My Family: The Life Of A Roman Family

Throughout the Republic, the wars, the politics, the economics and the social hierarchy could strongly influence the lives of a Roman family. For instance, my family is constituted of me, my husband and my four children, three sons and one daughter. Just as in every marriage in manus, my husband has the full control over me and since he is the pater of my children, he has the full control over them. In fact, my husband has the absolute rule over the household, me and the children, boys and girls. If they disrespect or anger him, he has the legal right to sell them into slavery, or even kill them. The power accorded to men is an absolute power. Once I gave birth to a girl, she was my first child and I loved her from the first seconds, yet my husband decided to not recognize her as his and to expose her. He killed my lovely daughter because she was not a boy, because legally he had this right. The paterfamilias also has the full control over his children’s property, thus legally my sons do not have anything that they work for; it belongs to their father. My husband loves me I know that , yet one time he putted me in his ergastulum , “prison” at home, for a week because I was “ disobedient. Normally this place …show more content…
My family is rich and we have many luxuries in our house. For instance, we have murals on our walls, comfortable furniture, and even water pipes. Water is brought into towns in aqueducts they went along lead pipes to individual houses, but only to wealthy houses as ours. I am always thankful to the gods for our life. Most of the Roman population does so. We are polytheists and we worship many gods. It is very important to keep the gods happy. To do this we made sacrifices outside the god 's temple. We kill an animal by having its throat cut; usually we use pigs because they are cheap and have a lot of blood. Animal sacrifices were by their mere nature very elaborate and bloody