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A marriage between a patrician and a plebeian was the only way to legally integrate the two classes. However, when the Twelve Tables were written down, the marriage between the two classes was prohibited. [ 14 ]
Plebeians were barred from marrying patricians in 450 BC but this law was annulled five years later in 445 BC by a tribune of the plebs. [2] [page needed] In 444 BC, the office of military tribune with consular powers was created. The plebeians who filled this office were then entitled to join the senate after their one-year term was completed.
Patricians always married by confarreatio, while plebeians married by coemptio or usus: in the latter, a woman could avoid her husband's legal control simply by being absent from their shared home for three consecutive nights once a year.
It was a modification to the Valerian law in 449 BC which first allowed acts of the Plebeian Council to have the full force of law over both plebeians and patricians, but eventually the final law in the series was passed (the "Shortening Law"), which removed the last check that the patricians in the Senate had over this power.
Following this, there was a period of consular tribunes who shared power between plebeians and patricians in various years, but the consular tribunes apparently were not endowed with religious authority. [13] In 445 BC, the lex Canuleia permitted intermarriage among plebeians and patricians. [14]
The lex Canuleia (‘Canuleian law’), or lex de conubio patrum et plebis, was a law of the Roman Republic, passed in the year 445 BC, restoring the right of conubium (marriage) between patricians and plebeians. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Patricians always married by confarreatio, while plebeians married by the latter two types. In marriage by usus , if a woman was absent for three consecutive nights at least once a year, she would avoid her husband establishing legal control over her.
Why was a law banning marriage between patricians and plebeians drawn up by a body composed by both patricians and plebeians (the majority of the members of the second decemvirate being plebeians)? [30] In 2005, historian Gary Forsythe dismissed the second decemvirate as unhistorical. He presents a number of arguments for his view.