Augustus drew an explicit link with a more austere and fecund past when he read out to the Senate the entire text of an old speech on the need for larger families, made by a censor, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, in the middle of the second century B.C. The dry and unsentimental Metellus said:
If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.
The princeps presented the so-called Julian laws (leges Juliae, after his clan name) in person to an assembly of the people. For the first time, the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis transformed a woman’s adultery from a private offense into a public crime. Since time immemorial, a rough-and-ready custom allowed a husband (in theory, at least) to kill his wife if taken in adultery, either on his own account or upon the judgment of a family council. His only alternative, and the one usually chosen, was divorce. The woman lost all or part of her dowry.
The princeps felt that this was unsatisfactory. According to his new law, an offended husband was obliged to divorce his wife immediately and then prosecute her for adultery in a special court. Penalties included banishment and confiscation of half the male lover’s property (if the couple were caught in flagrante, the husband was allowed to kill him). The woman was forbidden to marry a freeborn citizen in the future.
The law was not quite so severe in practice as appears at first sight, for unless a husband divorced his wife, she could not be prosecuted. A husband who took no action could be charged with condoning the offense, but only if he had actually caught his wife with another man, or if he could be shown to have profited by her activity—say, by pimping for her.
These were both unlikely circumstances and, in a generally permissive climate, it is uncertain that many husbands took advantage of the new legislation. They may have reflected that they themselves might be caught by it if (as was not uncommon) they were conducting an affair with a married woman. According to Suetonius, this was a situation in which Augustus often found himself. Moral campaigns are most likely to succeed if led by someone who has nothing with which to reproach himself.
Unsurprisingly, the princeps faced skepticism and laughter at his philandering. Unfazed, he advised senators to “guide and command your wives as you see fit,” he said. “That is what I do with mine.”
The amused senators pressed the princeps to tell them exactly what guidance he gave Livia. He uttered a few unwilling words about a modest appearance and seemly behavior, but seemed quite untroubled by the inconsistency between his words and deeds.
On another occasion, when Augustus was sitting as judge, a young man was brought before him who had taken as wife a married woman with whom he had previously committed adultery. This was most embarrassing, for it was exactly how the princeps had behaved when he married Livia in 38 B.C. Uncomfortably aware of the coincidence, he recovered his composure only with difficulty. “Let us turn our minds to the future,” he said, “so that nothing of this kind can happen again.”
A lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus addressed the low birthrate in the upper classes (if Suetonius is to be believed, the general population was rising). It was revised in A.D. 9 as the lex Papia Poppaea; exactly what was in the original legislation cannot now be certainly known, but the general thrust was philoprogenitive.
The legislation set penalties for bachelors and childless couples, mainly limiting their right to inheritance under wills. After divorce or widowhood, women were expected to remarry within a fixed time. There were incentives, too: a father of one child was allowed to stand for public office one year earlier than the age stipulated in the regulations. The siring of three children (four in Italy outside of Rome; five in the provinces) exempted a man from certain legal duties.
How effective were his measures? No statistics survive; we have only anecdotes. The literary record gives the impression that, legislation or no legislation, many men of the ruling class did marry and have children. Perhaps some took their time before doing so, but a glance at the family trees of leading personalities shows that most of them produced two or three children who survived to adulthood, and some had larger families (Agrippa, for example, fathered five children).
On the other side of the account, piquantly, Marcus Papius Mutilus and Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus, the consuls who brought in the lex Papia Poppaea, were both unmarried, as unkind observers noted. Augustus and Livia were childless, albeit involuntarily, and for all his fine words Horace never married.
Over the years the legislation was repeatedly reviewed and amended, which rather suggests that those against whom it was aimed found their way around its prohibitions.
Roman society depended on millions of slaves from every corner of the empire—Gaul and Spain, northern Africa, Greece, the eastern provinces. To function properly, Rome required their passivity, if not their loyalty.
The continuing flow of wealth into Italy in the first century B.C. was accompanied by a huge increase in the number of slaves, and so of those who could be freed. Enfranchisement (and, with citizenship) was popular not only as a reward for long and loyal service; ex-slaves were also a source of votes at election time, and manumission freed an owner of the duty of supporting old or sick slaves. A freedman, or libertus, was still linked to his former owner, for he had to join his clientela and owed him a continuing duty of loyalty and support.
Much of the Roman public believed that there were too many liberti: they were swamping the citizen body, diluting its Italianness. This appears to have worried Augustus too, who expressed a wish in his will to “preserve a significant distinction between Roman citizens and the peoples of subject nations.” It is reported that when Livia once asked him to make a Gallic dependent of hers from a tribute-paying province a citizen, he refused, offering exemption from tribute instead. He said: “I would rather forfeit whatever he may owe the Privy Purse than cheapen the value of Roman citizenship.”
Remarks of this kind seem to have been aimed at assuaging public fears rather than representing his real opinion, however, for in practice the princeps encouraged freedmen who showed energy, enthusiasm, and talent.
The formal methods of enfranchisement all took time to bring into effect, so owners were allowed to free slaves informally, by a simple written or verbal declaration. However, this did not confer citizenship; probably in 17 B.C., a lex Junia gave these informal enfranchisees a form of “Latin rights,” a second-class citizenship without voting rights.
In later years a lex Fufia Caninia limited the number of slaves whom an owner could free in his will, and a lex Aelia Sentia imposed some age limits: an owner had to be over twenty years old before he could give a slave freedom, and a slave over thirty before he could receive it. But these measures were designed to regulate manumission, not to prevent it.
Social reform was insufficient by itself to renew Rome. Writing before 28 B.C., Horace addressed his fellow citizens: