Ancient Roman wedding ceremony: From a participant in a wedding to an important member of society

For every man and woman in love, there is a desire for a better marriage, one of the important steps is to hold a wedding. The Chinese and Western wedding ceremony has its own characteristics, but no matter what kind of wedding ceremony, all the couple’s vision for the future, all the relatives and friends of the couple’s sincere wishes.The Chinese and Western wedding ceremonies have their own historical origins. The ancient Greek and Roman culture has influenced the development of European civilization, and of course it has penetrated into the wedding ceremony. Many contents of today’s Western wedding ceremony have been established in ancient Rome, so if you want to have a deeper understanding of today’s western folk culture and marriage and family, the study of ancient Rome wedding ceremony is an important way.

In the male-dominated ancient Roman society, women were the marginalized party. However, in the wedding ceremony, women were very important participants and played an irreplaceable role. Moreover, from the early Republic to the early Empire, the role of women was constantly expanding, which also reflected the process of women’s transformation from a wedding participant to an important member of society.

First, Ancient Roman wedding process.

Although the existence of marriage in ancient Roman society was not legally dependent on any form, the ceremony was still an important procedure for informing others of the marriage. And the wedding is also divided into several stages, in order to gradually realize the transition from paternal power to husband power.

01. Premarital preparation.

Ancient Romans generally held a betrothal ceremony before formal marriage, in which both parents made a marriage contract for their children. This was also an extremely complicated process, which needed to consider various factors and integrate the interests of the family. There is little involvement in the process and it is left to the parents to decide. Although betrothal ceremonies were performed by a significant portion of the society, they were not mandatory for all married people, but they became increasingly popular during the Roman Empire, and later weddings continued the custom.

After the engagement, the marriage ceremony can take place, and the specific time can be agreed upon by the two parties, which can be as short as a few months apart, or as long as several years apart, because each family needs different time to prepare for the wedding. Preparations for the wedding are not easy. A soothsayer first selects a time and place for the couple to hold the wedding, but the time is usually avoided in February and May, as these are the two months that the ancient Romans clearly wrote were not suitable for marriage.

Secondly, a few days before the formal wedding, the bride and groom need to hold a sacrifice ceremony before the wedding. This is the way that the ancient Romans sought protection from the gods in order to ensure the smooth progress of the wedding. Holding this ceremony means that the bride and groom have become adults and can be married. On the day of the wedding, the bride is carefully dressed to make her the most beautiful girl in the world on that day.

02. Wedding ceremony.

The wedding ceremony is roughly the same, but the details vary slightly from class to class and from historical period to reflect the difference in their status era.

Before the middle of the Republic, the wedding ceremony adopted by the aristocracy at that time was coophagous marriage. Coophagous marriage first required a divination ceremony. The groom usually came to the bride’s home in the morning to receive divination together with the bride. After the divination, the couple will offer a sacrifice to heaven, take an oath in the presence of a witness, and share a portion of the wheat cake with the diners, allowing the wedding party to celebrate together. There are two forms of marriage for sale and prescription, and the process is not as complicated as the noble wedding. Both of them just need to hold a simple ceremony, and the marriage relationship is produced.

By the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the sacrificial ceremony and the dressing of the bride had been retained, and the sacrificial ceremony was the most important ceremony of the whole wedding, but unlike before, the sacrificial ceremony was no longer performed by a dedicated priest, but by the newlywed. After the ceremony, the bride follows the groom home, escorted by a chorus, which is the most prominent scene on the street.

After the couple finally arrived at their new home, there are a series of tedious processes waiting for them, such as accepting the baptism of water and fire, asking questions to the bride, presiding over the sacrifice the next morning, only these processes are all completed, the two people are married under the witness of everyone, such a marriage is a legal marriage.

Ii. Background of Ancient Roman Wedding Era.

Although ancient Rome was still in the early days of human society, it was a relatively civilized civilization that had passed from group marriage to monogamy. Men were the masters of the whole society, while women were in a “patriarchal” society with low status and no power. However, in the early period of the empire, women gradually improved their status and began to have certain autonomy in marriage.

01. The Republican Period.

In the republican Roman family, the father was the core figure of a family. In this family, wives, daughters, slaves and property all belonged to the role of “father”. Therefore, the father could dominate the marriage of his children and choose what kind of family to marry his children into without consulting his children’s opinions, and his children had no right to oppose. Only unconditional obedience. And only after parents consent marriage is valid marriage, otherwise it will not be recognized by society.

