istoric reality." Professor d'Allosso
states that several details given by Virgil coincide with the details
of these tombs.[292]

From the earliest notices we have of the Roman women we find them
possessed of a definite character of remarkable strength. We often say
this or that is a sign of some particular period or people; when nine
times out of ten the thing we believe to be strange is in reality
common to the progress of life. In Rome the position of woman would
seem to have followed in orderly development that cyclic movement so
beautifully defined by Havelock Ellis in the quotation I have placed
at the beginning of the first section of this chapter.

The patriarchal rule was already strongly established when Roman
history opens; it involved the same strict subordination of woman to
the one function of child-bearing that we have found in the Athenian
custom. The Roman marriage law developed from exactly the same
beginning as did the Greek; the woman was the property of her father
first and then of her husband. The marriage ceremony might be
accomplished by one or two forms, but might also be made valid without
any form at all. For in regard to a woman, as in regard to other
property, possession or use continued for one year gave the right of
ownership to the husband. This marriage without contract or ceremony
was called _usus_.[293] The form _confarreatio_, or patrician
marriage, was a solemn union performed by the high Pontiff of Jupiter
in the presence of ten witnesses, in which the essential act was the
eating together by both the bride and bridegroom of a cake made of
flour, water and salt.[294] The religious ceremony was in no way
essential to the marriage. The second and most common form, was called
_coemptio_, or purchase, and was really a formal sale between the
father or guardian of the bride and the future husband.[295] Both
these forms transferred the woman from the _potestas_ (power) of her
father into the _manus_ (hand) of her husband to whom she became as a
daughter, having no rights except through him, and no duties except to
him. The husband even held the right of life and death over the woman
and her children. It depended on his will whether a baby girl were
reared or cast out to die--and the latter alternative was no doubt
often chosen. As is usual under such conditions, the right of divorce
was allowed to the husband and forbidden to the wife. "If you catch
your wife," was the law laid down by