Ideal bride and groom The Roman wedding was designed to ensure the legitimate transfer of the bride into a legal marriage. In Rome, the ideal bride was supposed to
lack prior sexual experience and be simultaneously frightened and joyful about the upcoming wedding. Depictions of the Roman wedding emphasize the misery and fear of the bride; literary accounts sometimes describe the tears and blushes beneath the bridal veil and artistic portrayals depict brides with turned town faces or eyes.
Catullus, a 1st-century BCE
Latin poet, describes the bride as "eager for her new husband," but also as sobbing because "she must go." In an
epithalamium by the 4th-century CE poet
Claudian, the bride is explicitly commanded by Venus to love her husband despite her initial fear of the wedding:
Venus instructs her, "whom you now fear you will love." The imagery of a suffering bride may have exaggerated for artistic purposes, although it is also possible that real Roman brides did indeed feel significant discomfort as the wedding marked a transitory period in their lives in which they were separated from their family. Wasdin argues that Roman literature often fetishizes the idea of resistance to sex or a feigned unwillingness to partake in intercourse: Ovid states "Perhaps she will struggle at first, and cry “You villain!” yet she will wish to be beaten in the struggle." However, Wasdin argues that the violence is justified within Roman literature by the supposed artificiality of the bride's dismay, noting that in other pieces of Roman spousal violence is explicitly condemned: Little attention was paid to the autonomy or will of the bride in Roman wedding rituals: Catullus instructs the bride to avoid displeasing her husband, stating "You also, bride, what your husband seeks beware of denying, lest he go elsewhere in its search." Statius, in one of his epithalamia, mocks Stella—the groom—for failing to act upon his love for Violentilla and take her as his bride, stating "Sigh no more, sweet poet, she is thine. The door lies open, and thou can come and go with fearless step." Catullus describes the groom as trembling during the wedding (""), however he also mentions that the groom listens to the ceremony with an "eager ear" (""). The writings of Catullus portray the groom as more sexually violent and aggressive, using the term "" ("to threaten" or "to long for") to describe the groom lying in bed awaiting the bride; he further mentions that the groom's "passion" ("") burns brighter than that of the bride. Claudian compares Honorius and his passion for his bride, Maria, to that of a
sexually aroused horse, stating that Honorius was akin to "noble steed when first the smell that stirs his passions." Differing cultural attitudes towards the groom and the bride are reflected in the Latin language itself: brides were said to "," or "to veil [themselves] for a man," while grooms were said to "," or "to lead a wife." Conversely, authors often describe the lack of such boons at doomed or improper weddings. In the
Troades of Seneca,
Helen of Troy laments that any wedding "bred of evil fate" and "full of joyless omens" is deserving of her "baleful auspices." Servius wrote that the
thunder and
lightning present at the wedding of
Aeneas and
Dido signified that their union would be unfortunate. In his
Metamorphoses, Ovid writes that a screeching owl appeared at the wedding of
Tereus and
Procne, presumably signifying the impending transformation of Procne and
Philomela into birds. Cicero, writing in the 1st-century BCE, describes the practice of using augurs and diviners at weddings as if it had already become antiquated by his lifetime, mentioning that, although augurs still appeared in Roman weddings, they lacked the same religious significance. Other writings of Cicero imply that augurs or other officiating priests remained pivotal to the Roman wedding: he lambasts an individual named Sassia for marrying her son without anyone "to bless" or "to sanction the union" and amidst "nought but general foreboding."
Valerius Maximus, a 1st-century CE Roman rhetorician, also reinforces the dated nature of augurs at Roman weddings, stating "Amongst the ancients nothing, either private or public, was held without auspices consulted." In his description of the various illegitimate weddings of
Messalina and
Nero, the 1st-century CE Roman historian
Tacitus highlights the ritualistic taking of the auspices, possibly as part of an attempt to convey the debauchery of these figures. His account is almost certainly inaccurate as a piece of historical documentation; however, his writing may accurately reflect and convey the cultural values of his time, thus rendering it somewhat useful to modern historians. At the wedding of Messalina and
Gaius Silius, Tacitus also mentions that they performed all the traditional rites of a Roman wedding, including the consultation of the auspices. Classicist Karen Hersch hypothesizes that Tacitus may have been infuriated that these individuals choose to include all the elements of a legitimate wedding within their own, in his opinion, perverted ceremonies. Hersch further suggests that, assuming the rituals were indeed antiquated by the time of Tacitus, he may have been illustrating the eccentricity of these figures by describing them using an ancient practice. Alternatively, as Tacitus more specifically states that Messalina had heard the words of the auspex, Hersch suggests that Tacitus may have been attempting to imply that she was failing to heed dire omens. Juvenal similarly satirizes the wedding of Messalina, claiming that she attempted to emulate a legitimate marriage by bringing along witnesses, an augur, and a wedding dowry of one million sesterces in the "ancient fashion." It is possible that Juvenal's emphasis on the "ancient fashion" is intended to induce outrage at a perceived defilement of the , or the customs and traditions of ancient Rome. Hersch argues that nuptial pig sacrifices may have ceased to occur by the early Empire due to lack of any artistic evidence for such a custom, despite the plethora of depictions of bulls and sheep on wedding scenes from sarcophagi. Servius, writing in the 4th or 5th centuries, treats the custom of animal sacrifice as an antiquated custom, claiming that "amongst the ancients no wife was able to be wed nor field able to be plowed without the sacrifices completed." Another reference to pre-nuptial animal sacrifice derives from the
Aeneid: Queen Dido, prior to her wedding, attempts to acquire assistance from various deities by—in isolation—pouring a
libation between the horns of a white
cow and sacrificing sheep to
Apollo (""), "lawgiving
Ceres ("")," the "father
Lyaeus ("")," and, most importantly (""),
Juno, who governs marriage bonds (""). Karen Hersch states that the precise details of Dido's involvement in this sacrifice remain unclear: Dido possibly personally scarified the animals, although the text also allows for the interpretation that she instead let priests perform the deed for her. Hersch proposes that Virgil may have intended to emphasize the "foreignness" of Dido, perhaps hoping to communicate that no Roman woman would similarly engage in a sacrifice. Alternatively, Virgil may have wished to emphasize the "doomed" nature of her wedding by showing Dido partake in an improper ritual. Sheep specifically are mentioned as part of the wedding ritual by Plutarch, who claims that, upon introducing the bride, the Romans would lay a
fleece underneath her and then the bride would proceed to hang a thread of woolen
yarn from her husband's door using a
distaff and a
spindle. Other evidence from Roman literature indicates that the groom was primarily responsible for wedding sacrifices: In
The Golden Ass of the 2nd-century writer
Apuleius, a character called Tlepolemus travels through the city accompanied by his relatives to sacrifice at public shrines and temples prior to his wedding. Another account of a pre-nuptial sacrifice performed by the groom derives from the play
Hercules Oetaeus by Seneca: In the play,
Deianira—the wife of
Hercules—becomes enraged upon hearing that Hercules would take another woman,
Iole, as a new wife and prays to become the sacrificial victim, hoping that Hercules would kill her and that her corpse could fall upon the lifeless body of Iole.
