Telesina and her ten husbands

Martial says that from the third century. B.C. Roman women could easily divorce and remarry so much that he reports the case of a matron named Telesina who in thirty days managed to get married 10 times.
For getting married and having divorced 10 times Telesina did not follow the rules of modesty, but above all she had to be a beautiful matron, busty but also of a certain wealth because in Rome the marriage, more often than not, could be an excellent deal for husbands .
Telesina is considered an adulteress because she married ten times when Roman law did not allow more than eight marriages and if Martial reproaches her for having it with young people it is because the marriages will have occurred not in days but perhaps in years and each time the husbands were less and less years old than the bride. However, it is also possible that Telesina was repudiated by her husbands; the repudiation was the annulment of the marriage that the husband, only he, could ask for after accusing his wife of adultery, murder, evil spell and poisoning.
There were no complicated practices to carry out, it was enough delivering to the wife a note with written note.

tuas res tibi habeto

take back what is yours

and the wedding was over. According to rules still established by Romulus, the husband had to return half of the dowry received to his wife and the other half had to be donated to the temple of Ceres.
The two elements that determined the marriage union were cohabitation and maritalis afectio. The marriage began with the cohabitation, which however had to be manifest and for this reason, in the rite it was foreseen deductio uxoris in domum mariti, the procession in which the bride was accompanied to the groom's house. Here, crossing the threshold, the bride pronounced the phrase ubi tu gaius, ego gaia; but, beyond the ritual representation, the union be achieved in the mutual will of the spouses to live together and in the recognition of the honor matrimonii to the bride who became mater familias.
Customs changed over time and at the beginning of the imperial age the marriage could be dissolved if one of the two elements described failed. When both spouses did not intend to continue in the union, there was the divortium which took place with rites contrary to marriage. In marriages sine manu, it was enough realized the trinoctium, or that wife passed three nights out of the her husband house.
The apparent ease with which divorces took place depended on just as much simplicity in the organization of marriages; Roman marriage was "free" in sense that the intention of being husband and wife was sufficient, however it is more correct to say that freedom of Roman marriage stemmed from the absence of a constitutive formalization.
In the same way, the divorce was also "free", you could get divorced by simply sending a note announcing that the marriage was considered finished; so did Messalina who to marry her lover Gaius Silius sent to Claudius, who was in Ostia, only a note announcing that she considered herself free. Messalina could do it according to Roman law; she was a woman who disposed herself and also could count on the support of her mother Domitia Lepida who was one of the wealthiest women in the empire, her mistake was wanting to leave not just any man but the emperor and in his decision there were political implications that involved the struggle for power of the freedmen of the palace who controlled imperial finances ...

Rome and Art

Telesina and her ten husbands

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