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You are here: Experts > Homework Help > Ancient/Classical History > Ancient/Classical History > Ancient Rome
Expert: Maria - 10/25/2009
Question
Hi Maria
I have being reading up allot about Ancient Rome and I have come across the paterfamilias allot, I have googled this an understand that pater means father and he was the head of the familia (family). But what was the power of the paterfamilias? I have seen that they have power over the entire house and send their children into slavery etc, but my real question is whether there is a gap between theory and practice of the power of the paterfamilias?
Thanks I hope this makes sense Chase
Answer
Hello,
since your real question is whether there is a gap between theory and practice of the power of the paterfamilias, I have to tell you that such a gap did not exist during the Roman monarchy
(from 753 BC to 509 BC) and the early Roman Republic (from 509 BC to ca. the 2nd.century BC), while later the father’s power of life and death had shrunk to that of light punishment, differently from what happened before, when the male head of the family had very large powers over his family (“patria potestas” just meaning ‘power of the father’).
In short, in Roman family law, originally the power that the paterfamilias exercised over his descendants was absolute and included the power of life and death, since a paterfamilias could even banish, kill, or disown a child. He had responsibility for the finances and economy of the home as well as for any servants or slaves that were employed in his house, and also to any tenants or lodgers. The father might allow a child certain property to treat as his own, but in the eye of the law it continued to belong to the father, and sons could not keep as their own what they earned as soldiers.
The “Patria potestas” ended normally only with the death of the father; but the father might voluntarily free the child or a slave by emancipation, and a daughter ceased to be under the father’s ‘potestas’, if upon her marriage she came under her husband’s ‘manus’, i.e. a corresponding power of husband over wife.
This in short, of course, as the matter is quite broad.
Anyway I hope that this outline can be helpful to you.
Best regards,
Maria
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