In ancient Rome, contubernium was a quasi-marital relationship between two slaves or between a slave (servus) and a free person who was usually a former slave or the child of a former slave. A slave involved in such a relationship was called contubernalis, the basic and general meaning of which was "companion".
Under Roman law, the slave was treated as property (res) and lacked the legal personhood to enter into legitimate forms of marriage. Although not codified as marriage (conubium) in Roman law, contubernium had legal implications that were addressed by Roman jurists in case lawMartin Schermaier, "Neither Fish nor Fowl: Some Grey Areas of Roman Slave Law", The Position of Roman Slaves: Social Realities and Legal Differences, Dependency and Slavery Studies, vol. 6 (De Gruyter, 2023), p. 252. and was intended to be a lasting, ideally permanent union modelled on marital affection (affectio maritalis)Susan Treggiari, "Concubinae," Papers of the British School at Rome 49 (1981), p. 59. that was approved and recognized by the slave's owner.Schermaier, "Neither Fish nor Fowl", p. 252. Inscriptions indicate that contubernium with the intentions it expressed was primarily a concern for "upwardly mobile" slaves and former slaves who served the imperial house (familia Caesaris) and bureaucracy or who belonged to houses of senatorial or equestrian rank. In contubernium when only one partner remained enslaved, most often the free person was a freedwoman (liberta).
Contubernium institutionalizedSchermaier, "Neither Fish nor Fowl", p. 252. the slave's honorable intention to form an enduring heterosexual union with economic, emotional, and parental benefits—an acknowledgment of the inherent contradictions between the status of the slave as property and "tool" (instrumentum) and the individual's evident humanity and desire to participate in what Romans regarded as normal family life.
The contubernalis
The word contubernalis seems sometimes to have been used as an enduring term of endearment even after a formerly enslaved couple achieved a legal status that allowed them to marry formally.Beryl Rawson, "Roman Concubinage and Other De Facto Marriages", Transactions of the American Philological Association 104 (1974), pp. 279, 293–294.
Men who commemorate the death of a female partner set up epitaphs for a contubernali bene merenti ("to a well deserving companion"), carissimae ("dearest"), piissimae or pientissimae ("most devoted"), optimae ("best"), incomparabili ("incomparable"), rarissimae ("most rare"), sanctissimae ("most sacred"), and dulcissimae ("sweetest"). Women also use many of these descriptors for the male partner they lost, and the same adjectives are used in epitaphs for spouses who had legal marriages.
Between two slaves
Roman law regarded the slave as property; slaves lacked legal personhood and therefore could not enter into contracts on their own behalf, including legally sanctioned forms of marriage (conubium). Some slaves, however, were permitted or encouraged to form family units—permanent heterosexual unions within which "natural children" (liberi naturales) might be reared as vernae.Adolf Berger, entry on contubernium, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (American Philological Society, 1953, 1991), p. 564. Roman jurists themselves when discussing case law sometimes refer to unions involving slave contubernales with terms for "husband" and "wife". In inscriptions, most contubernales whose status can be identified are slaves, though liberti and libertae (freedpersons) are also frequent.Rawson, "Roman Concubinage," p. 294. Although a slave lacked legal standing to contract a marriage recognized by Roman law, slaves who came from outside Italy would have their own marriage rites and customs, and there was no prohibition against slaves considering themselves married by custom in this way.
On a country estate (villa), a male slave who had proven his reliability might have license to cohabit with a fellow female slave (conserva).William V. Harris, "Towards a Study of the Roman Slave Trade", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 36 (1980), p. 120. The agricultural writer Columella says that contubernium is particularly desirable for the vilicus, the bailiff or overseer of a farm, who was often but not always a slave or former slave.Harris, "Towards a Study of the Slave Trade", p. 120, citing Columella 1.8.4. Any children born from these unions would increase the master's wealth.Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World (Yale University Press, 1992), p. 103. Vernae, slaves who had been born and reared within the household of their enslaved mother, were themselves more likely to be allowed to cohabit as a couple and to rear their own children.John Madden, "Slavery in the Roman Empire: Numbers and Origins", Classics Ireland 3 (1996), p. 115, citing Columella 1.8.19 and Varro, De re rustica 1.17.5, 7 and 2.126. Inscriptions reinforce the impression that contubernium was a privilege extended to slaves whose work at higher-skill jobs was valued.
It was possible for contubernium to exist between two slaves with different owners, but the clearest evidence occurs within a household. During most of the Republican and Imperial eras, free Roman women had the right as citizens to own property and retained their property rights within marriage.Richard P. Saller, "Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household", Classical Philology 94:2 (1999), pp. 187, 197. The mistress of the house would have her own staff, and many of the household's female slaves are likely to have been hers. Documented examples of couples in which each is affiliated with a different gens (extended family or clan) suggest that the two slaves might still belong to the same household or estate, one in the possession of the male head of household as dominus and the other of his wife as domina.
