arnt to recognise under the word _religio_. Marriage was a
religious ceremony, for we can hardly doubt that the patrician
_confarreatio_, in which a cake made of the anciently used grain called
_far_ was offered to Jupiter, and perhaps partaken of sacramentally by
bride and bridegroom, was the oldest form of marriage, and had its
origin in an age before the State came into being. We must remember that
the house was a sacred place, with religious duties carried on within
it, and the abode of household spirits; and when a bride from another
family or gens was to be brought into it, it was essential that such
introduction should be carried out in a manner that would not disturb
the happy relations of the human and divine inhabitants of the house. It
was essential, too, that the children expected of her should be such as
should be able to discharge their duties in the household without
hurting the feelings of these spirits. Some of the quaint customs of the
_deductio_ of later times strongly suggest an original anxiety about
matters of such vital interest; the torch, carried by a boy whose
parents were both living, was of whitethorn (_Spina alba_), which was a
powerful protective against hostile magic, and about which there were
curious superstitions.[177] Arrived at the house, the bride smeared the
doorposts with wolf's fat and oil, and wound fillets of wool around
them--so dangerous was the moment of entrance, so sacred the doorway;
and finally, she was carried over the threshold, and then, and then
only, was received by her husband into communion of fire and water,
symbolic of her acceptance as materfamilias both by man and deity.[178]

When the new materfamilias presented her husband with a child, there was
another perilous moment; the infant, if accepted by the father
(_sublatus_, _i.e._ raised from the earth on which it had been
placed),[179] did not immediately become a member of the family in the
religious sense, and was liable to be vexed by evil or mischievous
spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days,
by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which
was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and
struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of
agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile
spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly
spirits of household life and of settled