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Julia’S Nuptials: Free, Freed, And Slave Marriage In Late Fifth Century Roman Law, Hannah Basta, Cam Grey

DISCOVERY: Georgia State Honors College Undergraduate Research Journal

In 468 AD, a certain woman named Julia went to the Roman Emperor Anthemius to declare that she had married her former slave, her freedman. Roman law on the matter had previously stated that free women who knowingly cohabited with slaves would relinquish their freedom along with the freedom of any children resulting from such a union, and they would all become slaves of the master of the slave to whom she married. The law avoided any mention of marriages to freedmen. Marriages resembling Julia’s then, occupied a grey area in Roman law for over four hundred years. In response …