Editing Adoption in ancient Rome

{{Short description|Adoption in Roman law}}
[[File:Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, small Lucius Verus and Hadrian, a scene of a cycle “Adoption” of the Parthian frieze from Ephesus, the Parthian Monument reliefs, post 169 AD, Ephesos Museum Vienna, Austria (20434833803).jpg|thumb|[[Relief]] depicting imperial succession through adoption: Hadrian (right) adopted Antoninus Pius (center left), who in turn adopted the 17-year-old Marcus Aurelius (left) and the 8-year-old Lucius Verus; the head over Hadrian's left shoulder may represent the [[Genius (mythology)|guardian ''genius'']] of Aelius Verus, Lucius's late father]]

'''Adoption in ancient Rome''' was primarily a [[Roman law|legal procedure]] for transferring paternal power ''([[patria potestas|potestas]])'' to ensure [[Inheritance law in ancient Rome|succession]] in the male line within Roman [[paterfamilias|patriarchal society]]. The Latin word ''adoptio'' refers broadly to "adoption", which was of two kinds: the transferral of ''potestas'' over a free person from one head of household to another; and ''adrogatio'', when the adoptee had been acting ''[[sui iuris]]'' as a legal adult but assumed the status of unemancipated son for purposes of [[Inheritance law in ancient Rome|inheritance]]. ''Adoptio'' was a longstanding part of Roman family law pertaining to paternal responsibilities such as perpetuating the value of the family estate and ancestral rites ''([[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#sacra gentilicia|sacra]])'', which were concerns of the Roman property-owning classes and cultural elite. During the [[Principate]], adoption became a way to ensure [[List of Roman emperors|imperial succession]].

In contrast to modern [[adoption]], Roman ''adoptio'' was neither designed nor intended to build emotionally satisfying families and support childrearing.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=63}} Among all social classes, childless couples or those who wanted to expand the size of their families instead might [[Slavery in ancient Rome#Alumni|foster children]]. Evidence is meager for the ''adoptio'' of young children for purposes other than securing a male heir, and probably would have been employed mostly by [[Slavery in ancient Rome|former slaves]] legitimating the status of their own children born into slavery or outside a legally valid marriage.

Roman women could own, inherit, and control property as [[Roman citizenship|citizens]], and therefore could exercise prerogatives of the ''paterfamilias'' pertaining to ownership and inheritance.{{sfn|Saller|1999|pp=185, 187–189}} They played an increasingly significant role in succession and the inheritance of property from the 2nd century BC through the 2nd century AD,{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|pp=347, 350, 354}} but as an instrument for transferring paternal ''potestas'', adoption was mainly a male-gendered practice.{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=8}}

==Social and legal context==
[[File:Genio romano de Ponte Puñide (M.A.N. 1928-60-1) 01.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|A family ''[[Genius (mythology)|genius]]'' depicted as a ''paterfamilias'' (1st century)]]
Formal adoption was practiced primarily for financial, social, and political purposes among the property-owning classes. Free working people for whom these interests were minimal had little need of the cumbersome legal procedure and instead [[Alumni (ancient Rome)|fostered]] if they wished to rear children.{{sfn|Rawson|1986|p=196}} For the Romans, kinship was "biologically based but not biologically determined", and procedures such as adoption and [[Divorce in ancient Rome|divorce]] gave them greater latitude to restructure their families{{sfn|Saller|1994|p=43}} than was allowed in Christian Europe.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=47}} [[Cicero]] said that adoption was an accepted way to ensure the ''hereditas'' (transmission) of three aspects of Roman family continuity: the family name ''([[Nomen gentilicium|nomen]])'', wealth ''(pecunia)'', and religious rites ''([[sacra gentilicia|sacra]])''.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=63, citing Cicero, ''De domo sua'' 35}}  Adoption was appropriate for a man who had no legitimate children, but if there were already legitimate heirs, adoption risked diluting their inheritance and the social status that came with it.{{sfn|Saller|1994|p=123, citing [[Ulpian]], ''Digest'' 1.7.17.3}} Romans tended to prefer small families of two or three children for this reason, though premodern rates of [[infant mortality|neonatal]] and [[childhood mortality]], along with other factors, could be an unsought brake on family size that jeopardized the family line.{{sfn|Saller|1994|p=9}} In adopting an adult heir, the father "could see what he was getting".{{sfn|Rawson|1986|pp=8, 12}}