Auspicious and Inauspicious dates Roman authors recorded numerous dates in which it was considered ill-omened to wed; however, Hersch argues that such religious rules may not have necessarily concerned all, or even the majority, of Roman citizens. Hersch considers it unlikely that each individual Roman had detailed knowledge of the calendar, suggesting that—for most Romans—the intricacies of the calendar may have been inscrutable. Furthermore, Hersch argues that it is unlikely the Roman populace unanimously avoided performing any task on the days which Romans authors considered unlucky. Individual Romans would—according to Hersch—have been differently affected by religious matters; for instance, an urban resident in Rome may not have been concerned with agrarian omens. Many sources for these traditions were intentionally archaizing and thus may reflect traditions which had become antiquated by the author's lifetime: writers such as Ovid sought to catalogue the mythological origins for parts of Roman society and authors such as Varro and Festus were documenting rare and obscure words in the Latin language.
Macrobius. a 5th-century Roman historian, suggests that the
Calends,
Ides,
Nones, and the days following the Nones, ought to be avoided for weddings because violence was forbidden on the dates—according to Festus, because Republican military leaders had suffered catastrophic defeats after supplicating the gods on these dates—and violence appeared to be committed against virgins during the wedding. Varro, according to Macrobius, stated that these dates, alongside any day of religious observance ("") were more favorable for the weddings of
widows than virgins because it was considered more favorable to clean out old
drainage ditches than dig new ones during these days. Days associated with death were considered unlucky days for a wedding: the days of ("the world is open"), in which the spirits of the dead ("") were believed to walk the earth; the
Parentalia, in which feasts were held in honor of the dead; and
Lemuria, in which the Romans performed rituals to excise malevolent spirits of the dead from their homes, were all considered inauspicious for weddings. Ovid claims that women who wed during the Lemuria festival were expected to not live much longer and that the general public of Rome, the ("common folk"), believed that "bad women" ("") wed in May due to its connections with the festival. Other holidays are mentioned as inhospitable for weddings: Plutarch states that men refused to wed throughout the entire month of May, a tradition that is possibly connected to Lemuria or the festival of the
Argei, both of which occurred in May. Plutarch alternatively proposes that men wished to delay the wedding until June because the month was considered more favorable for weddings due to its connections with Juno. Ovid mentions that they were ill-advised on the festival of the
Salii, who were priests of
Mars, due to the presence of weapons at the festival and because "fighting is unsuitable for marriage." There is only scant evidence for any propitious wedding dates. Ovid mentions that the Ides of June was advantageous ("") for brides and bridegrooms although the "first part" of the month was considered unpropitious ("") for couples because—according to the in a conversation with Ovid—these dates occur before the had concluded, thus occurring before the
Temple of Vesta was cleaned and while was still forbidden from cutting her nails with iron, combing her hair with a comb made from
boxwood, or touching her husband the . The concludes by advising Ovid that his daughter "will better wed when Vesta’s fire shall shine on a clean floor."
