. As Juvenal predicts: "No present will you ever make if your wife forbids; nothing will you ever sell if she objects; nothing will you buy without her consent." The satirist contends that there is nothing on earth more intolerable than a rich woman: "intolerabilius nihil est quam femina dives"; while Martial for his part explains that he could not endure to marry a~ wealthy woman and be stifled under a bridal veil by taking a husband to him instead of a wife. [Source:“Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Prisoner not of his affections but of a dowry, the husband if his sovereign lady did not give him his conge herself sooner or later escaped from one gilded cage into another. In the city as at the court the ephemeral households of Rome were perpetually being disrupted, or rather were continually dissolving to recrystalUse and dissolve again till age and death finally overtook them. The freedman whom Augustus' law charged with the duty of conveying the written order of divorce had never suffered so little from unemployment. Juvenal does not fail to leave us a picture of this busybody fussing on his errand: "Let three wrinkles show themselves on Bibula's face," and her loving Sartorius will betake himself in haste to other loves. "Then will his freedman give her the order: Tack up your traps and be off! You've become a nuisance... be off and be quick about it!' " In such a case the outraged wife had no redress; there was nothing for her to do but to obey the order which the poet slightly paraphrases. Gaius has preserved the legal formula for us: "Tuas res tibi agito (take your belongings away!)." She took care to take with her nothing that strictly belonged to her husband, whose right to his own goods she recognised in the parting formula she used to him: "Keep your belongings to yourself! (tuas res tibi habeto)"

Increases in Divorce in the Roman Empire (31 B.C.–A.D. 476)

We must not imagine that it was always the man who took the initiative in these matters. Women in their turn discarded their husbands and abandoned them without scruple after having ruled them with a rod of iron. Juvenal points the finger of scorn at one of these: "Thus does she lord it over her husband. But before long she vacates her kingdom; she flits from one home to another wearing out her bridal veil.... Thus does the tale of her husbands grow; there will be eight of them in the course of five autumns a fact worthy of commemoration on her tomb!"

Martial's Telesilla was another such. Thirty days, or perhaps less, after Domitipn had revived the Julian laws, "she is now marrying her tenth husband... by a more straightforward prostitute I am offended less." In vain the Caesars now tried setting an example of monogamy to their subjects. But instead of following in the steps of Trajan and Plotina, Hadrian and Sabina, Antoninus and Faustina, imperial couples faithful to each other for life, the Romans preferred to ape the preceding emperors, all of whom, even Augustus, had been several times divorced.

Divorces were so common that as we learn from the jurists of the time a series of them not infrequently led to the fair lady and her dowry returning, after many intermediate stages, to her original bridal bed. The very reasons which today would doubly bind an affectionate woman to her husband's side his age or illness, his departure for the front were cynically advanced by the Roman matron as reasons for deserting him. It is an even graver symptom of the general demoralisation that these things had ceased to shock a public opinion grown sophisticated and inhuman. Thus in the Rome of the Antonines Seneca's words were cruelly just: "No woman need blush to break off her marriage since the most illustrious ladies have adopted the practice of reckoning the year not by the names of the consuls but by those of their husbands. They divorce in order to re-marry. They marry in order to divorce: exeunt matrimonii causa, nubunt repudii"

How far removed from the inspiring picture of the Roman family in the heroic days of the republic! The unassailable rock has cracked and crumbled away on every side. Then, the woman was strictly subjected to the authority of her lord and master; now, she is his equal, his rival, if not his imperatrix** Then, husband and wife had all things in common; now, their property is almost entirely separate. Then, she took pride in her own fertility; now, she fears it. Then, she was faithful; now, she is capricious and depraved. Divorces then were rare; now they follow so close on each other's heels that, as Martial says, marriage has become merely a form of legalised adultery. "She who marries so often does not marry; she is an adultress by form of law: Quae nubit Miens, non nubit: adutiera lege est."

