164 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
apparently did not use, was for the aging father to retire and turn over his
land to his son in return for support until his death. Such strategies, however,
did not wholly resolve the tensions: neither parricide nor stories of parricide
are unique to Rome.^55 In fact, very few actual cases of sons murdering
fathers or fathers executing sons are attested for imperial Rome. No doubt
parricide did occur, as in other societies, but Seneca’s often cited generalization
( Clem. 1.23) about the frequency of parricide is highly suspect.
Because men married later than women, a much higher proportion of
them would have been independent and hence free to make their own
decisions about when and whom to marry. There is also some reason to
believe that their age and sex gave even those in their father’s power more
infl uence in arranging a marriage than their sisters had. Young Quintus
Cicero appears to have made his own survey of the fi eld of potential wives,
but we cannot be sure that all young aristocrats enjoyed the same latitude
( Att. 15.29). In any case, once married, the new couple were expected to
establish a new household.
Inheritance and lineage
The Roman father’s power over, and interest in, his children did not cease
with his death. His will largely determined the future fi nancial well- being of
his children, who were his hope for posterity. The legal rules of inheritance
have been briefl y described, but, as in other societies, the rules and legal
instruments allowed for fl exibility and could be manipulated to achieve a
family’s goals in what have been called ‘strategies of heirship’ (that is, how
to plan a family and distribute the patrimony to the next generation). It has
already been pointed out in regard to the Roman vocabulary of family and
lineage that the emphasis in Roman thinking shifted from the strictly agnatic
familia and nomen in the Republic to the domus , which included relatives
by marriage and descendants through females as well as males. With this
change came an increased interest in daughters as perpetuators of the family
line. Under the empire a daughter’s children came to be spoken of as a man’s
‘posterity’, as they were not in the Republic. Fronto, who had no surviving
son, wrote of his choice of Aufi dius Victorinus to be his daughter’s husband
as a wise one ‘both for my own sake in regard to my posterity and for my
daughter’s whole life’ ( Ad amicos 2.11). In the same vein, a letter from Pliny
to his wife’s paternal grandfather, Calpurnius Fabatus, indicates a keen
desire on the part of Fabatus to extend his line through his granddaughter’s
children, whose ‘descent from both of us should make their road to high
offi ce easy’ ( Ep. 8.10). Of course, the reference to ‘the road to high offi ce’
implies a preference for a male descendant, but in the absence of a son or
grandson Fabatus was willing to place his hopes on the offspring of his
granddaughter. This willingness to use females to continue the family line is
refl ected in the development of extended names in the Principate when the