#this does not apply in the 18th-19th centuries tho. if your sister dies and you marry your brother in law. well. the scandal!

[sforzesco]

"In some such families, brothers practiced what is known as temporary marriages, where several brothers would marry a single wife, who would bear heirs to all of them in turn. While the Roman ideology of the univira, a woman's devotion to one husband, seems at odds with the practice of temporary marriage, the way Crassus stepped into his brother's marriage suggests that his family may have opted to allow only two sons to marry in order to secure the family's future. When his brother died, Crassus took the opportunity to move from uncle to husband, a move that may have served his own interests as well as fraternal pietas."

[The brothers of Romulus: fraternal Pietas in Roman law, literature, and society by Bannon, Cynthia Jordan]

@p-clodius-pulcher showed me this crazy quote, wherein "his family may have opted to allow only two sons to marry" made me go "so you are saying in a later era, Crassus would be a priest".

OHHHH THIS IS DELICIOUS. every discussion revolving around Crassus' marriage to his sister-in-law is so so fun. we have archaic traditions & obligations, there's the matter of keeping the dowry in the family (which in turn lends to a fun exploration of the economy at the time, wrt to crassus' father's policy making), & combined together, there's something to be said for the reasoning that the brother-sister marriage records of roman egypt may have had more to do with keeping property in the family.

but now with fraternal pietas? HELLO!! new things to think about. I'm going to unpack this with a magnifying glass.