FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD 155property from her husband’s was reinforced early in the Principate by the
extension of a prohibition on gifts between husband and wife to a ban on
the wife standing as surety for her husband.^14 The woman’s independence in
managing her property was also strengthened during this time through the
weakening of guardianship ( tutela ) over women, fi rst by Augustus, who
exempted women who had borne three children from the need of a guardian,
and then by Claudius, who abolished altogether agnatic guardianship, the
only type with any force (Gaius, Inst. 1.145, 171). In law, then, the conjugal
couple was not one fi nancial entity but two, with the wife enjoying complete
legal independence in the ownership of property after her father’s death.
The looseness of the classical conjugal bond is also apparent in other
aspects of the law. The husband had no legal authority during the marriage
over his wife who was in her father’s power, but also had no general
obligation of maintenance.^15 The fi nancial penalties for breaking off the
marriage largely disappeared in the late Republic, and from that time a
divorce required no more than a notice of intent to dissolve the marriage by
either husband or wife. Augustus’ requirement of witnesses to the notice of
intent was prompted by a need to make the end of the marriage a matter of
public knowledge and hence adultery clearly distinguishable, but it cannot
have served as an obstacle to divorce.
In sum, Roman women enjoyed a legal independence in marriage that is
quite remarkable by comparison with the position of women in many other
traditional agrarian societies. A striking indication of this can be seen in the
changes introduced by the jurists in late medieval Italy. When Roman law
was reintroduced, the classical principles of marriage in which the woman
did not transfer from her father’s to her husband’s legal power were generally
accepted. But the complete lack of authority of the husband over his wife
was unacceptable, and so the law was modifi ed: the wife’s position in regard
to her husband was assimilated to the Roman freedwoman’s subordination
to her ex- master, to whom respect and duties were owed, and the husband
often exercised guardianship over his wife after her father’s death (something
not usual in classical Roman law).^16
This notable legal independence of the woman in marriage was no doubt
restricted by various social customs. The conventional difference in ages at
marriage for men and women must have encouraged a psychological
subordination of wife to husband. A survey of Latin funerary dedications
suggests that men in the Latin- speaking West typically married for the fi rst
time in their late twenties or early thirties. It was for men who died at these
ages that wives appear for the fi rst time as a signifi cant proportion of
commemorators in place of parents; the most plausible explanation for the
almost complete absence of wives among the scores of commemorators for
men under twenty- fi ve is that men were not generally marrying in their teens
or early twenties. In contrast, husbands decisively replace parents as
commemorators for women in their late teens or early twenties. This
evidence points to a pattern of late male/early female marriage found widely