, 19th-century painting by
Juan Luna depicting the Roman wedding ceremony The Roman wedding incorporated a ceremony called the "" ("leading to the home"), which functioned as a ritualistic public kidnapping of the bride from her home to the house of the groom, possibly intended to demonstrate the wealth and prestige of the families involved as well as provide conclusive proof that the wedding had occurred. According to Festus, the ceremony involved seizing the bride from her mother's "" (meaning either "lap" or, figuratively, "embrace"), or—if her mother was not present—the next closest female relative, and then transferring her over to the groom. It is unclear at precisely which time the taking of the bride occurred: the groom is not mentioned accompanying the bride on her journey to the new house, leading Hersch to propose that the seizing did occur until the bride had already arrived at the home of the groom. Hersch supports her interpretation with a passage from Catullus in which he describes
Hesperus, the
evening star (which itself is the planet Venus in the evening), stealing the bride from her family. The bride was expected to at least feign fear of the wedding ceremony and despondency at the prospect of marriage. Hersch argues that by demonstrating a reluctance to abandon their homes, the bride was signifying that they had, prior to the wedding, "lived a cloistered life among her female relatives" and therefore was a chaste bride suitable to become a wife. Hersch cites the lack of the bride's "father or male guardian" at the seizing of the bride, which—in Hersch's opinion—reinforced the absence of men from the bride's life and consequently her virginity. Macrobius notes that, during weddings, maidens were most vulnerable to suffering violence; he describes this violence with the word "" (meaning "force" or "assault"), a term which is also used by the 1st-century Roman historian
Suetonius to describe the wailing and lamentation of Nero, who, during his wedding to the slave
Doryphoros (who is himself potentially identical to Pythagoras), was attempting to imitate the cries of "suffering virgins." Furthermore, this term was connected to the notion of forceful sex, or rape, in various Roman writings, with the author Augustine etymologically connecting the name Venus to the violence of Roman wedding ceremonies, declaring that Venus is called as such because "without violence ("") a woman does not cease to be a virgin." Despite the extreme reaction, Hersch notes that the groom does not find this behavior incongruent with that of an actual bride; he remains convinced that Chalinus is in fact Casina. Hallett interprets this scene as referring to
anal sex, which Hallett suggests may have been preferred by brides as it reduced the risk of injury to their bodies. Hallett cites another instance of a similar description from the , a series of short poems dedicated to the god
Priapus thought to have been composed during the 1st-century: the text mentions that virgins during their wedding night fear wounds in their "other place," which Hallett interprets as referring to a fear of a wound acquired through vaginal intercourse. Despite the apparent omnipresence of this notion of a groom leading his wife, it is unclear if the groom physically led the bride during the ceremony: Roman literature provides few, if any, actual descriptions a groom genuinely leading the bride. Karen Hersch proposes that the "earliest forms of the Roman wedding" may have involved a literal leading of the bride that vanished from later versions of the Roman wedding ceremony, although the language describing the leading of the bride persisted. Hersch further theorizes that the absence of the groom could be partially explained by the potential origins of the Roman wedding in the
Rape of the Sabine women, an event in Roman mythology in which
Romulus kidnapped
Sabine women and brought them to Rome as brides.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a 1st-century BCE Greek rhetorician, records that, after the rape, Romulus attempted to alleviate the despair of the captured girls by informing them that it was a Greek custom and the most illustrious manner of marriage for women, before imploring them to thank
Tyche (the Greek equivalent of the Roman goddess
Fortuna) for allotting them husbands. The existence of ornaments decorating the groom's house in preparation for the arrival of the bride is strongly hinted at by the mention of their absence at the wedding of Cato and Marcia: Lucan claims that—at this wedding—no festal wreath crowned the gate, a gleaming was not entangled around the posts,
ivory steps were not present, a wedding torch was not carried, the couch was not
embroidered with gold, and the bride herself was not adorned with the wedding
garland, the , a necklace (""), or a
jeweled girdle ("") to confine her "flowing robe;" her arm was also not covered by a type of
linen garment called a "." Hersch claims that such opulence and decor, in particular the parts related to the bride, likely conveyed her value as the manager of domestic affairs. He also cites an author named Masurius, who claims that the "ancients" gave the "palm" to
wolf fat and that, likewise, brides coated doorposts with wolf fat to safeguard themselves against any "evil medicine" (""). Servius similarly states that the fat and limbs of wolves were viewed as remedies for various medical
ailments. Furthermore, Servius explains that this tradition derives from the myth of
Romulus and
Remus, the two legendary
founders of Rome who were nursed by a
she-wolf; he clarifies that these rituals were performed to ensure the bride knew that she was entering into a sacred household and because of the loyalty of the wolf, leading Karen Hersch to speculate that the tradition may have symbolized the faithfulness of the bride. Servius also claims that was considered a baleful omen for the bride to trample over the threshold ("") of the house, because it was the "thing of
Vesta" ("") and therefore sacred. This tradition is also seemingly referenced by Catullus, who commands a bride to cross the threshold (also called a "") with "a good omen" and her "golden feet." In the play by Plautus, the maid Pardalisca instructs the bride—the slave Chalinus disguised as Casina—to lift her feet over the threshold, explaining that this ritual must occur for her to always remain more powerful than the groom, to conquer him, and to despoil him. The historian Gordon Williams suggests that this speech was likely given by the Cleustrata and functioned as an intentional subversion of a legitimate Roman nuptial speech; therefore, he concludes that the inverse of these claims, the idea of a bride being subservient to their husband, must have been the genuine advice offered to the bride. Karen Hersch adds that the proposition of Williams is unprovable, and that—even if true—the wedding depicted in may more accurately reflect Greek wedding customs than Roman practices. The Roman author Plutarch proposes that the ritual carried almost the opposite significance: that the bride was involuntarily carried across the border by other individuals, symbolizing either that she was unwilling to enter the house where she would lose her virginity or that she was unwilling to enter abandon her family and therefore needed to be forcefully brought into the new home. According to various Roman sources, there was some mention of the names "Gaia" during the Roman wedding ceremony. Plutarch—the comprehensive source available on this matter—suggests that it occurred during the , stating that when the bride was led to their new home, the phrase "" ("Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia") was uttered. Hersch argues that Plutarch implies that the bride did not necessarily utter this phrase of her own volition, as he uses the
verb "" ("," "to urge, command") to describe the ritual. Furthermore, Hersch notes that the specific
adverb used by Plutarch, "" ("," "where"), could be translated into a Latin either as "" or "" (both of which could mean "when"), which Hersch suggests could convey significantly distinct meanings. Plutarch proposes two possible explanations for the ritual: one suggests that it may originated to suggest that the couple had equitable control over the household, and thus–in Plutarch's view—the phrase could be rendered as "Wherever you are lord and master, there I am lady and mistress." Alternatively, he indicates that the phrase derives from
Gaia Caecilia, the name adopted by
Tanaquil according to some Roman sources, who is herself inaccurately labeled by Plutarch as the wife of one of
Tarquin the Elder's sons even though other Roman authors label her as the wife of Tarquin. Festus also cites Tanaquil as the origin of this tradition, adding that Roman brides honored Tanaquil—whose spindle and distaff were alleged by Pliny to have been stored in the Temple of
Sancus—because they sought a good omen for their wool-working skills. According to Hersch, Plutarch further indicates that the names "Gaius" and "Gaia" may have functioned as
placeholder names, equivalent to terms such as
John or Jane Doe. Hersch suggests that the writings of the 1st-century CE rhetorician
Quintilian carry a similar connotation, as they note that the names "Gaius" and "Gaia" were used at the wedding ceremony—in Hersch's view—"presumably to mean simply 'man and woman.'" Another reference to the name "Gaia" being invoked at weddings appears in the works of Cicero, who mocks overly pedantic lawyers by remarking those who excessive attention to semantics might believe that the bride is literally renamed "Gaia" after the type of Roman marriage known as "."
