UBI TU GAIUS, EGO GAIA

The Romans had various forms of marriages, Generally, the first part of the ceremony took place at the house of the bride's paterfamilias where the bride's parents would hand over the bride to the groom. There would be happen some important verbal exchange. 

The bride would tell the groom :  

"Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia," 

"Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia." 

And the groom would reply :

"Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius"  

"Where you are Gaia, I am Gaius."

The pronuba, matron of honor, would then join the couple's hands. The marriage was now legally valid, and more festivities followed.

The ceremony could take place even if the groom was not able to be present. In that event, he would send a letter with his part of the verbal exchange.

        I am presently working on a mosaic on this theme - Pure Classical Roman style - no flashing colours, only natural tones of the kind the Roman mosaicists used up to the 3rd century - after which they started to use glass tesserae)

This is going to be my first mosaic of a pure Classical Roman style in a long time. The last one I did was the Labyrinth table - it was about 7 or 8 years ago. I came to mosaics because of my love of Roman archaeology, so this is a great pleasure to be working on such a project !

You can see on the picture above how I am - again - using the reverse method for this piece. Although this process is slightly more difficult to handle than the direct laying, I like the result much better ! It is also the only way for me to use materials of various thickness. 

Roman Marriage

 

More to come on this piece...