01-28-2009, 07:40 AM
Hi 'dalnurse',
Please write your real (first) name into your signature (profile). It's a forum rule.
[url:1ie1yk45]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/ucp.php?i=profile&mode=signature[/url]
As to your question, I doubt that a physical inability to have children was intended here, but a social one. Having been a slave, albeit for a short time, wil have affected her social status as a wife.
I know of similar problems (although from a 3rd-c. context) where female abducted Christians were liberated from their slavery in barbaricum, only to be confronted by a double problem. They had been pronounced 'dead' in a legal sense and the church had big problems accepting them back, abused as they had been by pagans.
Also, and the HBO series does not touch on this at all, is what the legal status of Vorena and her siblings would have been.
First of all, they were Roman citizens, so how could they have been available for abuse - would any Roman citizen touch them without fear of reprisal? I assumed that Roman citizens could not be sold as slaves without someone's consent?
And, if having been degraded to slave staus, how would they be rescued by their father without him having to fear a lawsuit by his children's new owners?
I'm not an expert on this, so maybe others could shed more light on the legal side of this.
Please write your real (first) name into your signature (profile). It's a forum rule.
[url:1ie1yk45]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/ucp.php?i=profile&mode=signature[/url]
As to your question, I doubt that a physical inability to have children was intended here, but a social one. Having been a slave, albeit for a short time, wil have affected her social status as a wife.
I know of similar problems (although from a 3rd-c. context) where female abducted Christians were liberated from their slavery in barbaricum, only to be confronted by a double problem. They had been pronounced 'dead' in a legal sense and the church had big problems accepting them back, abused as they had been by pagans.
Also, and the HBO series does not touch on this at all, is what the legal status of Vorena and her siblings would have been.
First of all, they were Roman citizens, so how could they have been available for abuse - would any Roman citizen touch them without fear of reprisal? I assumed that Roman citizens could not be sold as slaves without someone's consent?
And, if having been degraded to slave staus, how would they be rescued by their father without him having to fear a lawsuit by his children's new owners?
I'm not an expert on this, so maybe others could shed more light on the legal side of this.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
