The Dangerous Roman Rituals Kept Hidden For 2,000 Years

It happened in the early morning of September 3, 89 AD, in a closed room of the medical wing of a Roman villa in Capua, when a 12-year-old girl, calling herself Lucilla, was screaming as two physicians and four matrons nailed her limbs against a marble table.

She was not sick and this was not a medicine, this was her wedding night. What they had been doing to her as recorded in medical records that have now endured through two millennia was not only legal but medically necessary according to the most advanced Roman society of its era.

The atmosphere in the room was of lamp oil, medicinal herbs smouldering in bronze braziers, and the metallic odor of fresh blood on the white linen sheets imported out of Egypt.

Frescoed walls with mythological pictures of deities who randomly raped mortals observed with impunity as a system that had been refined over centuries served its purpose with grotesque effectiveness.

The body has never lied and Lucilla had recounted a tale of torture which no child was supposed to know. Her face was as coldly sweaty as Carrara marble. Her unbelievably panicked eyes were fixed on the painted ceiling through which Venus was coming out of the sea, not caring what is going on down there. Her little hands which still retained the softness of early years were clenched into fists so hard that her nails had left her palms with a bloody half-moon imprint.

She was not only scared but it was the horrifying thought that all that was to come was created to bring her down and that all in the room- men and women who were educated in the finest schools of Alexandria and Athens- were involved because they truly thought it was their duty.

To see how Rome turned medicine into the tool of marital pressure, one must resort to the works of the most respected gynecologist of the 2 nd century Soranus of Ephesus, the author of the treatise Gynecology, which was the textbook of the doctors during the next millennium.

In this work, which survives in numerous copies in the libraries of the modern monasteries, Soranus gives a clinical account of the work done by the Roman doctors on brides prior to and on the nuptial night. The pages do not describe medicine, but the science of suffering, developed into a system.

The ceremony started several days prior to the wedding. Her mother had gone with Lucilla to the villa of the family physician, Claudius Galen, a man of 52, with all the world to recommend him. His desk was filled with withered herbs and parchments, and upon the walls grew anatomical drawings of which Lucilla knew not, but which gave her the idea of what was to happen.

Galen also tested her with cold metal tools and her mother waited outside. This was not a short test; it was almost an hour, in the process of which Lucilla came to know that her body was no longer hers and was going to be evaluated in the manner of merchandise.

Galen had a diagnosis that was too small to thus tell the mother with a cold, professional demeanor. He said that the uterus was not completely descended and the pelvis was the size of a child but not a woman. Not to prepare might bring in too much internal harm.

Antonio, the mother of Lucilla did not express any relief or whether the wedding could be delayed. Instead, she posed the question that the system wanted: What treatment do you recommend so that she is ready in time?

The case of a 12-year-old girl marrying a 35-year-old man was not viewed as a problem in 1 st -century Rome. The issue was that her body was not ready to support anything that was supposed to be the natural right of the husband.

Galen recommended what the physicians referred to as praeparatio corporis sponsae or body preparation of the bride. Over the five days before her wedding, Lucilla was exposed to a regime to alter her anatomy and be able to withstand more pain. The account about this regime is chillingly accurate.

The initial stage involved the progressive dilation through instruments. Roman physicians invented bronze speculums which had expansion screws that were placed in the body and opened gradually over a course of 30 minutes to two hours.

The above was aimed at making the act (sex) easier to the husband so as not to inconvenience the male experience, despite it potentially taking days of invasive procedures to the child. The first two days were spent in silence when Lucilla endured the sessions.

Her screams were heard throughout the medical wing by the third. Galen administered more opium and mandrake, not to harm her, but to stifle her because the screams did not please other patients.

The second stage entailed the use of corrosive materials. Soranus records combinations of fixed vinegar with extracts of astringent plants, used internally to harden the tissues and to de-sensitize them. These chemical compounds in the modern-day provided controlled burns resulting in scar tissue that led to a loss of sensation in the girl as the nerve endings were destroyed. It was a sort of anesthetic mutilation.

The submission exercises formed the third stage. This was not a physical but a psychological aspect. The bride was also taught by the matrons, elderly women who were employed to do this, how to behave: do not struggle, do not scream too much, keep your eyes shut, and breathe in a manner that will not cause you to faint too soon.

