). A concubine.
occupied at Athens a kind of middle rank between the wife and the harlot (ἑταίρα
). Demosthenes defines the position of each by saying that
the harlot ministers to pleasure only, the concubine serves, while the wife is for the
purpose of bearing children and acting as the faithful steward of her husband's goods
122, p. 1386). Thus Antiphon speaks of the παλλακή
of Philoneos as following him to the sacrifice, and also waiting upon
him and his guest at table. If her person were violated by force, the same penalty was
exigible from the ravisher as if the offence had been committed upon an Attic matron; and a
man surprised by the quasi-husband in the act of criminal intercourse with his παλλακή
, might be slain by him on the spot, as in the parallel case.
.) It does not, however, appear
very clearly from what political classes concubines were chiefly selected, as cohabitation
with a foreign (ξένη
) woman was strictly forbidden by law,
and the provisions made by the State for virgins of Attic families must, in most cases, have
prevented their sinking to this condition. Sometimes, certainly, where there were several
destitute female orphans, this might take place, as the next of kin was not obliged to
provide for more than one; and we may also conceive the same to have occurred with respect to
the daughters of families so poor as to be unable to supply a dowry. The
dowry, in fact, seems to have been a decisive criterion as to whether the connection between
a male and a female Athenian, in a state of cohabitation, amounted to a marriage. If no dowry
had been given, the child of such union would be illegitimate; if, on the contrary, a dowry
had been given, or a proper instrument executed in acknowledgment of its receipt, the woman
was fully entitled to all conjugal rights. It does not appear that the slave who was taken to
her master's bed acquired any political rights in consequence; the concubine mentioned by
Antiphon is treated as a slave by her master, and after his death undergoes a servile
According to an old definition, an unmarried woman who cohabited with a man was originally
(Gell. iv. 3
), but afterwards by the more decent appellation of concubina
50, 16, 144). Concubinatus
cohabitation other than marriage between free persons who were both unmarried, or between an
unmarried free man and an ancilla.
In the older times this was viewed as
an offence deserving punishment (Liv.x. 31
; xxv. 2); but when the
possibility of a lasting affection between persons who had not conubium
came to be recognized, the cohabitation of an unmarried man with his liberta
Epid. iii. 4, 29, 30
) was regarded without censure. In Cicero's time
De Orat. i.40.183
) the name of concubina
have applied to a woman who cohabited with a man who had not divorced his wife; but this was
not considered lawful concubinage in after-times. The Lex Iulia de Adulteriis of Augustus
imposed severe penalties on adulterium, incestus
, and stuprum
(q. v.); but by the Lex Iulia and Papia Poppaea concubinatus
was legalized and exempted from the penal provisions of the earlier
25, 7, 3, 1), though an honesta femina
wished to become a concubina
was not dispensed from them unless she made
an express declaration of her intention or testatio
ib. 3, pr.). But a man who already had an uxor
could not have a concubina
at the same time (Dig.
50, 16, 144), nor apparently
could a man have more than one concubina
at a time; and widowers who
already had children, and did not wish to contract another legal marriage, took a concubina
, as we see in the case of Vespasian (Suet.
), Antoninus Pius, and M. Aurelius.
differed from lawful marriage in three especial respects.
- 1. In the relation of the parties, there being no affectio
maritalis (Sent. Rec. ii. 20).
- 2. In the loss of reputation to the woman if honesta. Yet there
is an inscription in Fabretti (p. 337) to the memory of Paullianus by Aemilia Prima, concubina eius et heres, which seems to show that the term concubina was not one that a woman need be ashamed of.
- 3. In its legal effects: it was not a marriage, and therefore the rules as to dos, donatio propter nuptias, donatio inter virum et uxorem, had no
application; nor were the children in patria potestas, though their
paternity was recognized; they could be legitimated, and under the emperors were entitled
to maintenance, even from the legitimate children after the father's death (Nov. 89, 12, 6); also, they had some rights of succession on the
father's dying intestate.
By later emperors concubinatus
was discouraged, but it was not made
generally unlawful until the ninth century, by Leo the Philosopher.
Cohabitation between two slaves was called contubernium
, a name also
applied to that between a slave and a free person (Paul.ii.