Adoption was carried out by the male who was head of his family, the ''[[paterfamilias]]'', and his adopting did not make his wife a mother.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=63}} Nor was marriage required; an adult bachelor could adopt in order to pass along his family name and ''potestas'',{{sfn|Gardner|1998|pp=143–144, citing [[Paulus (jurist)|Paulus]], ''Digest'' 1.7.30}} as could a citizen [[eunuch]] (Latin ''spado'').{{sfn|Gardner|1998|p=144, citing Gaius, ''[[Institutes (Gaius)|Institutiones]]'' 1.103}}

===The adoptee===
A close relative was preferred as the adoptee, and a ''paterfamilias'' might adopt a grandson, especially if the grandson's father was not in the line of succession. The grandson might be his daughter's son, or the ''pater'' might have removed the boy's father from succession by emancipating him.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|pp=67–68}} One common pattern in Roman adoption was for a woman's childless brother to adopt one of her sons.{{sfn|Treggiari|2019|p=147}}{{sfn|Lindsay| 2009|pp=161–164}} A brother or cousin on the father's side might relinquish ''potestas'' over a son to provide a childless man with an adoptive heir.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=68}} A ''pater'' who had no sons might adopt his daughter's husband to strengthen family lineage, but to avoid technical incest, he would first need to emancipate his daughter so that she was no longer legally a part of the family – the adoption would otherwise create a brother-sister relationship that Roman law regarded as ''consanguines'', the same as blood ties.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=69}} Adoption of a stepson from the wife's previous marriage was another strategy, if the stepson had no children; after adoption, his offspring would enter the line as grandchildren of the adopting ''paterfamilias''.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|pp=71–72}}

The adoptee did not have to be a relative. Romans placed a high value on the social bonds of friendship (''[[amicitia]]''),{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=73}} and a childless man might adopt a friend or friend's son.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=156}} Fostering was preferred to adopting children of "low" birth or unknown parentage, and in [[Roman Egypt]] it was unlawful to adopt a male foundling.{{sfn|Rawson|1986|pp=196, 200 n. 51, citing ''Gnomon of the Idios Logos'' 41, 107}} The ''paterfamilias'' generally transmitted his estate to an adoptee of his own rank, or the adoptee acquired the social rank of the adoptive family, with some exceptions.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=64}}

====The freedman adoptee====
Most often adoption would have been a lateral move or a modest boost to the adoptee's standing and wealth, but a [[Freedmen in ancient Rome|freedman]] could also be adopted. A slave might even be simultaneously [[Slavery in ancient Rome#Manumission|manumitted]] and adopted by his former master, who became both his patron ''([[Patronage in ancient Rome|patronus]])'' and his "father". The adoption of a freedman placed his property under the control of his new ''paterfamilias''; it no longer belonged to him, but it would return to him along with the rest of his inheritance. The choice of a freedman for adoption may have been motivated most often by gaining access to his resources rather than securing lineage.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=134}}

In the [[Roman Republic|early Republic]], a freedman through adoption gained the same status as the freeborn citizen who freed him.{{sfn|Gardner|1989|pp=252 ''et passim''}}  By the time of [[Tiberius]], the adopted freedman was regarded as an unemancipated son in matters of family law but held only the rights of freedpersons otherwise.{{sfn|Gardner|1989|p=241}} Legislation that more closely regulated the varied statuses of ''liberti'' left the adoptee as a freedman who could not, for example, marry into the senatorial order even if he was adopted by a senator.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=134}}

