s
and praetors to see that no inconvenience arise to her from the use of
this right. Mommsen's supposition is therefore absolutely inadmissible.

Then again: suppose a woman married a man from another gens, but
remained in her own gens. According to the passage quoted above, her
husband would then have had the right to permit his wife to marry
outside of her own gens. That is, he would have had the right to make
provisions in regard to the affairs of a gens to which he did not belong
at all. The thing is so utterly unreasonable that we need not lose any
words about it.

Nothing remains but to assume that the woman in her first marriage
wedded a man from another gens and thereby became a member of her
husband's gens. Mommsen admits this for such cases. Then the whole
matter at once explains itself. The woman, torn away from her old gens
by her marriage and adopted into the gentile group of her husband,
occupies a peculiar position in the new gens. She is now a gentile, but
not a kin by blood. The manner of her entrance from the outset excludes
all prohibition of intermarrying in the gens, into which she has come by
marriage. She is adopted into the family relations of the gens and
inherits some of the property of her husband when he dies, the property
of a gentile. What is more natural than that this property should remain
in the gens and that she should be obliged to marry a gentile of her
husband and no other? If, however, an exception is to be made, who is so
well entitled to authorize her as her first husband who bequeathed his
property to her? At the moment when he bequeathes on her a part of his
property and simultaneously gives her permission to transfer this
property by marriage or as a result of marriage to a strange gens, he
still is the owner of this property, hence he literally disposes of his
personal property. As for the woman and her relation to the gens of her
husband, it is he who by an act of his own free will--the
marriage--introduced her into his gens. Therefore it seems quite natural
that he should be the proper person to authorize her to leave this gens
by another marriage. In short, the matter appears simple and obvious, as
soon as we discard the absurd conception of an endogamous Roman gens and
accept Morgan's originally exogamous gens.

There is still another view which has probably found the greatest number
of advocates. According to them the passage in Livy only means "that
freed slave girls