Concubinage
...DIANUM of 52 a.d. – therefore she became the slave of her partner’s owner if the owner had not agreed to the union or she became his freedwoman if he had agreed. Children of these unions were also slaves – even when the mother remained free (! Please note: Usually children born of regular marriage took the status of their father, in other unions children took the status of their mother). 3 . Unions between free women and their own slaves: The senatusconsultum claudianum has been discussed in the post-classical handbook named Sententiae Pauli because s.c. claudianum was directed against women who cohabited with someon else’s slave. There seems to have been no general law against the contubernium of o free woman with her own slave until the 4th century, but such a law may have once existed in earlier imperial legislation. So a woman could only manumit her slave for marriage, if she had been a slave herself and her patron had been given to her the man who had been her contubernalis in slavery. But if the woman had been her patron’s wife, she could not later marry one of her fellow freedman. As you see, freeborn women (ingenua) could not marry her slave. Consequences of “mixed unions”, reasons for choosing marriage / de facto-marriage Children born of non-marital relationships took the mother’s status, children born of regular marriage took the status of their father. s.c. claudianum: · if a freeborn woman joins herself to a slave, she becomes a slave herself. · A daughter in the power of her father (filiafamilias), if she should join herself to someone else’s slave without her father’s knowledge or against his wishes, retains her own status even after warning, since the rank of parents cannot become lower by their children’s act. If she persists in the union after her father’s death, then she becomes a slave. · If a filiafamilias should enter into a contubernium with someone else’s slave at her father’s command but against the master’s will, she does become a slave, since parents are able to make their children’s rank worse. · A woman who mistankly thought she was a slave and therefore entered into a contubernium with someone else’s slave does become a slave, if she should continue in the relationship after learning that she is free. · If a patroness should join herself to her freedman’s slave, it is not fitting that she become a slave even after the usual warning. · A freeborn woman, who knowingly has joined herself to a municipal slave, becomes a slave even without a warning, but not if she doesn’t know that he is a slave. · If a mother should join herself to her son’s slave, the s.c. claudianum does not remove the respectful reverence...