ОПИТЪТ ЗА НРАВСТВЕНА РЕФОРМА НА РИМСКОТО ОБЩЕСТВО С АВГУСТОВОТО БРАЧНО ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛСТВО
AUGUSTUS` MARRIAGE LEGISLATION

Summary/Abstract: The marriage legislation was part of Augustus` program to restore the res publica shaken by more than a century of political and social disorder. For Augustus and for men like Livy, Horace and Virgil the solution of the troubles which had befallen the Roman lay in the past, in the values and customs and of an earlier age (exempla maiorum) – family life, the chastity of Lucretia, the moral probity of Cato the Elder, in a word, Romanitas. The political settlement imposed by the principate was not enough without propagation of the Italian stock and of its prisca virtus, which, unadulterated by the attitudes and beliefs of the opulent and decadent east, had won Rome an empire. Ironically, the methods of Augustus of implementing this archaizing social policy, was itself a radical innovation – pervasive intervention by the state in the private lives of roman citizens passing three according to some of the contemporaries severe laws – Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus, lex Papia Poppaea and Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, which response is obviously visible centuries after the death of their glorious creator – the reformator emperor Octavianus Augustus.

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