Marriage and Children in Augustinian Rome

This 1st century BCE “Ara Pacis” celebrates fertility with breastfeeding children on a woman’s lap along with other symbols of fecundity. The artistic program matched with the mode of the day in Imperial Rome — the Republic had ended, and the new leader wanted to increase the population of elite Roman citizens. The birthrate among these groups had declined precipitously in recent years (just as the number of enslaved people was increasing). And so, the Emperor Augustus enacted a number of laws with the intention of “improving morals and increasing the birth rate of the upper classes.”

By 17 BCE, Augustus legislated the Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus, which made marriage compulsory, even forcing widows to remarry. They also restricted the inheritance of childless and unmarried people. To incentivize women to have more children, he also enacted the Ius trium liberorum — this gave elite women who had three children (four kids for freedwomen) the ability to evade the mandatory male guardianship that other women were forced to have, guardianship that meant that their inheritance and many other legal rights were under the control of a male family member.

Women, then as now, had many reasons for not wanting to have children – maternal death from childbirth was tragically common, for one thing. And since childhood fatality rates were so high, it meant that just to maintain a population, women would have needed to give at least four live births.

The rhetoric pressuring women to have more children coming from the current US executive administration has obvious parallels to the Ancient Roman situation, and shows just as misguided an understanding of women’s interests and perspectives. For what it’s worth, the Augustinian marriage and morality legislation failed to increase the birthrate of Roman elites. The laws were met with all kinds of resistance, and at least (according to the Ancient Roman Suetonius) at one point by “an open revolt.”