Editing Adoption in ancient Rome (section)

===Legitimation===
[[Legitimacy (family law)|Illegitimacy]] does not appear to have carried much stigma in Roman society before the time of [[Constantine I]],{{sfn|Nowak|2015|p=216}} as many forms of [[Roman marriage]] existed, some rather loosely defined, along with quasi-marital unions such as ''[[contubernium]]'' among slaves and monogamous concubinage ''([[concubinatus]])''.{{sfn|Treggiari|1981a|p=58 n. 42|ps=, citing [[Cicero]], ''[[De Oratore]]'' 1.183; [[Quintilian]], ''[[Declamationes]]'' 247 (Ritter 11.15); ''[[Digest (Roman law)|Digest]]'' 23.2.24 ([[Herennius Modestinus|Modestinus]]), 24.1.32.13 ([[Ulpian]]); 39.5.31 pr. ([[Papinian]]).}}  Birth outside marriage was primarily at issue in matters of inheritance but was not a clearly defined status with debilities in law, as a principle of customary international law ''([[ius gentium]])'' was that a child took its status from the mother.{{sfn|Nowak|2015|pp=215–216}} A [[Contubernium#Between a free woman and a male slave|freedwoman whose male partner remained enslaved]] might find it advantageous to assert that her child was fatherless and not conceived during her own servitude, so as to ensure the child's freeborn status.{{sfn|Nowak|2015|pp=211}} It was unusual for freeborn persons to legitimate a child born outside a legally valid marriage, and typically a man would not adopt his illegitimate child unless he had no other heirs.{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|p=355}} The adoptee could be ''[[ingenuus]]'' (freeborn) or a freedman, and might be a child resulting from ''concubinatus'',{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|p=355, citing Gaius, ''[[Institutes (Gaius)|Institutiones]]'' 1.102 and ''[[Pandects|Digest]]'' 1.7.15.2–3 (Ulpian)}} though [[Concubinatus#Children|children were not]] especially desired from these unions.{{sfn|Rawson|1974|p=291 n. 44}}

Provisions for retroactive legitimation became more capacious in [[late antiquity]] as family law was adapted during the [[Christianization of the Roman Empire]], in particular under Constantine and [[Justinian]].{{sfn|Buckland|1908|pp=77 (n. 3), 79}}{{sfn|Berger|1953|p= 473 on ''filius iustus'' (= ''filius legitimus''); p. 714 on ''spurius''}}{{sfn|Evans-Grubbs|1993|pp=128, 149}}

In the Classical period, legitimation might have been more common among former slaves. Since slaves lacked [[legal personhood|personhood]] under Roman law, they could neither contract a valid marriage nor institute an heir by means of a will. However, the quasi-marital union of ''contubernium'' was available to heterosexual slave couples with the owner's approval, and expressed an intent to marry if both parties gained rights of marriage and succession upon manumission. Because a male slave did not possess the standing to assert patriarchal ''potestas'', the child of an enslaved father was ''spurius'', one whose father could not be legally identified as such—that is, illegitimate.{{sfn|Berger|1953|p= 473 on ''filius iustus'' (= ''filius legitimus''); p. 714 on ''spurius''}} Since the child's status was determined by the mother's, if a woman was manumitted before her partner and conceived a child with him after that, the child was ''spurius'' but freeborn; unlike freeborn children from a legal marriage, however, the child was born ''[[sui iuris]]'', emancipated from the ''potestas'' of an adult male. If the father was later manumitted through a procedure that granted him full citizenship, he could legitimate his child through ''adrogatio''.{{sfn|Buckland|1908|pp=77 (n. 3), 79}}{{sfn|Evans-Grubbs|1993|p=128}}