Characters, Criminalisation and the Augustan Marriage Legislation

This paper sets out to provide an original study of the multichromatic characters which emerge from the myriad sources of the Augustan Marriage Legislation (18BC), applying a modern narratological approach to the study of this ancient package of legislation for the first time. Never before in Roman law had a legislator attempted to artificially create a set of character roles for the Roman people and their behaviour. Through the analysis of the characters in narratives of the legislation, this paper will explore how these ‘invented’ and artificial roles ultimately led to the impossible idealisation of women, and cast all but a minority of (faithful and fertile) women – those who failed to uphold a paragon of ideal behaviour – as criminals.