Patria Potestas

A Roman father had the power of patria potestas. However it could be argued that this was not an unrestricted power and that there was a large difference between Roman law and the actualities of Roman life. A Roman father or legally a Pater Familias was a male citizen sui iuris, who was in his own power, without a pater familias of his own. 1 The pater familias had several dimensions to his authority, he had potestas over his children and his wife if she was in manus, over his human property and protectorate over the families’ property. 2 A Roman father’s influence over the life of his child began at birth when the decision to expose or keep the child was made. However this was not only within the power of a Father, a Mother could make a similar decision without moral or legal penalty. Rights of the Roman Father extended to the sale of a child, chastisement, noxal surrender, demanding the divorce of his married children and the legal right to put to death an adult offspring with advice from family council. 3 However it could be argued that the legal right to sentence an adult to death was not necessarily accepted practice or custom. Crook states that the Roman’s kept law sharply apart from religion and morals, so that the legal character of patria protestas stands out in sociologically misleading clarity. ( J.Crook. CQ. 17.1. p.114.). Although the killing of guilty sons appears to of taken place, the sensationalism of accounts such as Livy’s of the consul who put his sons to death for treason, focus’ more on the fact that the “consul” was inflicting the punishment rather than the “pater”. 4 Sallurst also cites Fulvius who was executed by his father, who was a senator, for participating in a conspiracy. In the same text Sallurst discusses the work of Lentulus in encouraging a revolution through the strata of society but he does not record an equal amount of men chastised or executed by their fathers or the state for their treasonous behaviour. In fact there appears...