Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/423

 A^HAP. VIII. CHAXGES IX PRIVATE LAW. 41 f seen that the wife was subjected without reserve to the husband, and that the power of the latter went so far that he could alienate or sell her.' In another point of view the power of the husband also produced effects which the good sense of the plebeian could hardly comprehend. Thus the woman placed in the hands of her husband was separated absolutely from her pater- nal family. She inherited none of its property, and had no tie of relationship with it in the eyes of the law. This was very well in primitive law, when reli- gion forbade the same person to belong to two gentes, or to sacrifice at two hearths, or inherit from two houses. But the power of the husband was no longer conceived to be so great, and there were several excel- lent motives for wishing to escape these hard conse- quences. The code of the Twelve Tables, while providing that a year's cohabitation should put the wife in the husband's power, was compelled to leave him the liberty of contracting a union less binding. If each year the wife interrupted the cohabitation by an absence of no more than three nights, it was suffi- cient to prevent the husband's power from being estab- lished. Thus the M'ife preserved a legal connection with her own family, and could inherit from it. Without entering into further details, we see that the code of the Twelve Tables already departed con- siderably from primitive law. Roman legislation was transformed with the government and the social state. ' Gaius, I. 117, 118. That tliis mancipation was merely fictitious in Gaius's time, is beyond doubt; but it was, perhaps, real in the beginning. The case was not the same, moreover, with the marriage by simple consensus as with the sacred mar- riage, which established between husband and wife an indissolu- ble bond. 27