Legal status This ritual has been interpreted as the defining moment of a Roman wedding, the moment in which the bride officially became a wife: Ulpian writes that the marriage has been complete when "," meaning when the bride has been led, even if they have not entered the bedroom and lain with each other. However, Ulpian notes other, apparently contradictory circumstances in which the bride was led, but the marriage is not valid as the bride due to the young age of the bride, which prevented them from legally marrying. In one scenario a bride under the age of 12 commits
adultery ("") after having undergone the ; Ulpian argues that, since she was too young to be considered a "" ("wife"), she could not be prosecuted for adultery as a married woman, but she could be prosecuted as a "" (meaning "bride" or "betrothed woman," interpreted by the scholar
Lauren Caldwell as the latter in this instance). Ulpian writes that this legal reasoning is premised upon ideals outlined by the Emperor
Septimius Severus (). Caldwell argues that, although Ulpian concedes that the bride is not legally married, he implies that the ritual marks some variety of transition into adulthood or confirmation of engagement as he states that she is capable of choosing to commit the crime of "," which is described by the 2nd-century jurist
Papinian as requiring extramarital sex with or by a married woman. Caldwell interprets this description of a wedding with all the trappings of a standard Roman wedding ceremony but without accompanying legal validity, as evidence that, at least for the majority of the Roman populace, the wedding ceremony was not necessarily connected to Roman law governing legitimate marriages. Caldwell further proposes that the wedding ceremony may have served largely social, rather than legal, functions: the wedding may have served to publicly broadcast the marriage and thus functioned as a representation of the legal union, rather than its direct equivalent. There appear to be various instances in Roman literature in which a wedding is described as lacking the presence of the groom: Papinian states that the groom, if he had been absent from a wedding in which the bride was led, was not entitled to claim any interests if the bride did not take any expense from his
assets. Another account from the
Digests, authored by the 2nd-century jurist
Ulpian, mentions that another jurist, Cinna, recorded an incident in which an individual who married a woman whilst away and then perished while returning from dinner by the
Tiber. However, the scholar Zuzanna Benincasa notes that the legal reasoning of Cinna, which implicitly accepts the possibility that one may "accept an absent wife" (""), contradicts a separate ruling from the 2nd or 3rd century Roman jurist
Julius Paulus that "an absent woman is not able to wed" (""). Various possible explanations have been proposed to resolve this discrepancy; one theory proposes that a scribe may have been mistakenly wrote the
accusative form "" instead of the
nominative form "," thereby altering the meaning of the text from describing an absent groom to an absent bride. The scholar
Carlo Castello, although he accepted the potential transcription error, posited that the groom may have been present for the wedding feast in the house of the bride, and perished while returning to his home. Italian scholar of Roman law
Edoardo Volterra argued for a different interpretation of the original text, arguing that although the scenario assumed the absence of the bride, it possessed a sense of mutual "" ("marital affection") that was confirmed by the relatives and friends of the bride, which ensured the legitimacy of the wedding. However, the is seemingly absent from the wedding of Cato and Marcia as described in the
Pharsalia of Lucan as well as the wedding of Pudentilla to Apuleius recounted in the autobiographical telling of Apuleius himself.
Fire and water Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in the 1st-century BCE, claims that the marriages subsequent to the rape of the Sabine women were performed via a "communion of fire and water," a ritual which—according to Dionysius—remained prevalent "even down to [his] times." Plutarch, among many other hypotheses, inquires as to whether fire and water were used at Roman weddings because they are imperfect when separated, since fire without water is arid while water without heat is inert and unproductive; however, when they brought together, Plutarch suggests that they produce a more ideal union symbolic of a more ideal life. Alternatively, he proposes that the substances represented that the couple would remain together even if they lacked anything other than fire and water to share with each other. Ovid, writing during the lifetime of Varro, suggests that, because the combination of fire and water contains the source of life, the "ancients" may have denied it to exiles and used it to mark new brides. However, he implies that this tradition continued to be practice during his lifetime as he uses the present tense to describe the creation of new brides. Festus provides two separate possible explanations for this ritual: he states that the bride was sprinkled with water either so that she may approach her husband morally pure ("") or to share the fire and water with him. Connotations of purity are also apparent in one of Plutarch's suggested explanations: Plutarch postulates that fire purifies and water cleanses, thus they were used to ensure the bride remained "pure and clean." This tradition is also depicted in the legal comments of the 2nd-century CE jurist
Scaevola, who notes that—if a couple divorced— then any gift of money made before the bride had "crossed over to the groom" (possibly referring to the ) and had been "accepted by water and fire," could not be demanded to be returned from the wedding
dowry. Polish classicist
Zuzanna Benincasa argued that this scenario was exceptional and does not necessarily reflect broader Roman customs: Scaevola was commenting upon a case in which the bride had been living in the house of the groom prior to the wedding day, removing the need for a as the bride could not be led from one house to another. Benincasa suggests that Scaevola's legal reasoning may have been premised upon the idea that the usage of fire and water merely signified the conclusion of the , henceforth it was the successor to the ritual in its absence. Another hypothesis posited by Plutarch is that it may derive from the
Aediles, who had the right to possess more torches than the
Praetors, who could only carry three. This claim is possibly connected to the , a Roman law which mentions that Aediles are allowed to hold
wax tapers called "," a term similar to the word Plutarch claims is used to refer to the Roman wedding torches: "
cereones" (""). Another possibility is that this relates to a claim asserted by Festus: that one wedding torch once honored the goddess
Ceres. However, Seneca mentions
Agripinna the Younger—the mother of
Nero—carrying torches during the wedding of Octavia; Catullus commands young boys to lift up torches during one wedding ceremony. In Roman poetry, it was common for a mythical figure to be depicted carrying the torches: Catullus mentions the god Hymen shaking
pine torches and Ovid describes either Juno or Hymen at propitious unions.
