古代ローマ社会における近親婚

抄録

Did patterns of endogamy exist in Roman kin groups? This issue has recently been raised in the context of arguments relating to Roman social structure. J. Goody suggests that the Christian Church in the western Roman empire fundamentally altered the structure of the Roman family by restricting close-kin marriage, adoption, remarriage, and concubinage. Contrary to Goody's thesis, R.P.Saller and B.D.Shaw insist that parallel and cross-cousin marriages were rare among aristocrats, and parallel-cousin marriages rare among the mob during the first three centuries after Christ. Consequently, the Christian ban on close-kin marriage had little impact on society. In addition, they point out that Roman dowries were relatively modest and aristocrats normally owned landed property dispersedly, so there was no reason to develop marriage strategies like close-kin marriage to protect the unity of the landed property of a family. Even today, however, scholars have not come to much agreement concerning this issue mainly due to a shortage of related historical materials. This article first attempts to investigate the theories regarding this issue, and comes to the following conclusions. (1)Those who look on Roman society as endogamous can not find strong evidence for their argument. (2)Similarly, those who look on Roman society as exogamous do not have a leg to stand on, especially Saller and Shaw who misinterpret their data based on an examination of funerary inscriptions, which lead them to the wrong conclusion. The author concludes from the above that ancient Rome was an "in-marriage" society from the Late Roman Republic to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion. To these conclusions, the following points have been added. (3)The explanation for the enactment of imperial legislation on close-kin marriage did not lie only in the realm of Christian ideology of family and sexuality. These laws did reflect real and current practice of close-kin marriage among the inhabitants in the western Roman empire. (4)There is strong evidence for the practice of endogamy in female marriage. In such cases, close-kin marriage makes sense as a strategy to prevent the fragmentation of family estates.