Legislation concerning the family would be a distinct and probably unpopular innovation, and the princeps took his time before laying any proposals before the Senate. He may have sought to do so in or around 29 B.C., but stayed his hand. Now, probably in 18 B.C., he brought forward a body of laws designed to encourage marriage and procreation. His aim was not only to foster traditional values, but also to create new generations of imperial soldiers and administrators.
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.
