was rigorous and unequal; and she renounced the name and worship of her father's house to embrace a new servitude decorated only by the title of adoption. [Manus] A fiction of the law, neither rational nor elegant, bestowed on the mother of a family[1] (her proper appellation) the strange characters of sister to her own children, and of daughter to her husband or master, who was invested with the plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behaviour was approved, or censured, or chastised; he exercised the jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed that, in the cases of adultery or drunkenness,[2] the sentence might be properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a person, but as a thing, that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other moveables, by the [Usus] use and possession of an entire year. The inclination of the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws;[3] but, as polygamy was unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or more favoured partner.
Freedom of the matrimonial contract After the Punic triumphs, the matrons of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent republic: their wishes were gratified by the indulgence of fathers and lovers,- ↑ Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticæ, xviii. 6) gives a ridiculous definition of Ælius Melissus: Matrona, quæ semel, materfamilias quæ sæpius peperit, as porcetra and scropha in the sow kind. He then adds the genuine meaning, quæ in matrimonium vel in manum convenerat. [When a woman was married (whether she was under her father's potestas, or not), she passed under the power of her husband, and this power was called manus; it corresponded, in its scope, to the patria potestas. Manus was not strictly a consequence of marriage; it was rather the accompaniment of marriage, and was acquired in three ways, (1) By confarreafio, the ceremony described in the text. This ceremony seems to have been used only by Patricians. Certain priesthoods were confined to men sprung from a marriage contracted with confarreatio. In the last years of the republic, it fell into disuse. (2) By coemptio, which in the text seems to be confounded with confarreatio. The woman was mancipated to her husband, by her father if under his potestas, by herself if sui iuris. (3) By usus, or cohabitation for a year. If absent for three nights, the woman did not pass under her husband's manus. From the end of the republic manus had ceased to be the usual relation between husband and wife; and the decline of this legal institution seems to be parallel to the increase in frequency of divorce.]
- ↑ It was enough to have tasted wine, or to have stolen the key of the cellar (Plin. Hist. Nat. xiv. 14).
- ↑ Solon requires three payments per month. By the Misna, a daily debt was imposed on an idle, vigorous, young husband; twice a week on a citizen; once on a peasant; once in thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman. But the student or doctor was free from tribute; and no wife, if she received a weekly sustenance, could sue for a divorce; for one week a vow of abstinence was allowed. Polygamy divided, without multiplying, the duties of the husband (Selden, Uxor Ebraica, l. iii. c. 6, in his works, vol. ii. p. 717-720).
