Pater familias
Videos
The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias, was the head of a Roman family. The pater familias was the oldest living male in a household, and could legally exercise autocratic authority over hi
Bronze genius depicted as pater familias (1st century AD)
Contubernium
Videos
In ancient Rome, contubernium was a quasi-marital relationship between two slaves or between a slave and a free person who was usually a former slave or the child of a former slave. A slave involved i
Funerary monument set up by Iulia Thallusa for herself and her contubernalis, the sevir augustalis Lucius Iulius Hesychus (2nd century CE, Musée de la Romanité, Nîmes)
An imperial slave named Antiochus, reared as a verna (within the household he was born into), commemorated the death of his "well-deserving" contubernalis Valeria Fortunata in this Latin-Greek bilingual inscription, found along the Stoa of Attalus
Funerary altar of the freedwoman Volusia Arbuscula (CIL 6.9424, latter 1st century AD), the contubernalis carissima of Pallans, slave of the consul Q. Volusius Saturninus, from the columbarium of the Volusii along the Appian Way, on display at the Musée Condé, Chantilly
Inscription commemorating Caenis, described by the historian Suetonius as the "almost wife" of Vespasian