===Political adoptions and legal dodges===
In the late Republican era, [[Publius Clodius Pulcher]] famously subverted the usual course of "adopting up", surrendering his [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]] status and becoming a nominal [[Plebeians|plebeian]] in order to qualify for the office of [[Tribune of the plebs|tribune]].{{sfn|Tatum|1999|pp=280–282}} Plebeians had adopted patricians before, but the reasons are not always clear and were not always political.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=170}} Cicero criticized the ''adrogatio'' of Clodius as solely politically motivated,{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=63, citing Cicero, ''De domo sua'' 35}} and Clodius was emancipated immediately after he had achieved his aim.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=171}} Around the same time, a nominal adoption allowed [[Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther]], son of the [[Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther|consul of 57 BC]], to take a place in the [[College of Augurs]] by getting around the rule against having two members from the same ''[[gens]]''. The adoption seems to have been entirely fictional, since there is no evidence he ever made any use of the nomenclature of the [[Manlia gens#Manlii Torquati|Manlius Toquatus]] who adopted him.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=172}} Cicero's own patrician son-in-law, [[Publius Cornelius Dolabella (consul 44 BC)|Publius Cornelius Dolabella]], followed the path of Clodius in becoming a tribune by having himself adopted by a plebeian Cornelius.{{sfn|Lindsay|2009|p=172}}

Augustan legislation that granted privileges to fathers with multiple children and disadvantaged the childless also prompted adoptions of convenience.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|pp=73–74}} Adoption for this purpose became enough of an issue that by the time of [[Nero]] a senatorial decree had tried to block legal dodges. The historian [[Tacitus]] indicates that fictitious or "fake adoption" ''(simulata adoptio)'' could be detected by rapid emancipation once the benefit was realized – benefits including priority in the selection of [[Roman governor|provincial governors]] or candidates for office for men who had met the fatherhood quota.{{sfn|Gardner|1989|p=249, especially n. 29, citing Tacitus, ''Annales'' 15.9}} The restrictions under the decree are not preserved in full, but a request for ''adrogatio'' could be denied if the would-be adoptive father already had children or was under the age of sixty and assumed able to procreate.{{sfn|Gardner|1989|p=249, citing Cicero, ''De domo'' 34; ''Digest'' 1.7.15.2–3 and 1.17.17.3; and ''[[Codex Justinianus]]'' 8.47.3}}

==Forms of adoption==
''Adoptio'' had some commonalities with ''emancipatio'', the procedure by which an adult son was released from paternal ''potestas'' – regardless of age, Roman men and women remained in effect legal [[Minor (law)|minors]] as long as their father was alive unless emancipated. The father's relinquishing of ''potestas'' over the son in both cases took the form of a [[legal fiction|fictive sale]], based on an archaic provision of the [[Twelve Tables]] (mid-5th century BC) that a son sold three times was thereafter released from his father's legal control.{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=6}}

===''Adrogatio''===
''Adrogatio'' differed from ''adoptio'' in that the person adopted was already ''[[sui iuris]]''; another father did not have to surrender his ''potestas'',{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=6}} and rather than extirpating the adoptee's previous family line, the two family lines were merged.{{sfn|Berger|1953|p=250, s.v. ''adoptio''}} An adrogated adoptee was likely to have inherited from the natural father whose death had left him ''sui iuris'', consolidating two patrimonies.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|pp=75}} Ownership of anything belonging to the adoptee was legally transferred to the ''paterfamilias'', though it was set aside as ''[[peculium]]'', a fund or property for use by an unemancipated son or slave. When [[Tiberius]] was adopted in adulthood by [[Augustus]], he thereafter observed this longstanding legal requirement by crediting any property he received through inheritance to the ''peculium'' rather than his private ownership.{{sfn|Buchwitz|2023|p=175, citing [[Suetonius]], ''Tiberius'' 15.2}}

