162 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
had to tolerate their interference in a decision about marriage (a quarter of
aristocratic men, who married younger). Obviously, no more than a small
fraction of mature Romans (less than 5 per cent at age forty) lacked the
capacity to own property because they were still in their fathers’ power.^46
Clearly we must use other, more conventional methods to discover
whether the Roman family was as authoritarian in practice as in law during
the lifetime of the paterfamilias. Latin literature offers a glimpse, and not
much more, of the quality of family relations at progressive stages of the
lifecycle. Parents and children in Rome, it has been argued, did not enjoy
highly developed affective bonds for several reasons. On account of the high
infant mortality rate, parents could not afford a heavy emotional investment
in a baby who was unlikely to survive childhood.^47 In addition, it was
customary among the elite to entrust their children to slaves for wet- nursing
and rearing, a custom lamented by Tacitus as contributing to Rome’s decline
( Dial. 28–9). It would seem reasonable to posit greater distance in parent–
child relationships than we expect today, and some evidence supports this
generalization: infants rarely received funerary memorials and a few literary
passages display callousness toward the death of newborns (e.g. Cicero, Att.
10.18). On the other side, Latin authors repeatedly attest the strength of
parental affection. Fathers grieved immoderately the death of their children,
according to Seneca, despite the fact that they should have been numb
to a tragedy so often repeated ( Cons. ad Marciam 9.2). The children who
lived were a source of joy and pleasure (Seneca, Ep. 9.7, 99.23; Fronto,
Ad amicos 1.12).
One of the most obvious shortcomings of our sources written by males is
the lack of information about the mother–child bond from the mother’s
perspective. Fronto was able to neglect his wife’s feelings to such an extent
as to claim to have mourned the loss of their fi rst four children alone ( De
nepote amisso 2.1–2). It is hardly surprising, then, that these male sources
give us very little sense, for example, of how the pattern of frequent divorce
and remarriage affected the bond between mother and child.^48 Since Roman
children customarily remained with their father after his divorce, they must
very often have had to live with a stepmother ( noverca ) and half- siblings.
The noverca was assumed to have a greater interest in her own children at
the expense of her stepchildren, and so became stereotyped as a source of ill
will – a stereotype so deeply ingrained that even the normally dry legal
sources repeat it ( Digest 5.2.4). We know that the frequency of divorce and
remarriage produced complicated problems in division of the patrimony,
and it is reasonable to assume equally awkward complexities in bonds of
familial affection also resulted. One way for a widower or divorcé with
children to avoid such problems was to take in place of another wife a lower
class concubine, whose children would not be legitimate.^49
After childhood and years of education for children of parents who could
afford it, what kind of relationship did older children have with their
parents, and especially their father, in whose legal power they remained for