Chapter 10

Cultural Notes: Roman Freedwomen

A form of marriage existed between slaves, called contubernium (which meant sharing the same roof). Female slaves were rewarded for bearing children; this increased the master's resources, just as when a stock splits. When a married slave was freed, he bought his wife's freedom (also their children's, if any), and then married her according to social norms.

Masters and female slaves also got together, and he could, if he was unmarried and wished to, free and marry her unless he belonged to a senatorial family. Or she could be his concubine, which was a convenient social relationship encouraged by law. The children were not legitimate, and the daughters had no dowry, but otherwise there was little difference between concubinage and marriage and the couple was married in all but name. The only problem arose if this solution was chosen not because the woman had been a slave but because she was too poor to have a dowry, in which case concubinage would make her poverty and shame obvious. Married men did not have concubines, and no one had more than one at a time, so it was not just a form of promiscuity.

It was not proper for a woman to free and marry a male slave, unless she herself was a freedwoman and they had been slaves together, or unless he had been left to her in a will with this provision. People got nervous if a free woman lived as a slave's concubine.