Impediments against consanguineous marriage in Republican Italy

Abstract

According to current doctrine, impediments against consanguineous marriage were extended to the sixth degree until the third century BC. From that moment on, the situation would change with the progressive liberalisation of marriage up to the first cousins, which became a tolerated practice. The picture of metajuridical sources actually supports a substantially different picture, where marriage between first cousins was a widespread practice ab antiquo. Only under the reign of Augustus, the jurisprudential debate of the last decades of the Republic produced a legal rule about marriage impediments that would become crucial in later elaborations.