10 laws of ancient Rome that today look ridiculous and shocking

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the ancient world, Rome was equated as an advanced civilization, and the empire was a symbol of dignity and virtue. The Romans themselves more than once tried to make "progressive changes" in philosophy and legislation, changing the world's foundations. Sometimes this led to the emergence of laws that shocked even not the most conservative rulers of the time.

10. Clothing purple as a taboo

In ancient Rome, purple and violet colors were a sign of power. The emperors wore dazzling purple togas. This color became a "squeak of fashion" among the elite, but ordinary citizens were forbidden to wear purple clothes. The purpose of such a law was to determine the social status of a person at a glance. The courtiers and elite of the empire did not want to "blend in with the crowd." That is why commoners were forbidden to wear togas, and purple was considered the imperial color.

Another reason for the value of purple was the fact that the dye for it at that time was brought only from Phenicia, where it was obtained from shellfish. One purple toga required the crushing of thousands of shellfish, making such clothing a very expensive commodity.

2. Female crying at funerals is prohibited

Roman funerals were performed according to a specific ritual. They began with a procession of people who carried the deceased through the streets and mourned him.

It was believed that the number of people mourning the deceased directly reflected the status of the person. This was sometimes considered incredibly important to the family of the deceased. Therefore, many hired "professional mourners" to impress the townspeople. Women, who never even knew the deceased, walked along the streets with members of his family and literally "tore their hair out of grief."

Due to the excessively increased practice of using such actresses-mourners, the funeral too often turned into an "advertising campaign" and did not at all resemble a mournful ceremony. As a result, in Rome, women were banned from crying at funerals.

3. Fathers were allowed to kill their daughters' lovers

If a husband caught his wife red-handed while cheating with another man, he was legally obliged to take a number of actions. First, he had to lock his wife and lover in the house. Then the deceived spouse had to gather all his neighbors to witness the shameful crime. For this he was given twenty hours. After that, the husband had three days to make a public statement describing where and how his wife cheated on him, as well as provide any other details. As a logical conclusion, the husband was legally obliged to file for divorce, because otherwise he himself could be accused of pimping.

After a divorce, a man could kill his wife's lover if he was a slave. If the lover was a citizen of Rome, the situation became more complicated. The deceived husband had to turn to his former father-in-law for help, since fathers had the right to kill their daughters' lovers.

7. The capital punishment for killing a father is drowning with animals

If a Roman committed a murder, then he was beheaded. If he killed his own father with his own hands, then the punishment was terrible. The killer was blindfolded, taken to a deserted place, stripped of all his clothes and beaten with sticks to a pulp. After this, the criminal was tied up in a sack with a snake, dog, monkey or rooster and thrown into the sea.

6. Confuses were supposed to lighten their hair

In the Roman Empire, virtually all women were natural brunettes. Blondes were considered barbarians, and they usually belonged to the Gauls. Since no Roman prostitute received the same rights as other Roman women, they were required to look like barbarians and dye their hair.

Oddly enough, this rule led to unexpected consequences. Roman women became jealous of blondes and began to lighten their own hair or even make wigs from the hair of their slaves. Soon in Rome it was no longer possible to distinguish decent wives from prostitutes from lupanariev.

7. Senate gave permission for suicide

In the Roman Empire, it was believed that preparing for suicide was a sign of straightforward thinking. As you know, the emperors always kept a vial of poison "close at hand" in order to commit suicide if something went wrong. Seriously ill people were encouraged to take poison so that their suffering would end quickly. While many Romans were granted the ability to decide their own destiny, soldiers, fugitives, and even slaves were prohibited from committing suicide.

Moreover, at one point, suicide even became a formality. A person who wanted to commit suicide could petition the Senate about it. If the Senate ruled that it was better for a person to die, then he was given a free bottle of poison.

8. Prohibition to bury the victims of a lightning strike

If a citizen of Rome was struck by lightning, then it was believed that this happened as a result of the anger of Jupiter. If a person was “killed by the wrath of the gods,” then it was forbidden to bury him. Moreover, it was even forbidden to lift the body from the ground above knee level, so as not to anger the gods. Any violation of these rules was fraught with the fact that the violator was sacrificed to Jupiter.

9. Sale of sons by a father into slavery

Roman citizens who had children were allowed to sell them into temporary slavery. The father entered into a contract with the buyer, and the latter received the child in possession for a certain period, after which he had to return him back home. True, if the father sold his child three times, he was deprived of parental rights. After the third term of slavery, the child was declared free of debt to his family and "without parents."

9. Woman as real estate

Another strange law of the Romans regulated how long you need to own a thing in order for it to automatically become the property of a person. The most unusual thing about this law was that it extended to people. As a result, the wife had to leave home every year for 3 days, otherwise she was deprived of the right to freedom.

10. Fathers had the right to kill the entire family

At the beginning of our era, the fathers of families in Rome had complete control over their families. They were free to use any form of punishment and abuse. If the father considered it necessary, he could kill his children in cold blood without any consequences. Even after the children grew up and left home, no one took away the right to kill them. As a result, this led to the fact that the girls were afraid of the punishment of their fathers even after they got married and started their own family. Sons became independent only after the death of their fathers. This law was relaxed only in the 1st century AD, when fathers were allowed to kill their sons only if they committed any crime.

Sometimes the question arose before the ancient Romans - give birth or die. These were features of the intimate life of people of the Ancient World.