Men have absolute authority in the society, and they are in control of the sacrifice event in the family, so all the people in the family should follow his arrangement. At the same time, the absolute power of male patriarchs was also established in law. The Twelve Tables Law stipulated that parents could arbitrarily dispose of all members of the family.

At that time, all the family property was controlled by the parents. Other family members, such as the wife and children, were not allowed to own property, but could inherit the parents’ property without a will. This shows that at that time, all the people in the family were just the appendages of the “parents” who controlled the financial power, without any autonomy.

02. Early Empire.

In the early period of the Empire, a major social change took place. During this period, the “patriarchal patriarchy” was challenged. As the authority of the male patriarch in the family was weakened, the power of the female voice in the family was gradually expanded and she began to participate in the major choices and decisions of the family, thus the status of women was constantly improved.

This is because by this time, Rome was going on wars, which required a large number of men to join the army, and all the men in the family were going on wars, so it was up to the women to make all the decisions in the family. At the same time, family members have a broader source of wealth. Sons can earn their wealth by joining the army, which weakens the dependence of wives and children on male family parents, resulting in a relatively low status of parents.

In addition, the continuous improvement and establishment of laws also restrict the unreasonable power of “parents” in the family to some extent. Parents can no longer kill their wives, children and other family members at will, which weakens the absolute attachment of family members to their parents. Children’s marriage is no longer the final say of the parents, the mother’s opinion has become very important, children also have a certain choice in this respect, no longer blindly follow the choice of parents.

The Evolution of wedding ceremonies in Ancient Rome.

With the continuous progress and development of society, people’s ideas and customs were also changing, so the wedding etiquette from the early Roman Republic to the early Empire was also changing.

01. The evolution of wedding ceremonies.

First of all, the class difference between aristocracies and commoners was not as obvious as in the early Republic. Because the wedding of aristocracies was too complicated, they began to learn from some procedures of the wedding of commoners, and downplayed their own religious ceremonies in the wedding, so the wedding ceremony of aristocracies began to be simplified. Since then, this has gradually fixed the process of wedding ceremony, and in a long period of time, Western weddings have basically continued this form.

Secondly, the wedding in ancient Rome paid more and more attention to the role of the bride, which was reflected in the bride’s dress and clothing on the wedding day, and wanted to show the transformation of the bride’s identity through decoration. For women, the wedding was a “rite of passage”, which marked their transformation from a pure girl to a mature married woman. After taking on the task of bearing children and doing a good job as a wife, only the completion of the wedding can be considered as a formal ceremony.

At the same time, some wedding elements from other regions were also added to the Roman wedding, especially the Greek culture had the greatest influence on the Roman wedding, for example, in the process of the wedding mentioned “Hui men” the god of the wedding, hoping to pray for his shelter, let the wedding go smoothly.

02. Reasons for the evolution of rituals.

One of the most important reasons for the evolution of Roman wedding ceremonies was the influence of the father’s power. In the republican period, the father had absolute authority, and marriage was decided by the father. The wedding was held to realize the transition of women’s power, so in order to demonstrate this process, the wedding ceremony was more complicated. Later in the imperial period, the patriarchy was gradually weakened, and women’s personality was gradually valued, so the significance of the wedding ceremony then became to confirm the legitimacy of the couple’s relationship.

Secondly, it was affected by the changes of class relations in the society. In the early republic, aristocrats and commoners could not marry each other, and each class had its own wedding ceremony. Later, the boundary between nobility and commoners gradually faded, and the two classes were allowed to intermarry, so that the differences between the weddings of different classes gradually narrowed.

In addition, this change was caused by the influence of foreign cultures. After a long period of external campaigns, Rome constantly absorbed the cultures of other regions. This blending of cultures is reflected in Roman weddings, such as the carols used in the procession of the bride and groom using works from Greek literature, and the sacrificial rites before the wedding ceremony also derived from Greek wedding customs.

In ancient Rome, the holding of the wedding ceremony is very important, only by holding this ceremony, to officially announce to the society that the bride and groom have become a legal husband and wife, the bride can be accepted by the man’s family, their children have a legal status, in the future can get his due inheritance rights. The idea of attaching importance to the wedding ceremony has been continued to today. Many modern marriage rituals also come from ancient Rome, which shows its deep influence.