20 Ancient Roman Laws That Went Way Beyond Crime And Punishment

While pants were commonplace throughout the empire, they were banned in the city of Rome. Of all things to be disturbed about! In 397, 399, and 416 CE, emperors Honorius and Arcadius issued decrees banning pants and Germanic-style boots, with violators subject to property seizure and permanent exile. These decrees were an attempt to protect symbols of Roman identity (the toga and the tunic) rather than an act of madness.

The year after Rome’s severe defeat at Cannae in 216 BCE, the Senate issued the Lex Oppia, limiting a woman’s gold possessions to half an ounce, banning purple trim on clothes, and prohibiting women from traveling in carriages in and around Rome, except to perform religious services. Though taxes were levied on everyone to cope with wartime demands, this decree targeted women alone. After twenty years, in 195 BCE, women successfully blockaded the Forum, forcing the repeal of the Lex Oppia over the objections of Cato the Elder. Safe to say, they had had enough.

Ancient Rome’s debt laws were very grim, but they weren’t as gruesome as internet legend has it. A debtor who was confirmed to be in debt had 30 days to rectify it, but after that could be chained in private custody for 60 days, fed a minimum of one pound of grain a day, and paraded on three market days before being legally sold into slavery across the Tiber. They weren’t cut up, as an ancient scholar pointed out; the traditional phrase about “cutting shares” referred to shares of claims. Grim enough without the internet making it worse.

The Twelve Tables, one of ancient Rome’s earliest written sets of laws, forbade Romans from burying or cremating gold with the dead as a way to limit excessive funeral displays. One curious exception was that thin gold wire in the mouths of the dead, used to fix loose teeth, could stay. Etruscan and Roman dentists used gold wire to stabilize loose teeth and affix false ones.

It’s sometimes claimed that the Twelve Tables banned women from crying at Roman funerals, but real crying was not what the law forbade, as one Roman writer pointed out. What it targeted was highly theatrical displays of grief among women, complete with the ritualistic practice of tearing their cheeks bloody and performing wailing chants. The entire performance could even become competitive, since these actions were often carried out by professional mourners hired for the task. Grief was fine; making a whole production out of it was the problem.

Also under the Twelve Tables, a father had to sell his son into slavery three times before losing legal authority over him. Daughters and grandchildren only had to be sold once. Sounds brutal. But during the Roman Republic, jurists got creative with this one: the process of sale became a ceremony through which fathers could emancipate their adult sons, carrying out three sham sales in order to legally free them from paternal authority.

Writing or reciting defamatory verse was such a grave act that it was a capital offense in the era of the Twelve Tables. The sentence for it was clubbing to death. By the time of the Late Republic, however, the penalties had softened into hefty fines through suits for civil insult. The laws had softened over time, but the threat of the defamatory poem had not.

Established in the Twelve Tables, the prohibition on intermarriage between patricians and plebeians lasted only five years. After the plebeians threatened secession from Rome, a tribune named Gaius Canuleius passed a law in 445 BCE repealing the ban on intermarriage. The marriage restriction protected patrician access to wealth and to priesthoods.

Under Roman law, if the wife and husband lived together for 365 days, the husband gained full control of the wife’s wealth. However, the wife could evade this transfer of property, as specified in the Twelve Tables, by staying away from the marital home for three consecutive nights each year—the three nights away basically reset the 365-day counter. This action did not technically end the marriage; it was just a technicality to ensure that the wealth stayed within the wife’s natal family.

For Roman sex workers, blonde wigs were an official marker. Since Roman women rarely had blonde hair naturally, and blonde was associated with foreign captives, sex workers were required by municipal law to dye their hair or wear blonde wigs to mark their status. They were also prohibited from wearing the stola, which was reserved for respectable matrons, and required to dress in the male-style toga or in saffron-colored garments. Even ancient Rome had a very specific dress code.

The Twelve Tables provided that any overhanging branches must be trimmed back to 15 feet from the ground; otherwise, the neighbor could trim them and keep the wood. Also, if fruit fell onto the neighbor’s land, the owner could enter every other day to pick it up without being guilty of trespassing. Centuries later, Justinian’s code provided the same rules.

Persons found guilty of adultery were punished by losing half of their property as well as exile. Augustus’s adultery law required husbands to divorce unfaithful wives, on pain of criminal charges of pimping. The law granted fathers extensive rights to kill a daughter and her lover if they were caught together in his house, while the husband was only allowed to kill lovers of low status if caught in his house.

In Roman times, if you had a witness who didn’t want to give evidence, there was no way to force them to, but the Twelve Tables provided a legal workaround. You were allowed to go to the reluctant witness’s house every third day, stand outside, and yell accusations. Essentially, you shamed the witness into testifying to save his reputation. This was for registered witnesses, though, not a get-out-of-jail-free card to harass people.

A defendant summoned to court was expected to appear immediately; if not, he could be dragged there. If the man was too old or sick to walk, the plaintiff had to provide an open cart or a draft animal, but a nice, comfortable, covered, padded carriage was never required. If the defendant traveled in comfort, it was only at his accuser’s pleasure. Getting you to court was required; making the journey comfortable was not.

Bans against expensive dinners locally and across Italy were introduced repeatedly because people continued to ignore them. The Lex Fannia limited expenditure on meals to 10 asses on most days, 30 on market days, and 100 at festivals or weddings. Luxury shellfish were banned, as was foreign wine. A later law made guests legally liable as well, so that they would be fined along with the hosts.

A debt could be discharged by permanently transferring ownership of a living person or animal. For instance, a Roman household head was strictly liable for damages caused by his slaves, children, or animals. If necessary, this liability could be discharged either by paying damages to the victim or by giving the offending slave, child, or animal to the victim.

In 9 CE, the two consuls who introduced a version of Augustus’ marriage law were lifelong bachelors themselves. The law required men aged 25 to 60 and women aged 20 to 50 to marry and have children, or else face financial penalties. The unmarried were banned from receiving inheritances from non-relatives, and childless couples forfeited half of certain bequests to the state treasury. There were no jail sentences, only inheritance penalties. The irony of two lifelong bachelors introducing it is hard to miss!

Women’s right to own property and to be inherited from continued apace; the law Cato the Elder supported, the Lex Voconia, merely restricted the wealthiest citizens of Rome (those with 100,000 sesterces or more) from naming a woman, even their only daughter, as heir in their will. Smaller bequests to daughters were still allowed.

In ancient Rome, betting on games of chance, in particular dice, was illegal except during the Saturnalia, a December festival. Wagers could, however, be placed on athletic events like wrestling and running throughout the year. A tavern keeper who allowed gambling in their establishment forfeited their right to legal action if they were later robbed or assaulted.

In Roman law, parricide—the killing of a close relative—was considered a special crime against nature, not just against family. In its fully developed form under the Empire, the condemned would be beaten and then sewn into a leather bag alongside a dog, a rooster, a viper, and a monkey, with a wolf pelt covering his head and rawhide boots on his feet. He would then be thrown into a body of water, thus denying him burial in Roman soil. Not all of these elements were used at first, but during the Empire period, all four animals were used, making it one of the most severe punishments in Roman law.

This content was created with the help of AI.