Marriage plots: a new narratological approach to the Augustan marriage laws

This article seeks to break new ground by adopting an innovative methodology – a legal-narratological approach – in order to take a fresh look at the narrative dynamics and narrative tiers of a two-thousand-year-old piece of marriage legislation – the late first century BCE leges Iuliae. We argue that these Roman laws, which brought hitherto private behaviours into the public jurisdiction and state control, sought to establish its legal authority as a new normative framework through the lawmaker’s overt manipulation of the law qua narrative. In particular, we submit that it is through the explicit representation of the marriage legislation as a new chapter in an ancient cultural narrative that Augustus attempts to persuade the Roman senate and people of the constitutional validity of his radical legal reforms. We further propose that the ultimate failure of Augustus’ marriage legislation can also be understood in terms of a failure to align this new statute with the ‘master plot’ of that wider cultural narrative.