Adoption in ancient Rome
Adoption in ancient Rome was primarily a
In contrast to modern adoption, Roman adoptio was neither designed nor intended to build emotionally satisfying families and support childrearing. Among all social classes, childless couples or those who wanted to expand the size of their families instead might foster children. Evidence is meager for the adoptio of young children for purposes other than securing a male heir, and probably would have been employed mostly by former slaves legitimating the status of their own children born into slavery. Roman women could own, inherit, and control property as citizens, and therefore could exercise prerogatives of the paterfamilias pertaining to ownership and inheritance,[1] but adoption was largely a male-gendered practice.[2]
Practice
Adoption was carried out by the male head of the household, the
Adoption was a contract between the two families. The adopted child took the family name as his own. Along with this, the child kept his/her original name through the form of cognomen or essentially a nickname. The adopted child also maintained previous family connections and often leveraged this politically. Due to the power disparity that normally existed between the families involved in adoption, a fee was often given to the lower family to help with replacing (in most cases) the first-born son. Another case similar to adoption was the fostering of children; this effectively took place when a paterfamilias transferred his power to another man to be left in their care.[6]
One kind of adoption called adrogation occurred where the person adopted was free, and consented to be adopted by another. It was done at the assembly of the people while the commonwealth subsisted, and later by a rescript of the emperors. The Roman practice of adrogation required the adrogator to be at least 60 years old, for otherwise it was expected that they be procreating rather than adopting. Exception was made for the infertile and those who wished to adopt within the family.[7] This is contrasted with arrogation, in which one claims another for oneself without the right.
Former slaves who were freed by their masters could be allowed to adopt his children to legitimize them.[8]
Imperial succession
Many Roman emperors came to power through adoption, either because their predecessors had no natural sons, or simply to ensure a smooth transition for the most capable candidate.
The Julio-Claudian dynasty
As Augustus's central role in the
Claudius adopted his stepson Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar and succeeded Claudius as the emperor, Nero.
The adoptive emperors
The
Hadrian adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who changed his name to
Niccolò Machiavelli described them as The Five Good Emperors and attributed their success to having been chosen for the role:
From the study of this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus, were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But as soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced.[10]
This run of adoptive emperors came to an end when Marcus Aurelius named his biological son, Commodus, as his heir.
Adoption never became the official method of designating a successor, in part because Roman identity was based on citizenship with a visceral rejection of hereditary kingship. During the Principate, so called from Augustus's styling of himself as princeps (first among equals, in the manner of the princeps senatus), emperors consolidated their power by making use of the institutions of Republican Rome rather than overthrowing them outright. Augustus's early intentions seem to have been to apprentice and promote a successor on the basis of merit, but his longevity instead created an apparatus of centralized power from which his status as a private citizen could no longer be extricated. His fashioning of himself as "father of his country" enabled the transferral of his power over the Roman people in the same way that a paterfamilias of a family estate was bound to transfer his potestas whether or not the available successor was fully meritorious. A major transition in the means of imperial succession marks the periodization of Roman Imperial history into the Dominate, when Diocletian replaced adoption with the consortium imperii, designation of an heir by appointing him partner in imperium.
See also
- Roman culture
References
- ^ Richard P. Saller, "Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household," Classical Philology 94:2 (1999), pp. 185, 187–189.
- ^ Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Taylor & Francis, 1986, 2009 ed.), n.p.
- Paulus, Digest 1.7.30).
- ^ Jane F. Gardner, “The Adoption of Roman Freedmen,” Phoenix 43:3 (1989), p. 252 et passim.
- JSTOR 3064795.
- ^ "Adoption in the Roman Empire". Life in the Roman Empire. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
- ^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). "Adrogation". Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.
- ISBN 0801494605.
- JSTOR 41524520.
- ^ Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book I, Chapter 10.