Iphis, a
woman raised as a man in Greek mythology, fell
madly in love with Ianthe, another woman whom she was intended to wed, however this situation threatened to expose her true sex. Iphis laments the unfortunate nature of her predicament, including that she be the only woman to ever feel attraction towards another woman, leading the gods to respond to her cries by transforming her into a man. At the following wedding, the deities Venus, Juno, and Hymen are all present and congregate at the wedding torches. However, Ovid describes the
furies bearing the torches at weddings for ill-omened couples:
Canace, a
Thessalian princess in
Greek mythology who mothered a child with her own
brother, exclaims that, although Hymen must flee with his wedding torches from her "nefarious home" (""), the Furies are permitted to enter so they could light her
funeral pyre. Ovid mentions that both Hymen and Juno were absent from the wedding of
Procne, an Athenian princess who murdered
her child; instead, he claims that the furies brought wedding torches taken from funerals. According to Ovid, Procne and the
Thracian king
Tereus were wedded and conceived their child under this omen. Ovid also chooses to convey the doomed nature of a wedding if the wedding ritual is carried out improperly: Hymen arrives to the wedding of
Orpheus and
Eurydice with a displeased countenance and an unlit torch and the deity is described as fleeing from the wedding altars of Cydippe, an Athenian girl set to marry
Acontius; Cydippe complains that Hymen has failed to light the torches and has carried them with a lazy hand. In the , Statius conveys the unlucky nature of a wedding by highlighting the presence of Hymen and an "ill-omened Juno" ("") with an "inauspicious torch" ("").
Martial appears to invoke Hymen as a blessing for his friends in one of his letters: While describing the wedding of Claudia Peregrina and Pudens, he declares "A blessing for your torches, o Hymen!" According to Hersch, Festus's unique claim that one wedding torch formerly honored
Ceres may derive either from Ceres's connections to fertility, and therefore the potential to bring fertility to the bride, or her absence from the wedding of her daughter—
Proserpina—to
Pluto as the author Servius mentions that brides must honor Ceres because, after the abduction, the goddess cursed brides (""). However, Servius notes another viewpoint held by his contemporaries: others claimed that Ceres looked favorably upon wedding because she was the first to wed
Jupiter and helped build great cities, he cites another author—1st-century BCE orator
Calvus—who claims that, in addition to the aforementioned reasons, Ceres also helped teach humanity the "sacred laws." This torch is likely related to the torch of "" ("white
thorn," presumably the
whitethorn plant) described by
Festus, who claims that during the wedding one of the and carried such a torch while two others carried a bridal torch because the ceremony used to occur at nighttime. Festus adds that this torch was confiscated by friends to prevent the groom from burning it in a
sepulcher or both the bride and the groom (for the groom, specifically at night) from placing the torch underneath the wedding bed because, according to Festus, both acts were thought to bring
premature death to one another. Ovid implies that the torch may have had an
apotropaic function, stating that the nymph
Cranae was given a white thorn by Janus so that she could "repel all doleful harm from doors." Although Festus describes the torches in the
present tense, indicating the tradition was contemporary to his lifetime, Varro—as recorded by the 4th or 5th century grammarian
Nonius Marcellus—uses the
imperfect past tense to describe the whitethorn torches, indicating the opposite. Varro claims that—of the two torches used during the wedding—one was lit by the bride using fire from her household
hearth and the other was whitethorn and carried by a freeborn boy. Despite the apparent prevalence of whitethorn torches in the Roman wedding during some part of Roman history, other authors mention torches made of various different materials: Servius writes that the
cornel tree was used to create wedding torches and other authors, Seneca mentions
Medea, a Greek mythological figure, carrying a pine torch and the "bridesmaid's torch into the bedroom" (""). Seneca, in the same text, mentions the god Hymen kindling pine torches shortly prior to the
Fescennine Verses.
Wedding chants Fescennine Verses The Fescennine Verses, known in Latin as the
"" or, alternatively, the "
" ("Fescennine Joke"), were a set of lewd and derisive songs performed during the Roman wedding ceremony. These songs were likely intended to ridicule the bride or the groom by highlighting embarrassing details of the individual's lives: In the of the 1st-century BCE writer
Seneca the Elder, an individual criticizes an acquaintance's decision to award one of his
slaves with freedom and his daughter's hand in marriage, stating that during the Fescennine verses it will be joked that the groom would be
crucified. However, the 2nd-century rhetorician
Calpurnius Flaccus indicates that the groom could pronounce their own verses: Flaccus, while disputing the idea that a child born of rape should not be considered the son of the rapist, remarks that "if he does not kindle the torches and sing the Fescennine verses, then he is not able to be the father." Festus further mentions another type of abusive song called the "," which were directed towards the bride; he claims that this tradition originates either from a supposed tendency of young boys to shout obscene language towards the bride who had discarded the . The origins of these songs are unclear: Horace claims that they derived from earlier "ancient farmers' (""), who had a custom of—after the
grain harvest—propitiating
tutelary deities by offering a pig for the Earth, milk for
Silvanus, and flowers and wine for memory of their short lives. Horace further claims that the offensiveness of the verses led to the enactment of a law designed forbidding the songs, which was enforced by "terror of the cudgel" (""). Lucan implies that the verses were Sabine in origin, mentioning that the "morose husband did not receive the festal abuses by the
Sabine custom." Livy, on the other hand, attributes the origin of the song to the Etruscans: he claims that Etruscan actors used to perform the Fescennine verses. Servius states that the songs derive from an Athenian people and the 3rd-century philosopher
Porphyry, while commenting upon the works of Horace, claims that the Fescennine Verses were called "
Atellan." Festus notes that the songs were designed to repel the , a type of
apotropaic phallic symbol in ancient Rome; he further suggests that the two terms were
etymologically connected. The phallic imagery of the is, according to Karen Hersch, possibly connected to the aforementioned agrarian origins of the verses through the form of some variety of fertility ritual. If the Fescennine verses did indeed have a connection to fertility rituals, then it is possible its inclusion in the Roman wedding was motivated by a desire to bring fertility to the wedding couple. However, according to Hersch, this theory appears incongruent with the existence of Fescennine songs that had no connection to sexually explicit themes or lyrics. Servius opts for the former explanation of the tradition, claiming that—according to his source:
Varro—it was believed that the nuts were under the protection of
Jupiter and that the rattling noise of children yearning for the nuts would drown out the noise of the bride losing her virginity on the wedding night. Festus supports the latter interpretation of the ritual, explaining that the custom of throwing nuts to boys at the wedding emerged because the nuts constituted an auspicious sign for the bride upon entering the home of the groom.
