ABSTRACT
Roman marriage is a topic that has been the subject of extensive discussion, culminating in the encyclopaedic treatment by Susan Treggiari (1991a). It is not our intention to represent this material again. Instead, we wish to examine the variety of meanings and social conventions associated with marriage in Rome according to the age of the participants. Marriage created a new form of identity for both the woman and the man, but this identity was subject to variation according to the age of the participants and whether those participants had been married before or had children from an earlier marriage. Our evidence for such marriages is partial and we may only find in our sources an indication of the potential variety of meanings of marriage. What is made clear by this evidence is that marriage was a key experience for nearly all adults, but the nature of marriage and its characterisation by others varied according to the age of the participants. In these cases, their age affected their expected behaviour within marriage and ultimately their character or what we might call today their psychological profile, or personality.