Seeking a Divorce in Cappadocia in the A.D. 4th Century

Verianus, a citizen of Nazianzus, had been offended by his son-in-law, and on this account wished his daughter to sue for a divorce. Olympius, prefect of Cappadocia Secunda, referred the matter to the Episcopal arbitration of Gregory Nazianzus ( A.D. 329-390), who refused to countenance the proceeding, and writes the two following letters, the first to the Prefect, the second to Verianus himself. [Note that Gregory refers to a difference of view between Christian regulations and Roman law; also, he refers to the fact that Christians were entitled to seek judgement or legal redress from a bishop, bypassing the regular judicial system. [Source CCEl.org]

To Olympius (EP. CXLIV): “Haste is not always praiseworthy. For this reason I have deferred my answer until now about the daughter of the most honorable Verianus, both to allow for time setting matters right, and also because I conjecture that Your Goodness does not approve of the divorce, inasmuch as you entrusted the enquiry to me, whom you knew to be neither hasty nor uncircumspect in such matters. Therefore I have refrained myself till now, and, I venture to think, not without reason. But since we have come nearly to the end of the allotted time, and it is necessary that you should be informed of the result of the examination I will inform you. The young lady seems to me to be of two minds, divided between reverence for her parents and affection for her husband. Her words are on their side, but her mind, I rather think, is with her husband, as is shewn by her tears. You will do what commends itself to your justice, and to God who directs you in all things. I should most willingly have given my opinion to my son Verianus that he should pass over much of what is in question, with a view not to confirm the divorce, which is entirely contrary to our law, though the Roman law may determine otherwise. For it is necessary that justice be observed — which I pray you may ever both say and do.

To Verianus: (EP. CXLV): “Public executioners commit no crime, for they are the servants of the laws: nor is the sword unlawful with which we punish criminals. But nevertheless, the public executioner is not a laudable character, nor is the death-bearing sword received joyfully. Just so neither can I endure to become hated by confirming the divorce by my hand and tongue. It is far better to be the means of union and of friendship than of division and parting of life. I suppose it was with this in his mind that our admirable Governor entrusted me with the enquiry about your daughter, as one who could not proceed to divorce abruptly or unfeelingly. For he proposed me not as Judge, but as Bishop, and placed me as a mediator in your unhappy circumstances. I beg you therefore, to make some allowance for my timidity, and if the better prevail, to use me as a servant of your desire: I rejoice in receiving such commands. But if the worse and more cruel course is to be taken, seek for some one more suitable to your purpose. I have not time, for the sake of favoring your friendship (though in all respects I have the highest regard for you), to offend against God, to Whom I have to give account of every action and thought. I will believe your daughter (for the truth shall be told) when she can lay aside her awe of you, and boldly declare the truth. At present her condition is pitiable — for she assigns her words to you, and her tears to her husband.

Hard Line Against Adultery in Ancient Rome

In attempt to boost the declining birth rate Augustus (27 B.C.– A.D. 14), in the A.D. 1st century, imposed strict marriage laws and changed adultery from an act of indecency to an act of sedition, decreeing that a man who discovered his wife's infidelity must turn her in or face charges himself. Adulterous couples could have their property confiscated, be exiled to different parts of the empire and be prohibited from marrying one another. Augustus passed the reforms because he believed that too many men spent their energy with prostitutes and concubines and had nothing for their wives, causing population declines.

Constantine (A.D. 307–337) also took a hard line against adultery. He wrote to Africanus: “It should be ascertained whether the woman who committed adultery was the owner of the inn, or only a servant; and if, by employing herself in servile duties (which frequently happens), she gave occasion for intemperance, since if she were the mistress of the inn, she will not be exempt from liability under the law. [Source: Codex Justinianus, Book IX, Title IX. On the Lex Julia Relating to Adultery and Fornication, University of Calgary] [Lex Julia is an ancient Roman law that was introduced by any member of the Julian family. Most often it refers to moral legislation introduced by Augustus in 23 B.C., or to a law from the dictatorship of Julius Caesar]

“Where, however, she served liquor to the men who were drinking, she would not be liable to accusation as having committed the offense, on account of her inferior rank, and any freemen who have been accused shall be discharged, as the same degree of modesty is required of these women as of those who are legally married, and bear the name of mothers of families. Those, also, are not subject to judicial severity who are guilty of fornication or adultery, and the vileness of whose lives does not render them worthy of the attention of the law.... [A.D. 326]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024