and According to Livy, the Romans would chant "" during weddings as, during the rape of the Sabine Women, a girl "conspicuous among them for all her grace and beauty" was designated for an individual named Thalassius, and thus, to uphold his claim, the Romans chanted "" (meaning "for Thalassius"). Servius also connected the chant to the myth of the Sabine women, claiming that Thalassius was invoked as a protector of virginity, because—during the rape of the Sabine women—he aimed to prevent others for capturing the girl by pretending she was of a noble leader, by whose name her virginity was safeguarded. Plutarch inquired into the origins of this chant in his , theorizing that it may either derive from the aforementioned possibilities or that it may derive from
wool-spinning; he cites the similarity between and the
Greek word "" (meaning "
wool-basket"), the custom of spreading a fleece underneath the bride, and of using a distaff and a spindle to hang a woolen yarn from the door of the husband's house. Festus supports this argument, stating that the term "" (Festus and his source, Varro, spell the word like instead of ) derived from a type of basket called the "" which was the equivalent of the
calathus, a type of basket involved in wool-working. Catullus describes the groom serving an entity called Talasius, likely a personification or deification of Talassius or the "" chant. Despite this singular reference to Talassius, Martial exclusively uses the standard term for the chant, "," throughout the rest of his writings. Karen Hersch interprets this abnormality as an intentional discrepancy or inaccuracy designed to highlight the unconventional nature of the wedding, which was a homosexual union between two men: Callistratus and Afer.
Petronius, a 1st-century Roman author, mentions that during a wedding ceremony the entire
household ("") began chanting "" ("Good luck for Gaius"). Juvenal implies that the
interjection "" was uttered at some point during the wedding ceremony; he mentions it alongside a list of other events that occurred at the wedding, such as the signing of the tablets.
Ovid and Catullus both reference the chant "" appearing at weddings, with the song featuring prominently in Catullus 61. Statius mentions that the song was performed by doorposts, an assertion supported by Catullus although he leaves it unclear whether it is the doorposts of the entrance to the bedroom or the home. In later writings, mentions of the chant accompany doomed or unhappy weddings: Lucretius mentions them occurring at the wedding of
Iphigenia and Ovid describes the
Calydonian princess
Deianira fearing that
Iole will be wedded to
Hercules under the "shameful bonds of Hymen." Seneca mentions that a choir of
Tritons sung the chant at the sacrifice of
Polyxena, who was duped into voluntarily arriving at the sacrificial are under the guise of a wedding. However, Seneca also portrays the bride as—in the opinion of Hersch—a "drunk partygoer:" In his
Medea, he mentions that Hymen arrives at the wedding with "languid, drunken steps, wreathing [his] brows in a rose garland" and, following the conclusion of the ceremony, permits the spewing of the Fescennine verses and implores the youths to sing songs deprecating their masters. Hersch argues that such descriptions indicate that Hymen was viewed far more as a comical figure than an important and powerful god, noting that—aside from the aforementioned characterizations—one of his most enduring traits in Roman literature is
crossdressing: Ovid describes him dressed in a perfumed and saffron , a type of Roman cloak worn by women, which embarrassed him so greatly that his face blushed in a manner Hersch considers evocative of the blushing of the bride. Catullus likewise portrays Hymen in a more feminine manner, describing as dressed like a maiden: he is wearing the bridal , a marjoram garland, and yellow shoes (""). Hersch doubts that Claudian genuinely believed that Hymen was vital for a legitimate wedding as Rome had already been
Christianized; instead, Hersch argues that Hymen had merely become an expected feature in Roman epithalamia by this time. Ovid implies, however, that the chant was spoken at weddings: Ovid pleads with his friend, Maximus, to help convince Augustus him from exile and reminds his friend that he led the at his wedding. Furthermore, Martial provides evidence for a specific type of nuptial blessing involving Hymen, stating in a short epithalamium to his friend "" ("Blessings be on your torches, Hymenaeus"). Although these sources may suggest that Hymen remained an important aspect of the Roman wedding ceremony, Hersch suggests that it is possible both were merely utilizing Hymen as an expression designed to refer the wedding metonymically, one that may have been rooted in real customs, but not necessarily in customs contemporary to either author's lifetimes. Servius supports the connection between the and the
Flamen Dialis, stating that noble and "unclothed" ("") boys and girls were called and and respectively that they each served the and . Festus further connects the to a type of Greek figure called the "," which held this exact role. Macrobius records that another author,
Callimachus, was reputed as stating that the term was an
Etruscan term for Mercury, and that this motivated the mythological king
Metabus to name his daughter
Camilla, as she was a servant of the goddess
Diana. According to Varro, "those who have interpreted difficult words" believe that there was once a type of a
handmaid called the , who functioned in "more secret" matters. Varro believes that the derives from the ; he further explains that the carried some type of box called the which contained items unknown to most of those who partook in the ceremony. However, Festus, when describing a box labeled as the "," explains that the item, which—according to Festus—was an opened vase, actually held the "materials of the bride" (""). Festus also describes a box referred to as the : he claims that it was a nuptial item similar to the , adding that the was often crafted from
palm or
broom wood. Servius adds onto this definition that the and had to have been born from parents wedded through
confarreatio. If these groups were indeed identical, then it appears to clash with Festus's apparent differentiation between the and , who he claims helped carry the wedding torches, and the , who he says helped carry bridal accoutrements. However, in the epithalamium for Maria and Honorius, Claudian mentions that joining of the hands was performed by the general Stilicho, according to the "father's office." Later, an enraged Juno declares that the wedding dowry for
