Adoption of women

[Ingsoc]

The purpose of the adoption practise was to provide male heirs so families wouldn't be extinct, but what was the purpose of the adoption of women?

[Nephele]

George Long (19th century Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge), in his article "Adoptio" for Smith's Dictionary, wrote that "The Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea gave certain privileges to those who had children, among which privileges was a preference in being appointed to the praetorship and such offices. This led to an abuse of the practice of adoption; for childless persons adopted children in order to qualify themselves for such offices, and then emancipated their adopted children."

 

So, presumably, if males were not readily available for adoption, females might make do as far as taking advantage of these legal loopholes. Additionally, the adoption of a female would be less expensive than the adoption of a male, because the adoptive father (of the senatorial rank) obviously would not have the expense of sponsoring a daughter through the cursus honorum, as he might be obliged to do with a son.

 

Otherwise, an adoption of a female apparently could serve pretty much in the same way as the adoption of a male in further cementing (beyond marriage) the bond between two illustrious families, as Augustus did in his will, which adopted Livia into the Julii.

 

But this is an interesting topic that I don't think has been covered here before, and I'm looking forward to other members' input.

 

-- Nephele

[Ingsoc]

You seem to be right about the adoption as a political tool use by the imperial family (for example Claudius had his daughter adopted out of the family so she could be married to Nero) but it's seem that adoption of females began at the time of the repulic.

 

"And so died Tiberius, in the seventy eighth year of his age. Nero was his father, and he was on both sides descended from the Claudian house, though his mother passed by adoption, first into the Livian, then into the Julian family." (Tacitus, Annals, 6.51)

 

Obiviously Livia first adoption happend in the time of the republic.

[Nephele]

Obiviously Livia first adoption happend in the time of the republic.

 

Well, Livia passed by adoption into the Livian family as the result of her father (originally a member of the patrician Claudii Pulchri) having been adopted by a plebeian Livius Drusus.

 

Broughton's Magistrates of the Roman Republic includes a "M. (Livius) Drusus (Claudianus)" who was either a Praetor or Iudex in the year 50 BCE. If this is the same Livius Drusus Claudianus who was Livia's father, around the time of his adoption into the Livii, then Livia would have been a very young child when her father was adopted.

 

-- Nephele