Lex Canuleia
The lex Canuleia (‘
Canuleius' first rogation
Five years earlier, as part of the process of establishing the Twelve Tables of Roman law, the second decemvirate had placed severe restrictions on the plebeian order, including a prohibition on the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians.[5][6]
Undeterred, Canuleius reminded the people of the many contributions of Romans of lowly birth, including several of the kings, and pointed out that the Senate had willingly given Roman citizenship to defeated enemies, even while maintaining that the marriage of patricians and plebeians would be detrimental to the state. He then proposed that, in addition to restoring the right of conubium, the law should be changed to allow plebeians to hold the consulship; all but one of the other tribunes supported this measure.[8]
An ill-chosen remark by the consul Curtius, to the effect that the children of mixed marriages might incur the displeasure of the gods, thereby preventing the proper taking of auspices, inflamed the people to the extent at which the consuls yielded to their demands, allowing a vote on Canuleius' original rogatio. The prohibition on intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was thus repealed.[9]
Second proposal
The second question, however, permitting plebeians to stand for the consulship, was not brought to a vote. The senator
Claudius then suggested that
In popular culture
In the novel, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, set in an English boarding school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the schoolmaster Mr. Chipping describes the law to his Roman history class, suggesting a pun that could be used as a mnemonic device:
"So that, you see, if Miss Plebs wanted Mr. Patrician to marry her, and he said he couldn't, she probably replied: 'Oh yes, you can, you liar!' "[ii] (emphasis supplied).[13]
See also
- Roman law
- List of Roman laws
- List of legal Latin terms
- Morganatic marriage
Notes
References
- ^ Livy, iv. 1–6.
- ^ Broughton, vol. I, p. 52.
- ^ Oxford Classical Dictionary, pp. 202, 650 ("Gaius Canuleius", "Law of Marriage").
- ^ Flower, pp. 210 ff.
- ^ Livy, iv. 4.
- ^ Dionysius, x. 60.
- ^ Livy, iv. 1.
- ^ Livy, iv. 3–5.
- ^ Livy, iv. 6.
- ^ a b Livy, iv. 7.
- ^ Dionysius, xi. 60.
- ^ Dionysius, xi. 60, 61.
- ^ James Hilton, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Little, Brown, and Company (1934).
Bibliography
- Titus Livius (History of Rome.
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities).
- T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952).
- Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed., N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, eds., Clarendon Press (1970).
- Harriet I. Flower, Roman Republics, Princeton University Press (2011), ISBN 1-4008-3116-4.