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412 14. the family in the late roman world
contact with peoples such as the Persians and Saracens. 73 Hence, whereas
modern historians have tended to attribute close-kin marriage very broadly
to the ‘Romans’ of Constantinople along with many other peoples of the
eastern empire, the Byzantine emperor himself regarded such marriages as
geographically and socially confined to the rural populations that were alien
to Roman laws and customs.
‘East’ is thus a singularly vague label, one expected to cover areas as dissimilar
as Greece, Lycia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Armenia and Mesopotamia.
No less vague, however, is the term ‘close-kin marriage’, which is quite inadequate
to describe the differences in family structure between east and west.
The modern term covers not only marriages between siblings or between
uncle and niece or aunt and nephew, but also those between cousins. But
the distance between two cultures that held conflicting views on marriage
between cousins (e.g. Roman Africa and Greece in the fifth century a.d.)
was not necessarily any greater than that separating a culture that practised
marriage between cousins (e.g. Greece) and another that practised marriage
between even closer relatives (e.g. Byzantine Mesopotamia).
The most significant distinction between east and west, therefore, concerned
marriage between cousins. Theodosius I punished such unions with
death. In the year 396 Arcadius confirmed the prohibition but considerably
mitigated the punishment. But the law must still have met with strong resistance
in the east, for eventually Arcadius lifted the ban (in 405). At the time
of Justinian, marriage between cousins was still considered legitimate in
Byzantium. In the west, on the other hand, the ban remained in force, as is
attested by a law of the year 409. 74 That the disparity in the legal situations
of the two parts of the empire actually reflected differences in marriage
customs is confirmed by Augustine: marriage between cousins, he
declared, was rare (in most of the western regions, we infer) even before it
was prohibited by law: propter gradum propinquitatis fraterno gradui proximum
quam raro per mores fiebat, quod fieri per leges licebat. 75
73 Justin, Nov. 3; the expression gamoi athemitoi was not so much a ‘euphemism’ (Lee (1988) 407) as a
general indication comprising all consanguineous marriages except those between cousins (which were
permitted by Byzantine law). It is questionable whether it refers only to marriages between brothers and
sisters and between parents and offspring, and not also (or indeed above all) to those between uncles
and nieces. In this connection, see Theodoret, Ep. 8, SChrét. 40.80, where the custom was considered
typical of the Persians. On Iranian customs, see the recent Herrenschmidt (1994); on late antique representations
of Persian marriage customs, see Chadwick (1979); for Dura, see Cumont (1924).
74 For Theodosius’ law, see p. 396 above, n. 12; C.Th. iii.12.3�CJ v.5.6 (396); CJ v.4.19 (405); C.Th.
iii.10.1�CJ v.8.1 (409); Just. Inst. i.10.4. The opinion expressed in Patlagean, Pauvreté 118ff. (i.e. the
banning of marriage between cousins in response to a ‘resserrement des liens conjugaux et familiaux’)
is contradicted by the widespread, traditional practice of marriage between cousins in the Greek world:
Bresson (1985) 266. On later developments in Byzantium, Laiou (1992) ch. 1. On the continuity, in the
Byzantine age, of the traditional position of the grandfather and the maternal uncle in the Greek family,
see Bremmer (1983).
75 Aug. Civ. xv.16. Roda (1979) emphasizes imperial derogations. On the avunculate in the Celtic
world, with particular reference to the family of Ausonius, see Guastella (1980).
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