Lavinia shall be paid by
Trojan and
Rutulian blood, and the war goddess
Bellona shall be the instead of her. Karen Hersch suggests that the original audience of the
Aeneid may have been intended to view the wedding is illegitimate due to the wrath of Juno, as in the
Digests it is stated that statements made in anger—such as a request for divorce—are not necessarily legally valid. Whereas in the writings of Ovid the presence of Juno (for instance, at the ill-omened wedding of Jason and
Hypsipyle) does not necessarily signify that the wedding will be fortunate, her absence is used to highlight the doomed nature of a wedding: She is absent from the wedding of
Procne, who eventually murdered her son
Itys, Throughout other Roman writings, the Erinyes appear as the at particularly cursed weddings: In the
Oedipus of Seneca, the
ghost of the former
Theban King
Laius threatens that he shall bring an Erinys as the and. in
The Golden Ass of
Apuleius, the character of Charite tells the villainous Thrasillus—who attempted to marry her—that he shall have only the blindness, the pain of his
conscience, and the Erinyes as . Lucan, in his
Pharsalia, notes that, during the wedding of
Cornelia Metella, an Erinys was the alongside the ghosts ("") of slaughtered
Crassi—a branch of the
Licinia family. Servius, Tertullian, and Festus both provide definitions of the : All three claim that were summoned to the wedding and were required to have had only one husband.
Isidore of Seville, a medieval author writing after the
fall of Rome, also offers a definition of the , stating that it is a type of
paranymph who oversaw the wedding ceremony.
and
Faustina the Elder clasping hands with a statuette of
Concordia between them. The two small figures are
Marcus Aurelius and
Faustina the Younger. Roman art offers numerous depictions of the bride and groom joining hands during the wedding ceremony, a ritual reflected in literature by various accounts of the physical joining of the couple. Although the practice of joining right hands—referred to as the in the Latin language—is prevalent in artistic depictions, few pieces of Roman literature contain explicit descriptions specifically of the clasping of the hands. Another potential account of a in Roman literature derives from the of Seneca, which recounts a hypothetical scenario involving a marriage (a type of marriage involving slaves), in which slave is unable to touch the right hand of the bride. However, all of these analyses have been challenged as there is scant reference to the practice in Roman literature, compelling scholars such as Karen Hersch to argue that rather than describing a genuine practice, the idea of clasping of the hands served purely as visual shorthand for the idea of union in marriage. August Rossbach noticed that in many Roman depictions of the there is a female figure standing between the couple, whom Rossbach interpreted as Juno , thus, Rossbach suggested that the may have been responsible for overseeing the ritual. Alternatively, the individual in the center has been interpreted as
Concordia, the Roman goddess of harmony, since the joining of the hands may
metonymically represent the harmony of marriage. One piece of writing dated to 400 CE, attributed either to the Christian bishop
Peter Chrysologus or the bishop
Severian of Gabala, explicitly confirms the usage of Concordia in portraiture, stating "When the images of two persons, kings or brothers, are painted, we often notice that the painter, so as to emphasize the unanimity of the couple, places at the back of them a Concordia in female garb." He later claims that the imagery of Concordia was replaced by the "Peace of the Lord," which Severian claims was used by his lifetime to illustrate this same concept. Another hypothesis posited by the French historian
Franz Cumont proposes that the gesture functioned as a symbolic representation of the eternal union of the couple in the
afterlife, a proposition which—according to the American historian
Anna Marguerite McCann—conforms to a trend of
funerary art in the 3rd century. symbol, a common
Christogram. During the reign of
Antoninus Pius (), coins depicting the emperor and his wife
Faustina the Elder clasping hands together emerged. These coins frequently feature depictions of the deity Concordia, which Ellison argues likely functioned as propaganda intended to publicize the "harmony of marriages in the imperial ." This perception of the Imperial couple as exemplifying harmony began to influence Roman wedding customs, with one inscription from Ostia decreeing that all newlywedded couples were mandated to sacrifice at statues of Antoninus and Faustina due to their (""). The historian Cassius Dio records that, in 176 CE, the
Senate decreed that silver statues of
Marcus Aurelius and
Faustina the Younger were to be erected at the
Temple of Venus and Roma and all newlyweds were required to perform sacrifices. According to the historian
Peter Brown, such depictions caused the perceived of a marriage to become viewed as a representation of broader civic order. German historian
Ernst Kantorowicz argued that the notion of in the Roman marriage was a relatively late development in Roman history, noting that—during the rape of the Sabine women—the grooms did not clasp hands with the bride, but instead grabbed her by the wrist. However, Kantorowicz suggests that, partially due to influence from the
Stoic concept of
homonoia, the idea of social and political unity, the wedding ceremony was recontextualized as a conduit for demonstrating . Other deities have served as the : One coin dated to around 270–275 CE depicts
Emperor Aurelian () and his wife
Ulpia Severina clasping hands underneath a depiction of the
sun god Sol Invictus, a god whose Aurelian helped revitalize. Another piece of artwork, discovered on a gold glass vessel dated to around 360–400 CE depicts
Hercules standing between a couple and a third art piece also dated to the 4th-century depicts Cupid situated between a couple. Ellison argues that the variety of deities capable of functioning as the may have reflected the variety of different
