In the 'Spes, ultima dea' novel presented in the pages below (1), Pomponia, the hero’s confident, is speaking of one of the characters of the story, that is ending : «(..) since she owned her dowry back, whose mortgages you have redeemed, admirers are many.»

This simple and subtile stroke, as most of these that Misses Comastri Montanari has riddled her opus, opens a vast and rich reality : this of the roman woman dowry.

Latin word for 'dowry' is «dos, dotis». The dowry is what is given (to give=dare, pfct datum). There existed, and still exist in the world, two opposite dowry systems : in the first one, the husband makes his dowry to obtain certain rights upon a woman of another family, with which an alliance is wished. In the other system, the word designs the estates that are gathered to allow a woman to contribute to the expenses of the house. Roman law is closer to this second solution.

Let us remember that Rome allowed to the woman, and similarly to the future spouses in modern French law, to form and enter in a community (societas), either with all the existing and future goods, or just with the first ones.

The first difference between the two dowry systems is that Roman law did not consider the existence of a dowry as forming itself the wills agreement between the spouses or their families. Nevertheless, the ancient social prastice, even in the most modest families, confirms the custom of waiting for a dowry.

In effect, we may consider that dowry is also, somehow, a compensation given to the woman to balance the disappearing or decreasing of the chances that she has to inherit from her birth family. Here too, Roman law is closer to certain today law systems which belong to the «expense for the husband dowry» conception.

In a system where the donation between the spouses is forbidden, the situation is thus different according the type of marriage done by the future spouse: the marriage cum manu sees her going from under the authority of her own father or grand-father to her husband’s one, while the marriage sine manu allows her living maritally with her husband, but remaining under her father’s authority (potestas).
The advantage of this last state was, for the woman, that her father could still intervene to protect her, or even to take her back to the family home for some time. Moreover, the sine manu spouse keeps her death duties in her birth family. Last, she may divorce, even on her demand, which is forbidden in cum manu marriage where the sole repudiation of the woman by the husband is possible. In the same way, this last type of union considers, concerning legacy, the woman as the « daughter » of her dead husband, and the 'sister' of her own children.

Actually, from the last centuries of Roman republic, sine manu marriage became so more frequent, that, as well by conservatism as by a sincere will to preserve spouses psychologically 'harassed' by a spendthrift husband, Augustus and Vellian Senatus consultum (1st c. AD) then emperor Justinian (6th c.) intervened to protect the dowry and limit the financial autonomy of the sine manu married «so that the levity of feminine gender does not turn to ruin of women’s patrimony».

(to be continued next page)

Publius Memmius Albucius