Testamentary Officia and the Mother’s Identity in Ancient Roman Law
By Maria Elena Roccia
Iris: Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria, Vol. 22 (2009)
Introduction: In ancient Roman law, the rights of a mother to bequeath her property to whomever she wished were limited. Although much has been written on the testamentary capacity of Roman women, and on the rights of Roman women with regards to their property in general, one aspect that has received little attention is the how the status of mater (mother) affected those rights because of certain expectations of her pietas (family duty).
The object of the present study is a survey of the juridical sources and a discussion of the semantics of key Roman legal terms, in order to reconstruct the social motivations for, and consequences of, legal procedures regarding mothers of the elite classes and their wills. In fact, the introduction of the concept of pietas in the context of family law seems to have had a significant impact on the juridical construction of the mother’s identity, that is the whole set of rights and duties obtaining in the family relationship between a mother and her children according to ancient Roman law; specifically, the invention of certain testamentary officia pietatis (duties of pietas) that restrained a mother’s liberty in writing her will seems to have been motivated by a desire to impose obligations on women to conform with their social and legal status.
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