patron deities each individual Roman may have preferred; Romans may have altered the chosen deity to function as depending upon the specific boons they hoped to acquire through currying favor with a god. The wedding couch, the ("genial couch"), was often described as lavishly ornamented: Juvenal mentions Messalina bringing a
Tyrian to her wedding and Claudian mentions that the wedding couch for Honorius and Maria was of the expensive
Tyrian purple dye and would soon be splotched with blood following sexual intercourse. In the
Attic Nights of the 2nd-century Roman author
Aulus Gellius, it is said that legislation was passed restricting the size of wedding expenses: First, the ("
Fannian Law") imposed a limit of 200
asses and then the ("
Julian Law"), passed by
Emperor Augustus (), instituted a maximum cost of 1,000
sesterces for Roman wedding feasts. Treggiari suggests that the bride's family may have been largely responsible for covering wedding costs, citing a passage from Plautus in which a character remarks "What, couldn't that old fellow
[Euclio, father of the bride Phaedria] buy stuff out of his own pocket for his daughter's wedding?" Cicero, in his legal argument ("In favor of
Cluentius"), mentions that an individual named Oppianicus organized a wedding feast and invited a sizeable quantity of guests according to the "custom of
Larinum." Festus explains that the term for the couch derives from the
genii—spirits for whom Festus claims the was decorated or laid out. Arnobius, writing centuries later, provides a similar claim, mentioning that the Romans pagans in prior ages used to spread a toga across the couches call upon genii of matrimony. In contrast, Varro postulates that the couch was laid out in honor of the deities
Pilumnus and Picumnus, two deities associated with children. The connection between the genii and the couch has led the author
J. P. V. D. Balsdon to argue that the bed was symbolically intended for the genii, not the actual bride and groom. Treggiari disputes this assertion, denouncing it as "unsubstantiated by clear evidence;" evidence which includes a section from Catullus, in which the author notes a Tyrian couch occupied by the groom and awaiting the bride., ca. 19 BCE)
|299x299pxServius provides another etymology: he explains that the couch earned the name from the generation of children, a theory also expressed by Isidore of Seville. Servius further notes that the bed was spread out for the bride, a claim supported by other authors: Catullus, in his description of the wedding between the king Peleus and the Nereid Thetis, mentions that the wedding bed, which was crafted from Indian tusks and covered with purple embellished with a red tint, was being "set for the goddess." Cicero describes a woman named Cluentia who, upon remarrying, reuses the same marriage bed that was "made ready for her daughter" and then once more has it adorned and "made ready for her." an anecdote cited by Treggiari as evidence that the wedding couch may have been situated within the atrium, which was itself the main entrance to a Roman house. It is also possible that the couch may have been positioned opposite of the door, as in the works of Aulus Gellius the wedding couch is referred to as "" ("adverse couch"). However, Treggiari concedes that this tradition, if it was practiced, could have been performed by those wealthy enough to afford such homes with atria. Another segment from Apuleius conveys a similar implication: a woman is condemned to be publicly humiliated by having sex with the protagonist Lucius, who has been transformed into a donkey. The punishment was set to imitate a wedding ceremony, including a nuptial couch stuffed with feathers, covered by a bedspread of flowers, and adorned with tortoiseshells. However, the reliability of these depictions is questionable: these ceremonies were intentionally aberrant, with Treggiari and Hersch both noting that they were intended to be viewed as outrageous and shocking. Furthermore, Augustine outright denies that the first act of intercourse between the bride and the groom was public, stating that when the wedding couple retire to the nuptial bed the wedding attendants withdraw from the ceremony. Treggiari argues that the bride and groom may have been left alone on the wedding couch, citing a passage from Catullus in which the "virgins" are asked to depart after the bride joins the groom in bed. Claudian describes the bedroom scene in the wedding of Honorius and Maria as a violent affair, implying that the bride may violently resist Honorius with fingernails; the author compares her to a rose guarded by thorns or honey protected by bees. Wasdin suggests that this nuptial violence may derive from a belief that violent retaliation heightened the pleasure to be derived from sex, citing a passage from Claudian in which he expostulates that "sweeter is the kiss snatched through tears." Evidence that the Roman bride was obligated to recline with her husband derives from the Roman History of Cassius Dio: The author records that Livia, the ex-wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, was approached by a slave during the banquet for her wedding to Caesar who was confused as to why she was reclining with the dictator as opposed to Nero, whom the slave still believed was her husband. Cyprian, a 3rd-century Christian bishop, admonishes all virgins who attended wedding banquets, as they may partake in the "unchaste conversation" and the "disgraceful words" that excite lust and compel the bride "to the endurance of shame ("")" and the groom "to dare lewdness." Cyprian remarks that such licentiousness may "dimmish the virtues" of a virgin by inducing immodesty, which by extension defiles them in "eyes, in ears, [and] in tongue" even if they "remain a virgin in body and mind." In the play Casina
by Plautus, the mother of the bride performs the preparations for the wedding feast; however, in Aulularia,'' another Plautine play, the feast is organized at the behest of the father. This play provides further details about the wedding feast: a female
tibia-player and cooks to prepare dishes such as fish, bread,
roosters,
lambs, and wine. Later in the same play, the protagonist Euclio remarks on the ludicrousness of the idea of cancelling the wedding after the wedding feast and other nuptial accoutrements were prepared. Juvenal mocks grooms who expend much effort or resources on extravagant meals and cakes called for women who do not reciprocate their love, declaring that the wedding indulgences were merely a waste of time in such a scenario. == Depictions in art and literature ==