Contubernium thus was normally a cohabiting relationship between two slaves within the same household.Susan Treggiari, "Family Life among the Staff of the Volusii", Transactions of the American Philological Association 105 (1975), p. 396. In the records kept by well-to-do families concerned with lineage, the contubernia of slaves were acknowledged along with family births, deaths, and manumissions. Arranged marriage was common among Romans of any status, and at least some contubernia would have been arranged by the owner.Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 50–51. A Greek novel of the 2nd century AD has a fictional domina forcing a slave girl she's jealous of to serve as the wife of an enslaved goatherd.Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome, p. 50, citing Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale 2.9. The paterfamilias would have retained the right to break up contubernia,Thomas Finkenauer, "Filii naturales": Social Fate or Legal Privilege?" in The Position of Roman Slaves, p. 47. just as a father might seek to dissolve the marriage of his son or daughter against their will,Eva Cantarella, "Fathers and Sons in Rome," Classical World 96:3 (2003), p. 291. but the agricultural writers in particular thought that an attachment to family and home made workers more stable and productive. When cases about breaking up families came to juridical attention, the jurists tended toward keeping spouses, parents and children, and even siblings together.Finkenauer, "Filii naturales," p. 41. But neither the protections nor liabilities of Roman law on marriage applied to contubernales; for example, a contubernalis could not be prosecuted for adultery.
Between a free woman and a male slave
The jurists of the Digest tend to use the term contubernalis in the context of a marital union between two slaves that is acknowledged by the owner. In practice, the 260 contubernia recorded in inscriptions from the city of Rome (CIL vol. 6), analyzed by Susan Treggiari, show that in this form of quasi-marriage, while most common between two slaves or two former slaves, one partner could be free and the other not. Among the contubernia between a slave and a free person, most often it was the woman who was free, and the male was the slave. There were several scenarios in which this arrangement could be advantageous to the female or male partner or both.
Since legally binding manumission came with automatic citizenship and the legal status of a child was determined by the mother's, children born from contubernium between a male slave and a freedwoman were themselves free citizens. If she remained a slave, their children would be born into slavery even if later manumission was granted to one or both parents. Some slaves earned money by managing a fund or property (peculium), and certain lucrative financial positions, such as the dispensator who managed a wealthy household, were staffed by slaves for legal reasons.Leonhard Schumacher, "On the Status of Private Actores, Dispensatores and Vilici", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies suppl. 109 (2010), p. 31. "Upwardly mobile" slaves who served in the imperial bureaucracy also could expect to accumulate wealth and were regularly manumitted in their early thirties.Thomas E. J. Wiedemann, "The Regularity of Manumission at Rome", Classical Quarterly 35:1 (1985), p. 163. Although women served in the imperial household as well, the highest positions in financial services were held by male slaves. Under these circumstances, a slave might retain the earning power of his job and arrange to use his peculium to pay for the manumission of his contubernalis instead of himself.Schumacher, "On the Status of Private Actores, Dispensatores and Vilici", pp. 36–38. In such cases, the wife might act as the functional head of the householdDale B. Martin, "The Construction of the Ancient Family: Methodological Considerations," Journal of Roman Studies 86 (1996), pp. 55–56. because as a free person she had the right to own property.Richard P. Saller, "Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household," Classical Philology 94:2 (1999), pp. 187, 189.
As another example, a woman born into first-generation freedom as the daughter of a successful freedman might have limited prospects for finding a financially secure husband of compatible social standing. Contubernium with an imperial slave, who reasonably expected to be manumitted between the ages of 30 and 35 in possession of a certain amount of wealth, might be attractive, allowing her to start a family during her childbearing years before he completed his service; their children would be born illegitimate (spurii) but free.Judith Evans-Grubbs, "'Marriage More Shameful Than Adultery'": Slave-Mistress Relationships, 'Mixed Marriages', and Late Roman Law", Phoenix 47:2 (1993), p. 128. In most contubernia between a male slave and a free woman, both partners are from imperial slave families—the wife being either a liberta of the imperial house or the daughter of an imperial freedman.
In one case, a domina had given one of her female slaves (pedisequae, "footwomen") to her business manager (actor) to serve as his wife; the relationship is specified as a contubernium. When the domina died, she freed all the pedisequae in her possession by the terms of her will, and the court ruled that the bequest of freedom applied also to the wife of the actor,Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome, p. 50, citing Digest 40.4.59. whose status is not noted. Actores were typically slaves, and if this actor had been bequeathed as part of the estate and not also manumitted, the couple would have had unequal status in which only the wife was free.Schumacher, "On the Status of Private Actores, Dispensatores and Vilici", pp. 32–38, 40–43, 47, generally on actores, their slave status, testamentary manumission, and their marriage partners.