16. Other Roman population control laws encouraged marriage and children
In 9 AD, two Roman suffect consuls (the highest elected posts of the government at the time) amended the laws passed by Augustus. Although the law was intended to further encourage and protect marriage, neither of the consuls, Marcus Papius Mutilus and Quintus Poppaeus Secundus, were married. The law imposed further restrictions on who could marry whom. For example, Senators and their children were forbidden from marrying persons whose parents had been performers, former slaves, or sex workers. Performers included gladiators, dancers, musicians, and many others.
Celibacy was not made strictly illegal (past a certain age) but it was strongly discouraged. A celibate could not take possession of inheritance unless he agreed to marry within a specified period of time. Otherwise, the inheritance is passed to the state. Widows (under the age of fifty) would lose what their late husband had left them if they did not remarry within a specified time. Women over fifty and men over sixty were exempt from the law unless they had broken it before attaining those ages. Roman law assumed that a woman was still capable of bearing children up to the age of fifty, and thus should be doing so.
