A Roman Wedding, from Veil to Threshold

Marcus Valerius

Come in, come in, and mind the step. You've caught me on a good day. Lucius the sandal maker is marrying off his daughter Fabia to young Quintus, and I've been asked to witness the tablets. Nobody asked a senator. They asked me, a man who sells a little wine near the Forum. That's how Rome works for the likes of us.

Marcus Valerius

Smell that? Wool, and a little myrtle, and Lucius's wife burning something she thinks will bring luck. Now look at Fabia. She's wearing a plain straight tunic, the tunica recta, woven upright on the old loom the way our grandmothers wove. Around her waist is a woolen girdle, tied in the knot of Hercules. It's a stubborn knot. It's meant to bring fruitfulness and keep bad influences away, and only Quintus may untie it, and only when no one else is watching. So don't look for it later.

Marcus Valerius

Her aunt is doing her hair. Six locks, not five, not seven, and she parts them with the point of an iron spear, bent back at the tip. Yes, a spear, at a wedding. The old story says it echoes the Sabine women, carried off by our ancestors when Rome was young and short of wives. Whether that's truly why, I can't swear. I only know the spear has always been there, and the aunt hums as she works. Then comes the wool, the woolen fillets twisted through the locks.

Marcus Valerius

And then the veil. The flammeum. A flame colored veil, somewhere between saffron and the red of a hearth coal, and when it drops over her face the whole room goes quiet. It's the same fashion worn by the priestess of Jupiter, the Flaminica Dialis, whose marriage can never be undone. Every bride borrows a little of that. Nobody says it aloud. Everybody thinks it.

Marcus Valerius

Now the business. Fabia isn't passing into Quintus's power. Most of us marry that way now, and she stays under her father's authority. What makes the marriage is that both of them mean it, what we call affectio maritalis. Lucius reads out the dowry on the tablets, and I press my seal into the wax beside nine other men. Her dowry is modest: bedding, a good chest, some silver spoons. It's honest, though, and it's written down.

Marcus Valerius

Then comes the part I love. A matron steps forward, Calpurnia from the third floor, who has been married once and only once. That matters. We call her the pronuba. She takes Fabia's right hand and Quintus's right hand and joins them, and she calls on Concordia, and on Juno, who watches over wives. On Fabia's left hand there's a plain iron ring on the fourth finger. People say a fine vein runs from that finger straight to the heart. I don't know any physician who has seen it. But I've never met a bride who wanted it on another finger.

Marcus Valerius

Now, dusk. Watch the mother. Fabia clings to her. Quintus's friends step in, and they pull her away, and she cries out, and her mother holds on a little too hard to be play acting. It's all staged, you understand, and it's all true at once. A bride must be seen to leave unwilling, so her household gods know she didn't abandon them. We call it pudor. Modesty. Out she goes, into the street.

Marcus Valerius

Torches! Five of them, hawthorn and pine, and the pitch smoke gets in your throat and stings your eyes. Boys carry them, and every boy has both parents living. That's the rule. Plutarch, who knows our customs better than most Greeks, writes of the five torches in his Roman Questions. Behind them walks the bride, veiled, and she can hardly see the paving stones.

Marcus Valerius

And the crowd! Everyone leans out of the upper windows of the insulae. Somebody shouts "Talassio!" and then we all roar it. Talassio! Why? Ask three Romans and get four answers. Some say it was the name of a lucky man among the old Sabine abductors. Livy tells it that way. Others say it has to do with wool baskets, the talaria. I just shout it. The words matter less than the noise.

Marcus Valerius

Then the verses start, the Fescennine verses, and I won't repeat them, I have a guest. Let's say they're rude about Quintus, ruder about the wedding night, and the whole street sings along. The idea is that if the gods hear us mocking the couple, they'll think them ordinary and won't envy them. The evil eye goes looking for the proud, not for the laughed at.

Marcus Valerius

Quintus reaches into a bag and throws walnuts. Hear them? They clatter across the basalt, and children come out of nowhere, screaming, shoving, crushing shells underfoot. Throwing nuts means he's done with boyish games. Let the children have them. At the crossroads, Fabia stops and sets a coin at the shrine of the Lares of the crossing. A small coin. It means a great deal to her.

Marcus Valerius

And here is Quintus's door. Fabia ties woolen bands to the doorposts, then smears them with fat. In my day it's pig's fat, that's what the writers say brides use now. The old men tell me it used to be wolf's fat, to keep out sorcery and poisons. I've never seen a wolf anywhere near a wedding. The smell is greasy, honest, a little sour, and nobody minds.

Marcus Valerius

Quintus asks her name. She answers with the old words. Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia. She will be mistress of this house as he is master. Then the men lift her. Not carry. Lift, over the stone threshold, so her feet never touch it. If a bride stumbles there, it's the worst omen a house can have. Listen. The whole street holds its breath.

Marcus Valerius

She's over. Fire and water wait inside, in the atrium, the things no household lives without. Someone laughs, someone cheers, and the torches go out in the street. Fabia's gone in as a daughter and she'll come out a wife. And me? I'm walking home through the nutshells, with a little pitch smoke in my hair, and a seal's worth of wax still on my thumb.