Sull’originario significato del termine «paelex»

Abstract

The original meaning of paelex, which historical sources show us as a sort of «concubine» and femina probrosa, if not even a «prostitute», in the archaic age was referring simply to the woman who lived with a man looking forward to becoming, after the year of usus, wife conventa in manum. The fact that its original meaning did not have negative implications is demonstrated in particular by an epigraph from the III-IV century AD. in which a girl who died at the age of eleven is indicated by the same mother as paelex and this proves that the original meaning of the therm, not at all negative, had not been lost.