respective boundaries the chiefs of districts, resembling our mayors, fulfilled the same function for the persons of their own rank or of an inferior rank. We are indeed told that the consent of parents was necessary, but it was not a question of the consent of the interested parties.[1] Besides, it was strictly forbidden to marry outside the civil group of which the individuals formed a part. In this case marriages must often have been contracted between relatives more or less near. As to incest, there was little severity, since the Inca was legally bound to marry one of his sisters, with the reservation that she might not be his uterine sister,[2] and the same rule was at last extended to the nobles of the empire.
In sanctioning the civil marriage of the country, the public functionary, the Curaca, administered to the couple the oath of conjugal fidelity, which, according to P. Pizzarre, was generally kept; perhaps because, as we shall see later, the Peruvian law was not tender to adulterers. There does not appear to have been the least nuptial ceremony in Peru. In Mexico, on the contrary, marriage was celebrated with much show, and it was religious. The bride was conducted in great pomp to the house of the bridegroom, who came with his family to meet her. The two processions mutually perfumed each other with boxes of burning incense. After this the future spouses sat down on the same mat, and a priest married them by tying the robe of the bride to the mantle of the bridegroom. The precaution had previously been taken to consult the diviners and augurs. Nuptial festivals followed, in which the newly-married couple took no part. They lasted four days, and the marriage was not to be consummated until their termination. III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt.
In the ancient empires of central America the position of the wife was very subordinate;—this is an ordinary fact in barbarous countries. But in this respect, a singular exception seems to have existed in ancient Egypt, which