The development of ''adrogatio'' as a form of adoption is bound up with an early procedure for making a will that required the approval of the ''[[comitia calata]]'', an assembly of the Roman people. Upon the testator's death, the named heir was in effect adopted by the deceased.{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=164}} The legislative act of adrogation was carried out by thirty magisterial [[lictor]]s summoned by the [[Pontifex Maximus]].{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=6}} Because adoption law developed to support the particular institutions of Roman society, ''adrogatio'' could take place only in the city of Rome until the reign of [[Diocletian]] in the late third century.{{sfn|Gardner|1989|p=237}}

Adrogation of female adoptees became possible through imperial [[rescript]] in the [[Antonine era]] (AD 138–192), and under exceptional circumstances a woman could adopt in the same way. In one documented case from the 3rd century, a woman whose sons had died was permitted to adopt her stepson. Since a woman did not transfer paternal ''potestas'', however, adoption accomplished little that could not be achieved through exercising her rights under inheritance law.{{sfn|Gardner|1986|p=144}}

===Testamentary adoption===
[[File:Glittica romana, augusto, livia e nerone, sardonice, I sec dc..JPG|thumb|Cameo (1st century) depicting Augustus, Livia, and [[Nero]] as a child]]
{{See also|Inheritance law in ancient Rome}}
Testamentary adoption became more common during the late Republic.{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|p=355}} Octavian, the future Augustus, was adopted in this way by his maternal great-uncle [[Julius Caesar]].{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=70}} Although ''adoptio'' was a practice aimed at furthering the succession of male privileges, both men and women could in effect "adopt" by passing along their property in a will with the condition that the heir carry on the family name ''(condicio nominis ferendi)''.{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=64}} The role of women in passing property along the family line became "increasingly important".{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|p=354}} Technically, this was not adoption but the "institution of an heir."{{sfn|Corbier|1991|p=64}} The advantage of this arrangement was that the testator did not have to assume patriarchal responsibilities for the adoptee while he was alive but had assured the continuity of the family name, rites, and estate after his death;  the testamentary adoptee did not surrender his own status as a ''pater'' as he would in adrogation but received the benefits of inheritance.{{sfn|Lindsay|2011|p=355}}

Adoption was also the means by which married women could become part of their husband's family. From the late Republic through the Principate, most Roman women [[Manus marriage#Sine manu|married ''sine manu'']], meaning that they remained part of their birth family and did not submit to their husband's ''potestas''. [[Livia]], the wife of Augustus, outlived him, and only upon his death did testamentary adoption make her a part of the Julian family.{{sfn|Saller|1994|p=76, citing [[Tacitus]], ''Annales'' 6.51}}

===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}}

==Imperial succession==
Many [[Roman emperor]]s came to power through adoption, either because their predecessors had no natural sons, or simply to ensure a smooth transition for the most capable{{citation needed|date=June 2024}} candidate.

===The Julio-Claudian dynasty===
[[File:JulioClaudian.svg|thumb|336x336px|Julio Claudian Family Tree]]
[[Augustus]], as he was known after he became the first [[Roman emperor]], was adopted into the ''[[gens Julia]]'' in [[Augustus#Heir to Caesar|the will of his great uncle]], [[Julius Caesar]]. He inherited Caesar's money, name, and ''[[auctoritas]]''.

As Augustus's central role in the [[Principate]] solidified, it became increasingly important for him to designate an heir. He first adopted his daughter Julia's three sons by [[Marcus Agrippa]], renaming them [[Gaius Caesar]], [[Lucius Caesar]], and [[Agrippa Postumus|Agrippa Caesar]]. After the former two died young and the latter was exiled, Augustus adopted his stepson, [[Tiberius|Tiberius Claudius Nero]], on the condition that he adopt his own nephew, [[Germanicus]] (who was also Augustus's great nephew by blood). Tiberius succeeded Augustus, and after Tiberius's death, Germanicus's son [[Caligula]] became emperor.{{sfn|Levick|1966|pp=227–244}}

[[Claudius]] adopted his stepson Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar and succeeded Claudius as the emperor, [[Nero]].

