Whether at the confarreatio there was an animal sacrifice besides the sacrifice of grain, or not, we do not know; Ulpian seems to assume that there was. In later times the sacrifice of corn fell into desuetude, but for the rest the old ritual was maintained as far as possible, so that for instance there was always a prayer delivered, if not by a priest, by an auspex nuptiarum and addressed to other gods. Also in these later times the celebration of marriage centred round the sacrifice of a calf or even of a pig, and the newly wedded pair set out this sacrifice themselves, not always in the house but sometimes before a public temple. Not only have we express witnesses to testify to this, but also pictorial representations in which partly the temple is sketched and partly the sacrifice in process of performance, which would have no sense if the sacrifice took place in the house. So it comes that sacrifice of animals could only be conducted in the house, as in the temple, under certain conditions, whereas it was quite common on the sacrificial altars erected especially for private sacrifice in front of the temples. The witnesses having expressed their congratulations (feliciter) in a shout of approval, the sacrifice was followed by the cena, which, like all earlier portions of the celebration, was usually held in the house of the bride’s father.
Head-dresses
The guests having risen from this at fall of night, the deductio begins. The bride is taken from the arms of her mother and conducted in solemn procession to the new house, the procession including not only the guests but also the interested public. Flute-players and torch-bearers lead the way, the procession sings a fescennine song and echoes the cry talasse; the boys bid the bridegroom strew walnuts as he is now taking leave of the games of childhood. The bride is accompanied by three pueri patrimi et matrimi, one of them bearing a torch in front, the other two leading the bride; after her are borne distaff and spinning-wheel. The bridegroom’s torch is not, like the others, made of fine resin, but of white thorn (Spina alba), which is sacred to Ceres and a charm against witchery; it is captured by the guests and carried away by violence. The procession having reached the new house, the bride anoints the door-posts with fat or oil and binds them with woollen fillets; then she is borne over the threshold of the house and received in the atrium by her husband into the common possession of fire and water; that is to say, she is made a partner in domestic life and the service of the gods. In the atrium, her future living room, opposite the door, the lectus genialis is made ready by the pronuba; here she prays to the gods of the new home for a happy marriage. On the day after the wedding she receives relations at the feast of repotia as a matron and presents her first sacrifice to the gods of the house.[f]
THE STATUS OF WOMEN
The restoration of the temples of Juno by Augustus and his consort indicated the interest the new government felt in the institution of marriage. Neither the history nor literature of Rome can be understood without clear ideas upon this branch of her social economy. All nations have agreed in investing marriage with a religious sanction; but religion and policy were closely connected through every phase of the social life of the Romans, and in none more closely than in this. Marriage they regarded as an institution hallowed by the national divinities for the propagation of the Roman race, the special favourite of the gods. Its object was not to chasten the affections and purify the appetites of man, but to replenish the curies and centuries, to maintain the service of the national temples, recruit the legions and establish Roman garrisons in conquered lands. The marriage therefore of Caius and Caia, of a Roman with a Roman, was a far higher and holier matter, in the view of their priests and legislators, than the union of a Roman with a foreigner, of aliens with aliens, or of slaves with slaves. Even the legitimate union of the sexes among the citizens was regulated by descending scale of confarreation, coemption, and mere cohabitation; and the offspring of the former only were qualified for the highest religious functions, such as those of the flamen of Jupiter, and apparently of the vestal virgins, on which the safety of the state was deemed most strictly to depend.
These jealous regulations were fostered in the first instance by a grave political necessity; but the increase of the power of Rome, the enlargement of her resources, the multiplication of her allies, her clients and dependents, had long relaxed her vigilance in maintaining the purity of her children’s descent. The dictates of nature, reinforced by the observation of foreign examples, had long rebelled in this matter against the tyrannical prescriptions of a barbarous antiquity. After the eastern conquests of the republic it became impossible to maintain the race in its state of social isolation. In his winter quarters at Athens, Samos, or Ephesus, the rude husbandman of Alba or the Volscian hills was dazzled by the fascinations of women whose accomplishments fatally eclipsed the homely virtues of the Latin and Sabine matrons. To form legitimate connections with these foreign charmers was forbidden him by the harsh institutions of a Servius or Numa; while his ideas were so narrowed and debased by bad laws, that he never dreamt of raising his own countrywomen by education to the level of their superior attractions. Gravely impressing upon his wife and daughters that to sing and dance, to cultivate the knowledge of languages, to exercise the taste and understanding, was the business of the hired courtesan, it was to the courtesan that he repaired himself for the solace of his own lighter hours. The hetæræ of Greece had been driven to the voluptuous courts of Asia by the impoverishment, and perhaps the declining refinement, of their native entertainers. They were now invited to the great western capital of wealth and luxury, where they shared with viler objects the admiration of the Roman nobles, and imparted perhaps a shade of sentiment and delicacy to their most sensual carouses. The unnatural restrictions of the law formed a decent excuse for this class of unions, which were often productive of mutual regard, and were hallowed at least at the shrine of public opinion.
Such fortunate cases were, however, at the best, only exceptional. For the most part, the Grecian mistress of the proconsul or imperator, the object of a transient appetite, sought to indemnify herself by venal rapacity for actual contempt and anticipated desertion. The influence of these seductive intriguers poisoned the springs of justice before the provincial tribunals. At an earlier period a brutal general could order a criminal to be beheaded at his supper table, to exhibit to his paramour the spectacle of death; at a later, the luxurious governor of a province allowed his freedwoman to negotiate with his subjects for the price of their rights and privileges, or carried her at his side in his progress through Italy itself. The frantic declamations of Cicero against the licentiousness of Verres and Antony in this respect were a fruitless and, it must be admitted, a hollow attempt to play upon an extinct religious sentiment.
The results of this vicious indulgence were more depraving than the vice itself. The unmarried Roman, thus cohabiting with a freedwoman or slave, became the father of a bastard brood, against whom the gates of the city were shut. His pride was wounded in the tenderest part; his loyalty to the commonwealth was shaken. He chose rather to abandon the wretched offspring of his amours, than to breed them up as a reproach to himself, and see them sink below the rank in which their father was born.