The Romans Needed to make Laws to increase their Population

THE Romans, by destroying others, were themselves destroyed. How did the Romans increase their population?

Chapter 21: Roman Population Laws

THE ancient laws of Rome tried hard to get people to marry. Dio says that Augusus said:

The Fabii family was exterminated by the Veientes.

Dionysius Halicarnasseus† could not believe that but one child remained. This is because the ancient law which obliged every citizen to marry and to educate all his children‡, was still in force.

Independently of the laws, the censors focused on marriages. According to the republic’s exigencies, they resorted to marriages by shame and by punishments.

The corruption of manners that began to take place, contributed vastly to disgust the citizens against marriage, which was painful to those who had no taste for the pleasures of innocence.

Metellus Numidicus was a censor. He spoke to the people:

The corruption of manners destroyed the censorship, which was itself established to destroy the corruption of manners. When this depravation became general, the censor lost his power.

Civil discords, triumvirates, and proscriptions, weakened Rome more than any war.

They left but few citizens. Most of them remained unmarried.

To remedy this last evil, Cæsar and Augustus re-established the censorship, and would even be censors themselves.

Cæsar gave rewards to those who had many children.

All women under 45 who had neither husband nor children, were forbid to wear jewels, or to ride in litters. It was an excellent method to attack celibacy by the power of vanity.

The laws of Augustus were more pressing. They:

• imposed new penalties on the unmarried
• increased the rewards of those who were married and those who had children.

Tacitus calls these Julian laws.

The law of Augustus had many obstacles. 34 years after it had been made, the Roman knights insisted on its being abolished.

There were more unmarried than married.

Augustus, with the gravity of the ancient censors, spoke to them:

He made a law, which was called after his name, Julia, and Papia Poppæa, from the names of the consuls for part of that year.

The greatness of the evil appeared, even in their being elected. Dio tells us that they were not married and had no children.

This decree of Augustus was properly a code of laws, and a systematic body of all the regulations that could be made on this subject.

The Julian‡ laws were incorporated into it; and received a greater strength. It was so extensive in its use, and had an influence on so many things, that it formed the finest part of the civil law of the Romans.

Parts of it were dispersed in:

• the precious fragments of Ulpian
• the laws of the Digest, collected from authors who wrote on the Papian laws,
• the historians who have cited them,
• the Theodosian code, which abolished them, and
• in the works of the fathers, who have censured them, without doubt, from a laudable zeal for the things of the other life, but with very little knowledge of the affairs of this.

These laws had 35 heads. Aulus Gellius tells us of the seventh and relates to the honours and rewards granted:

The Romans sprung from the cities of the Latins which were Spartan colonies.

They had received a part of their laws even from those cities.

Like the Spartans, they venerated old age.

When the republic wanted citizens, she granted to marriage, and to a number of children, the privileges which had been given to age.

She granted some ’the right of husbands’ which were privileges to marriage alone, independently of the children which might spring from it.

She gave others to those who had children, and more to those who had three children. These three things must not be confounded.

These last had those privileges which married men constantly enjoyed; as for example, a particular place in the theatre*; they had those which could only be enjoyed by men who had children; and which none could deprive them of but such as had a greater number.

These privileges were very extensive.

The married men, who had the most children were always preferred whether in the pursuit, or in the exercise of honours.

The consul, who had the most offspring, was the first who received the fasces; he had his choice of the∥ provinces: the senator, who had most children, had his name written first in the catalogue of senators, and was the first in giving his opinion in the senate.

They might even stand sooner than ordinary for an office, because every child gave a dispensation of a year**.

If an inhabitant of Rome had three children, he was exempted from all troublesome offices. The free-born women who had three children, and the freed-women who had four, passed out of that perpetual tutelage, in which they had been held by the ancient laws of Rome.

They had also penalties. Those who were not married, could receive no advantage from the will of any person that was not a relation†††; and those who, being married, had no children, could receive only half. The Romans, says Plutarch, marry only to be heirs, and not to have them.

The advantages which a man and his wife might receive from each other by will, were limited by law. If they had children of each other, they might receive the whole; if not, they could receive only a tenth part of the succession on the account of marriage; and if they had any children by a former venter, as many tenths as they had children.

If a husband absented himself from his wife on any other cause than the affairs of the republic, he could not inherit from her.

The law gave to a surviving husband or wife two years§ to marry again, and a year and a half in case of a divorce.

The fathers who would not suffer their children to marry, or refused to give their daughters a portion, were obliged to do it by the magistrates.

They were not allowed to betroth, when the marriage was to be deferred for more than two years††; and as they could not marry a girl till she was 12 years old, they could not be bethrothed to her, till she was 10.

The law would not suffer them to trifle* to no purpose; and under a pretence of being betrothed, to enjoy the privileges of married men.

It was contrary to law for a man of 60 to marry a woman of 50. As they had given great privileges to married men, the law would not suffer them to enter into useless marriages.

For the same reason, the Calvisian Senatus Consultum declared the marriage of a woman above 50, with a man less than 60, to be‡ unequal; so that a woman of 50 years of age could not marry, without incurring the penalties of these laws.

Tiberius added to the rigour of the Papian law, and prohibited men of 60 from marrying women under 50; so that a man of 60 could not marry without incurring the penalty. But Claudius abrogated this law made under Tiberius.

All these regulations were more conformable to the climate of Italy, than to that of the North, where a 60 year old man still has strength and women of 50 are not always past child-bearing.

That they might not be unnecessarily limited in the choice they were to make, Augustus permitted all the free-born citizens, who were not senators, to marry freed-women.

The Papian law forbade the senators marrying freed-women, or those who had been brought to the stage.

From the time of Ulpian, free-born persons were forbid to marry women who had led a disorderly life, who had played in the theatre, or who had been condemned by a public sentence.

This must have been established by a decree of the senate. During the time of the republic they had never made laws like these, because the censors corrected this kind of disorders as soon as they arose, or else prevented their rising.