The Roman institution of marriage has been lauded as being the first purely humanistic law of marriage, one that is based on the idea of marriage being a free and freely dissolvable union of two equal partners for life. (Schulz, 1951;103) This is quite a simplistic view, as there were many differing forms of marriage in Rome, from the arranged marriages of the elite to the unions of slaves and soldiers. As we shall see, the Romans' actual expectations of married life and the gains they envisioned they would receive from the experience depended greatly on their age, sex and social status.
Unlike our contemporary society, no specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a marriage; only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly. (Gardner,1986;47) Although not a legal necessity, some weddings, usually the first marriage of elite couples was accompanied by much revelry and song, as featured in one of Catullus' poems.......
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