Did people in ancient Rome get divorced?

by alaserdolphin
Cinaedus_Perversus

Yes. The Romans had three kinds of marriage: in usum, coemptia and confarreatio, each with their own way of divorcing.

The in usum marriage was simply a common law marriage. If a man and a woman lived together as husband and wife for long enough, they were legally considered married. In practice, 'long enough´ was one year; it was common for women to sleep at their parents houses three consecutive nights out of the year, since this prevented the in usum from taking effect and kept the woman in patria potestate, in her father's might. Divorce was as simple as moving out.

The coemptia was sort of ritualized sale. The woman was sold to the man for the price of a nummus, a coin, sort of like the proverbial 'a nickel and a dime'. In this case, divorce came down to the bride (or rather, her father/family) repaying the nummus and cancelling the sale.

The confarreatio was by far the most formal way of marrying: it was reserved for patricians whose parents were married through confarreatio too, and required some of the top Roman priests to be present. Since this was a deeply religious way of marrying, divorcing was a lot harder. All we know is that some religious ritual had to be preformed to break the sacred bond of marriage.

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In theory, divorcing was easy for both sexes. The Romans saw a marriage as a completely voluntarily action between two consenting adults. The moment one of the adults revoked their consent, a divorce could be finalized. In practice there was a lot of pressure from family to either stay married or divorce, especially among patrician families for whom marriage was a way of securing both wealth (in the form of dowries) and power (in the form of close ties to other families).

Subterrainio

How did they get married?