166 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(15b, ed. O. Hense) suggests that even wealthy families resorted to infant
exposure to restrict the number of children for fi nancial reasons.^57
Some indication that Pliny’s and Seneca’s perceptions about the reluctance
to have children were not exaggerated is to be found in the discontent
aroused by Augustus’ marriage laws. These laws established legal disabilities,
particularly in matters of inheritance, for men and women who were
unmarried or had had fewer than three children.^58 Augustus’ aim was to
force the aristocracy to have children, but he failed and the laws were a
continuing source of irritation until Constantine abolished them. Several
points about Augustus’ measures are worth stressing. First, if Roman parents
did no more than meet the legal standard of three children, aristocratic
families would have died out very quickly. Only 40 per cent of fathers would
have been survived by a male heir, and 35 per cent would have had no child
to institute as heir, fi gures that belie the view that Augustus hoped to weaken
the aristocracy by requiring so many children that aristocratic estates would
have been fragmented.^59
The second point is that state intervention to force the propertied classes
to have children and to continue their families is unexpected. In many early
modern European societies nobles displayed a veritable obsession with
securing male successors for their lines,^60 whereas in Rome the emperor had
to employ carrot- and-stick methods to convince aristocrats to have three
children, a number that would not have resulted in full replacement of their
numbers. It was not that all Romans had abandoned concern for perpetuation
of the family line, as Pliny’s and Fronto’s interest in their own posterity
shows. Rather, it seems likely that many Romans came to take a more
individualistic view of life, giving correspondingly less effort to ensuring the
success of family and lineage.^61 Besides, Roman law and custom offered
attractive alternatives to large families for continuing the domus. If a Roman
could be satisfi ed with a daughter to perpetuate his domus he need have
only half the number of children to achieve the same probability of having
a successor as if he required a son. Better still, a man could continue the
family name without any of the cost and trouble of a family by adopting a
son, usually an adult, in his will.^62 This technique had other advantages as
well. The testator could choose a son whose character was already developed,
thus avoiding the possibility of being burdened with a reprobate natural
son. Furthermore, being childless until his death, the testator would attract
the attention and favours of the crowd of legacy- hunters so often mentioned
in our texts. Indeed, part of the rationale behind Augustus’ restrictions on
the capacity of the childless and unmarried to inherit from unrelated
testators was precisely to neutralize the advantage that they enjoyed in the
exchange of gifts and legacies.^63 The custom of distributing bequests widely
outside the family, rather than concentrating the inheritance on natural
children, is a distinctive feature of Roman society, resulting in a fl uidity of
wealth between aristocratic families that contrasts strikingly with the drive
in other aristocracies to prevent dispersion of the patrimony. Its role in