e
presence of witnesses sells her to the husband who declares that he
buys her for his wife. This is marriage by sale (coemptio).

For the Romans as for the Greeks marriage is a religious duty;
religion ordains that the family should not become extinct. The Roman,
therefore, declares when he marries that he takes his wife to
perpetuate the family through their children. A noble Roman who
sincerely loved his wife repudiated her because she brought him no
children.

=The Roman Woman.=--The Roman woman is never free. As a young girl,
she belongs to her father who chooses her husband for her; married,
she comes under the power of her husband--the jurisconsults say she is
under his "manus," _i.e._, she is in the same position as his
daughter. The woman always has a master who has the right of life and
death over her. And yet, she is never treated like a slave. She is the
equal in dignity of her husband; she is called the mother of the
family (materfamilias) just as her husband is called the father of the
family (paterfamilias). She is the mistress in the house, as he is the
master. She gives orders to the slaves whom she charges with all the
heavy tasks--the grinding of the grain, the making of bread, and the
cooking. She sits in the seat of honor (the atrium), spins and weaves,
apportions work to the slaves, watches the children, and directs the
house. She is not excluded from association with the men, like the
Greek woman; she eats at the table with her husband, receives
visitors, goes into town to dinner, appears at the public ceremonies,
at the theatre, and even at the courts. And still she is ordinarily
uncultured; the Romans do not care to instruct their daughters; the
quality which they most admire in woman is gravity, and on her tomb
they write by way of eulogy, "She kept the house and spun linen."

=The Children.=--The Roman child belongs to the father like a piece of
property. The father has the right of exposing him in the street. If
he accepts the child, the latter is brought up at first in the house.
Girls remain here until marriage; they spin and weave under the
supervision of their mother. The boys walk to the fields with their
father and exercise themselves in arms. The Romans are not an artistic
people; they require no more of their children than that they know how
to read, write, and reckon; neither music nor poetry is taught them.
They are brought up to be sober, silent, modest in their demeanor, and
o