[85] Under the church theory that all members of the witch’s family are tainted, the husband of this unfortunate woman hid himself, fearing the same fate.—Telegram.
CHAPTER SIX
[1] He bought his bride of her parents according to the custom of antiquity, and she followed the coemption by purchasing with three pieces of copper a just introduction to his treasury and household duties. Gibbon.—Rome, 4; 395.
[2] By the law of the Twelve Tables woman possessed the right of repudiation in marriage. These tables were a compilation of still older laws or customs, a species of common law incorporated into statutes by Lachis of Athens, daughter of one Majestes; and were so wise and of such benefit to the people of Attica that the Romans received them as natural laws in which there was more of patriotism and purity than in all the volumes of Popinanus. H.S. Maine.—Ancient Law.
[3] After the Punic triumphs the matrons of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent republic.... They declined the solemnities of the old nuptials; defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days, and without losing their name or independence subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their private fortunes they commuted the use and secured the property; the estate of a wife could neither be alienated or mortgaged by a prodigal husband. Religious and civil rites were no longer essential, and between persons of similar rank, the apparent community of life was allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials.... When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, their marriage like other partnerships might be dissolved. Gibbon.—Rome, 4; 347.
[4] Uses or Usucapion, was a form of civil marriage securing the wife more freedom than the form which held her “under his thumb” as his daughter. It was as old or even older than the Twelve Tables, and although for many centuries not considered quite as respectable a form of marriage as that in which the wife became the husband’s slave with divorce impossible, it eventually grew to be the customary form of Roman marriage. Maine.—Early History of Ancient Institutions, p. 517.
[5] It was with the state of conjugal relations thus produced that the growing Christianity of the Roman world waged a war ever increasing in fierceness, yet it remained to the last the basis of the Roman legal conception of marriage.—Ibid.
[6] When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father and master, and silences the scruples of a foolish woman. Milman.—Note to Gibbons Rome.
[7] “‘Usus’ had the very important consequence that the woman so married remained in the eye of the law in the family of her father, and was under his guardianship and not that of her husband. A complete revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This must have been the period when a jurisconsult of the empire defined marriage as a life-long fellowship of all divine and human rights.”