It was training to live under an extreme circumstance. Sempronia, the head matron, was 68 years old and she had made hundreds of brides. Her hands, which were hard, patted Lucilla blindly. The less you oppose, the sooner it will be over. The first night is the worst. Then your body will know, you see, she would say. But there was nothing better than that, just what happened next.

When the night of the wedding came Lucilla was not the same. The modification of her body, her work on the breaking of her will and the destruction of her self-image as a human being were arranged in a systematic manner.

The ritual was Ancient, and the praises of Juno and the parades, but in the bedroom she had no privacy. She located a room with a group of professionals engaged to guarantee that all things went as per protocol. Galen was available, in accordance with the law when it comes to girls below 14. Two matrons came and sat next the bed and a scribe was standing to record all that was presented in the process. At the floor's centre of it all, the husband Publius Cornelius was sitting when the professionals were preparing the girl as a surgical patient.

What ensued was recorded with accuracy in the medical record of Galen, found in 1897 in Herculaneum ruins. According to the doctor, he had gone through initial examination to check on the success of the preparation. In his view, the bride had few signs of resistance, which confirmed that the dosage of opium was right. Having ensured sufficient dilation, he gave a go-ahead to the husband with vital signs under surveillance to avoid cardiovascular collapse.

All the words of that book are reflections of a system that was not in place to protect the child, but to make sure that her body was able to sustain the circumstances, by using stimulants in case she passed out and declaring success by the standards which did not recognize the consent or human dignity. Everything was justified in the system. The use of the doctor was introduced as a precautionary measure since girls were that young, and risked actual hemorrhage and traumatic shock.

The answer, however, was not to shield them against the act, but to have a doctor on board which would address any emergency in case the trauma was too serious. The matrons would have to testify that the husband did not violate any correct procedures absolving him of legal responsibility in case something went awry.

This scribe was assuring the legacy of the future heirs, creating an official document that contained the date, time and attestation of virginity. It was a horror bureaucracy, as thorough as the tax books of the empire.

The documents show that Roman doctors sorted out brides according to their age and physical development to define the necessary amount of preparation. The five-day procedure and the presence of a doctor was necessary to girls in the age group of 12-13.

The ages between 14 and 15 were given three days of preparation and those between 16 were given behavioral instructions. This was the classification that was and still exists today codified by the most prestigious professional medical association in the empire. It was not a fringe practice, but state medicine was justifying as a necessary part of the society.

Among the most prominent practitioners in Western medicine, Galen of Pergamon has claimed in his treatises that nature had fashioned the female body to serve the male but due to extreme youth he needed to be helped by a doctor to accomplish this role without injuring both parties. This perception made the trauma of a child equal to the possible discomfort of an adult man.

In situations that were not well, like the situations of serious hemorrhage or infections that were reported in Pompeii, the system cushioned the man. A case involving a 107 AD case where a 13-year old girl called Octavia died of trauma, the courts found that a husband responsible to taking medical advice could not be blamed of the constitutional frailty of the wife.

Lucilla did not succumb that night, but it is on record that she almost had cardiovascular collapse three times. She managed to make it as the system planned; a quiet wife, a mother to four children, and in 40 years so to come the matrons who made another bride.

The machine made victims into accomplices. Lucilla was 63 years old and trained her own granddaughter to commit the same error. It is on record that she did the procedures with professional efficiency since she had resigned to the fact that this was the only possible reality.

There were rare exceptions. In 143 AD a female doctor, Metrodora, came out publicly to criticize these practices saying that they were harmful and without a therapeutic effect and that 12 years was biologically inappropriate. She suggested that she would wait till 16 years, yet the Roman establishment disregarded her ideas. With the advent of Christianity, the original provisions that implied maturity to marry was undermined by the Roman culture. By 5th century, church was also blessing such unions on the basis of civil law.

Lucilla died at age 65. Her tomb, discovered in the 1970s, contained something unexpected: a fragment of papyrus hidden in a perfume jar. The text read: “I became what I feared. I prepared my granddaughter as I was prepared. I could not break the chain. If anyone reads this in a time where women can say no, tell them that we could not. If you have the choice to break these chains, do so.”

This fragment is now in a museum in Rome. It is a reminder that the history of Rome is not made only of monuments and laws, but also of a system that normalized pain under the guise of tradition.

The empire fell, but the logic that an individual’s autonomy can be negotiated based on social expectations still echoes in various parts of the world. The story of Lucilla and so many others whose voices were erased deserves to be remembered so that the suffering of the past is neither ignored nor repeated under new names.