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Marriage in ancient Rome was a strictly monogamous institution: a Roman citizen by law could have only one spouse at a time. The practice of monogamy distinguished the Greeks and Romans from other ancient civilizations, in which elite males typically had multiple wives. Greco-Roman monogamy may have arisen from the egalitarianism of the democratic and republican political systems of the city-states. It is one aspect of ancient Roman culture that was embraced by early Christianity, which in turn perpetuated it as an ideal in later Western culture.〔Walter Scheidel, "Population and Demography," ''Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics'' (April 2006), p. 7.〕 Marriage had mythical precedents, starting with the abduction of the Sabine Women, which may reflect the archaic custom of bride abduction. Romulus and his band of male immigrants were rejected ''conubium'', the legal right to intermarriage, from the Sabines. According to Livy, Romulus and his men abducted the Sabine maidens, but promised them an honorable marriage, in which they would enjoy the benefits of property, citizenship, and children. These three benefits seem to define the purpose of marriage in ancient Rome.〔Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.〕 The word matrimonium, the root for the English word "matrimony," defines the institution's main function. Involving the ''mater'' (mother), it carries with it the implication of the man taking a woman in marriage to have children. It is the idea conventionally shared by Romans as to the purpose of marriage, which would be to produce legitimate children; citizens producing new citizens.〔 ''Consortium'' is a word used for the sharing of property, usually used in a technical sense for the property held by heirs, but could also be used in the context of marriage. Such usage was commonly seen in Christian writings. However, the sharing of water and fire (''aquae et ignis communiciatio'') was symbolically more important. It refers to the sharing of natural resources. Worldly possessions transferred automatically from the wife to the husband in archaic times, whereas the classical marriage kept the wife's property separate.〔 In order for the union of a man and woman to be legitimate, there needed to be consent legally and morally. Both parties had to be willing and intend to marry, and both needed their fathers' consent. If all other legal conditions were met, a marriage was made. ==Conventions of Roman marriage== The lives of elite Roman women were essentially determined by their marriages. We are best informed about families with both wealth and political standing, whose largely inherited money would follow both their sons and their daughters. In the earliest periods of Roman history, Manus Marriage meant that a married woman would be subjugated by her husband, but that custom had died out by the 1st century BCE, in favor of Free Marriage which did not grant a husband any rights over his wife or have any changing effect on a woman's status.〔Duby,Perrot,and Pantel A History of Women Volume 1, pg. 133〕 Elite young men would usually marry in their mid-twenties, after a year or more of military service and some initial experience attending cases and even pleading in the criminal or civil courts.〔Rodgers, Nigel: "Life In Ancient Rome" < page 97. Anness Publishing Ltd, 2007.〕 Their brides, however, would be markedly younger women, between fifteen and twenty years of age.〔Guy , John: "Roman Life" ,page 21 . Barron's Publishing Ltd, 1998.〕 This was in part because the family felt no need to retain the daughter at home in order to give her a full education, and partly from fear that once into the flush of adolescence the girl might throw away her virginity or lose the reputation for chastity, which was a prerequisite for marriage. The higher the social position of the girl, the sooner betrothal tended to follow puberty, since marriages were arranged for political reasons. The actual marriage, however, was usually postponed until she was physically mature enough to carry a healthy pregnancy or survive the high risks of childbirth. The young wife would learn some of the complexities of running a large household by observing her mother, and her training would be supplemented by the slave staff of her new household.〔Elaine Fantham, ''Julia August: the Emperor's Daughter: Women in the Ancient World'',Routledge, 2006〕 The more prominent her family, the less it was likely that the girl would have much choice in the age, appearance or character of her first husband.〔 Through high status marriages (even imperial ones), women were able to gain associative power from their husbands' prominent positions in society. Women who gained power in this way could even then legitimize the power positions of their sons (such as with Livia and Tiberius) as their symbolic status influenced Roman society. While upper class girls married very young, lower class women – plebeians, freedwomen etc. – in practice would marry during their late teens to men in their late twenties.〔Boatwright, Gargola & Talbot: "The Romans From Village To Empire", page 209. Oxford University Press, 2004.〕 Women were not seen as likely to marry after thirty. Marriage for them was not about economic or political gain, so it was not as urgent. In a sense, the lives of all women in antiquity were defined around their expectation and achievement of marriage: first as young girls, then as wives and, if all went well, as mothers. In their later years, it was statistically probable that they would survive their husbands and live as widows. From day to day, on a larger scale, their obligations and opportunities depended on the man or men to whom they were married.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marriage in ancient Rome」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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