===The adoptive emperors===
[[File:HADRIANUS RIC II 3c-761923.jpg|thumb|[[Denarius]] issued under Hadrian; the reverse shows him joining hands with Trajan with the legend ''ADOPTIO'']]

The [[Nerva-Antonine dynasty]] was also united by a series of adoptions. [[Nerva]] adopted the popular military leader [[Trajan]]. Trajan in turn took [[Hadrian|Publius Aelius Hadrianus]] as his protégé and, although the legitimacy of the process is debatable, Hadrian claimed to have been adopted and took the name ''Caesar Traianus Hadrianus'' when he became emperor.

Hadrian adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who changed his name to [[Lucius Aelius|Lucius Aelius Caesar]] but predeceased Hadrian. Hadrian then adopted Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt both the natural son of the late Lucius Aelius and a promising young nephew of [[Faustina the Elder|his wife]]. They ruled as [[Antoninus Pius]], [[Lucius Verus]] and [[Marcus Aurelius]] respectively.

[[Niccolò Machiavelli]] described them as ''The Five Good Emperors'' and attributed their success to having been chosen for the role:
{{blockquote|From the study of this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except [[Titus]], were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But as soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced.<ref name="Mac">Machiavelli, ''Discourses on Livy'', Book I, Chapter 10.</ref>}}
This run of adoptive emperors came to an end when Marcus Aurelius named his biological son, [[Commodus]], as his heir.

Adoption never became the official method of designating a successor, in part because Roman identity was based on citizenship with a visceral rejection of hereditary kingship. During the [[Principate]], so called from Augustus's styling of himself as ''princeps'' (first among equals, in the manner of the ''[[princeps senatus]]''), emperors consolidated their power by making use of the institutions of Republican Rome rather than overthrowing them outright. Augustus's early intentions seem to have been to apprentice and promote a successor on the basis of merit, but his longevity instead created an apparatus of centralized power from which his status as a private citizen could no longer be extricated. His fashioning of himself as "father of his country" enabled the transferral of his power over the Roman people in the same way that a ''paterfamilias'' of a family estate was bound to transfer his ''potestas'' whether or not the available successor was fully meritorious. A major transition in the means of imperial succession marks the periodization of Roman Imperial history into the  [[Dominate]], when [[Diocletian]] replaced adoption with the ''[[consortium imperii]]'', designation of an heir by appointing him partner in ''[[imperium]]''.

==References==
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* {{cite journal
    | last = Saller
    | first = Richard P.
    |author-link= 
    | title = ''Pater Familias'', ''Mater Familias'', and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household
    | date = 1999
    | journal = Classical Philology
    | volume = 94
    | issue = 2
    | pages =182–197
    | jstor = 270558
}}
* {{cite book
    | last = Tatum
    | first = W. Jeffrey
    |author-link= 
    | title = The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher
    | url = 
    | date = 1999
    | publisher = University of North Carolina Press
    | isbn = 
}}
* {{cite journal
    | last = Treggiari
    | first = Susan
|author-link= Susan Treggiari
    | year = 1981a
    | title = ''Contubernales'' in ''CIL'' VI
    | journal = [[Phoenix (classics journal)|Phoenix]]
    | volume = 35
    | issue = 1
    | pages = 42–69
    | doi = 10.2307/1087137
    | publisher = CAC
    | jstor = 1087137
 }}
* {{cite journal
    | last = Treggiari
    | first = Susan
    | year = 1981b
    | title = ''Concubinae''
    | journal = [[Papers of the British School at Rome]]
    | volume = 49
    | issue = 
    | pages = 59–81
    | doi = 
    | publisher = 
    | jstor = 
}}
* {{cite book
    | last = Treggiari
    | first = Susan
    | title = Servilia and Her Family
    | url = 
    | date = 2019
    | publisher = Oxford University Press
    | isbn = 
}}
{{refend}}

{{Ancient Rome topics}}
{{Adopt}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adoption In Ancient Rome}}
[[Category:Adoption in ancient Rome| ]]
[[Category:Adoption history]]
[[Category:Family law in ancient Rome]]