is most interesting; for we can follow a complete evolution in regard to it which has never been so complete in any other country. At first we find conjugal anarchy, the capricious union or usus, which could be, and which was in fact, often polygamous, as the ulterior persistence of the concubinate proves; then the marriage by capture, of which the trace remained in the marriage ceremony; then the marriage by purchase, the coemption, with its ordinary consequence, the servitude of the wife, which even the solemn marriage or confarreation did not abolish. At length this brutal law of the primitive ages relaxes. The law which holds the woman under paternal power (patria potestas) is turned round. The father himself gives his daughter in mancipium to a third party, who afterwards enfranchises her. Sometimes it is the patria potestas which is a check to the manus of the husband. The wife, in marrying, without being subject to the manus, remains subject to her father, who can even claim her again.
But the institution of the dowry as obligatory and inalienable by the husband, the power of the woman to marry while remaining in the paternal family, to have her paraphernalia, to inherit property of her father, to control both of these, and also the great facility of divorce, ended by rendering the Roman, or at least the patrician matron, almost independent. Under the empire Roman marriage had become in fact a sort of free union, in which money considerations played the predominant part. Plautus already speaks of the dotal-slave, a creature of the wife's, managing her property and ruling the husband—
"Argentum accepi, dote imperium vendidi."[1]
Horace mentions the wife ruling by means of her dowry—"dotata
regit virum conjux" (Od. iii. 18). Martial declares
that he wishes no rich marriage; it does not suit him, he
says, to be married by his wife—"uxori nubere nolo meae"
(Epig. viii. 12). From Seneca to Saint Jerome, who both
speak of it, the dotal-slave is advantageously replaced by
the frizzed steward (Procurator calamistratus) managing the
- ↑ Asinaria, v. 70-72.
