The frequency of remarriage among the elite was high. Speedy remarriage was not unusual, and perhaps even customary, for aristocratic Romans after the death of a spouse.Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 258–259, 500–502 et passim. While no formal waiting period was dictated for a widower, it was customary for a woman to remain in mourning for ten months before remarrying.Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, p. 48. The duration may allow for pregnancy: if a woman had become pregnant just before her husband's death, the period of ten months ensures that no question of paternity, which might affect the child's social status and inheritance, would attach to the birth.In Roman inclusive counting, a pregnancy was counted as lasting ten months. No law prohibited pregnant women from marrying, and there are well-known instances: Augustus married Livia when she was carrying her former husband's child, and the College of Pontiffs ruled that it was permissible as long as the child's father was determined first. Livia's previous husband even attended the wedding.Eva Cantarella, "Marriage and Sexuality in Republican Rome: A Roman Conjugal Love Story," in The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome (University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 276.
