FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD 157latitude to come to radically different conclusions about the quality of
marital devotion and affection in this era.^21 Carcopino believed that marriage
had degenerated to the point that it had ‘become merely a legalized form of
adultery’. In complete contrast, Veyne has recently suggested that the early
imperial senatorial order invented and disseminated a proto-Christian ideal
of the affectionate marriage.^22 Both views are suspect. The notion of
degeneracy depends heavily on accepting the Romans’ idealization of their
past and the statements of moralists about the pervasiveness of contemporary
vices, motifs that are suspect as history. The evidence for the instability of
marriage and high rates of divorce among the elites of classical Rome,
however, is convincing. A famous epitaph of the Augustan age boasted of a
long marriage ‘ended by death, not broken up by divorce’ as something
‘rare’.^23 Many elite Romans had more than one spouse in the course of their
lives, and some went through a series of remarriages after divorce or the
death of spouses.^24
The case for the ‘invention’ of the affectionate marriage by the aristocracy
of the Principate is even less compelling. Pliny is sometimes held up as the
prototype of a loving husband who openly expressed a new sentiment, a
longing and concern for his wife. But a century and a half earlier Cicero
wrote to his wife from exile about his desire to embrace her and his concern
for her well- being during his crisis ( Fam. 14.1.3, 14.4.1). More generally,
Lucretius in the late Republic gave poetic expression to what can only be
described as powerful family affection. Asking what a man most fears he
will miss after death, Lucretius answered: his home, his excellent wife, and
his children who race to welcome him home and to secure the fi rst kiss,
‘touching his heart with sweetness’ (3.896). The affectionate family
obviously did not have to be invented during the Principate. The search for
the origins of conjugal affection by Roman historians and others is a quest
for a chimera. It might still be claimed that emphasis on the sentimental
attachment of husband and wife increased during the Principate, but decisive
evidence is hard to fi nd. Pliny’s letters demonstrate that marriages were still
arranged with a view to family honour and advancement much more than
to the compatibility of the couple or the wife’s happiness (e.g. Ep. 6.26). But
of course arranged marriages do not preclude marital affection.^25
The third virtue for which Calpurnia received praise was her effort to
follow and appreciate Pliny’s endeavours. While she and many other wives
may have done so as youthful admirers rather than as equal companions,
upper- class Roman women did share in more of their husbands’ activities
than, for instance, their Athenian counterparts, who were segregated from
male political and social activities.^26 Roman wives were educated, attended
dinner parties with their husbands and in the Principate began to accompany
husbands during their tenure as governors of provinces. But the
companionship was not on terms of equality, and not only because of the
usual seniority of husband over wife. Calpurnia could share in Pliny’s public
life only as a spectator at a distance because women were not allowed to