Roman marriage: Did you mean...?

In ancient Rome, the legally acceptable age for marriage for girls was twelve. Although in middle-class Roman society, the most common age of first marriage for a girl was mid-to-late teens, evidence also shows that in a section of elite...

Medical texts from ancient Mesopotamia provide prescriptions and practices for curing all manner of ailments, wounds, and diseases. There was one malady, however, which had no cure: passionate love. From a medical text found in the Library...

Love, sex, and marriage in ancient Rome were defined by the patriarchy. The head of the household was the father (the pater familias) who had complete control over the lives of his wife, children, and slaves. This paradigm was justified...

Defending Clerical Marriage (1524) is an open letter by reformer and theologian Katharina Zell (nee Schütz, l. 1497-1562), written to justify the marriage of Christian clergy. The Catholic Church prohibited clerical marriage, but Katharina...

Love, sex, and marriage in ancient Greece are portrayed in Greek literature as distinct, yet closely intertwined, elements of life. For many upper-class men, marriages did not take place for love, and other relationships, be it with men or...

Fragment from the front of a sarcophagus; relief in blue-veined marble with large crystals (probably Proconnesian), showing a Roman marriage ceremony (dextratrum iunctio, literally joining of hands). Between the bride and groom was a figure...

Although marriages in ancient Egypt were arranged for communal stability and personal advancement, there is evidence that romantic love was as important to the people as it is to those in today. Romantic love was a popular theme for poetry...

On this Sumerian relief, the marriage of the goddess Inanna and the Sumerian King Dumuzi is depicted.

Babylonian Marriage Market by Edwin Long, 1875 CE, Royal Holloway College, London.

Whether there was a king, a consul, or an emperor that stood supreme over Rome and its territories, the one constant throughout Roman history was the family. Like many earlier societies, the family was the fundamental social unit in the eternal...