mancipium, which was almost a right of propriety, passed afterwards to the heirs of the owner.
We have seen that the pater familias had the right to marry his daughter without consulting her, but he enjoyed a right more excessive still, that of re-marrying her when his son-in-law had been absent for three years.[1] It was Antoninus only who thought of depriving the father of his right to annul the marriage of his daughter. To the potestas of the father succeeded the manus of the husband. The woman in manu was considered legally as the daughter of her husband, and therefore as the sister of her children. If the husband was himself the son of a family, the wife in manu was held as grand-daughter of the father of the family. This entailed for her the extinction of paternal power (on her own side), and of guardianship and the rights of relationship with the male members of her father's family. In the marriage with manus the husband became the proprietor of all the dowry of his wife. The father, however, could stipulate that the dowry should be returned to him if his daughter died without children or was repudiated. The leges Julia and Papia had, in fact, imposed on the father the obligation of giving a dowry to his daughter; but the dowry could be appointed by third parties or by the woman herself, if she was sui juris, and then also she had the right to stipulate for some reservations.
This terrible right of manus was acquired by the husband with every form of marriage, even the grossest of all, the usus, or simple cohabitation during one year; but the wife could avoid the conventio in manum by passing three nights in the year out of the conjugal domicile. The manus invested the husband with a large right of correction over his wife, though in very grave cases he was to assemble the family tribunal, which included the children of cousins-german. These family tribunals took cognisance even of murder committed by the wife, and they were still in use under the emperors.[2] On the other hand, the Roman husbands did not let their legal right of beating their wives fall into desuetude, for Saint Monica consoled the wives of her acquaintance whose faces showed marks of marital
