Read the document
“He revised existing laws and enacted some new ones, for example, on extravagance, on adultery and chastity, on bribery, and on the encouragement of marriage among the various classes of citizens.”
Suetonius, Life of Augustus · 34.1 (Loeb translation)
The Roman historian's summary of Augustus' marriage legislation.
Neque eadem duobus nupta esse potest, neque idem duas uxores habere.
“Nor can the same woman be married to two men, nor the same man have two wives.”
Gaius, Institutes · 1.63
The classical jurist stating the rule as settled law, second century AD.
Put it in context
Augustus legislated marriage and childbearing after the civil wars. The laws rewarded marriage, attached consequences to remaining unmarried or childless, and regulated which status groups could marry. They assumed the one-spouse form Roman custom already held.
This is the legal world every New Testament congregation in a Roman colony lived inside. A citizen could not lawfully contract a second simultaneous marriage, whatever any teacher said about it.
What is disputed
Whether Roman marriage law shaped Christian teaching, or merely coincided with it, is a question of causation that the statutes themselves cannot settle. Roman citizens were not the whole of the early church, and congregations included non-citizens, slaves and provincials whose legal position differed.
How I read this record
This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.
The records establish that one-spouse marriage was already Roman civil law before Christianity became an institution. They give us the legal setting of the early congregations, but they do not by themselves prove how much that setting shaped Christian theology.
Open the sources
- Suetonius, Life of Augustus 34, at LacusCurtius ↗ · The Latin and English of the passage above.
- Gaius, Institutes, book 1, at the Grenoble Roman law library ↗ · Gaius 1.63 in the Latin.