Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/219

 brutality, by saying to them: "Take care to control your tongues It is the duty of servants to obey their masters You have made a contract of servitude."

There were at Rome three kinds of marriages, which I have already named—1st, The usus, resulting from a simple continuous cohabitation, without contract or ceremony, a sort of Tahitan marriage; 2nd, the coemptio or purchase, of which I have spoken at length—that is to say, the legal regulation of the primitive marriage by purchase, in use all over the world at the origin of civilisations. Coemption, without any palliatives, delivered the wife's body and goods to her husband; 3rd, the confarreatio, or aristocratic marriage, in which the high Pontiff of Jupiter gave, in the presence of ten witnesses, a cake made of flour, water, and salt to the bride and bridegroom, who ate it between them. The manus was conferred on the husband in the marriage by confarreation, the same as in the marriage by usus and coemptio. We must note that at Rome, as in Greece, the religious ceremony was in no way essential to the marriage, which was a laic and civil institution in the first place.

These three forms of marriage very probably represent the evolution of the conjugal union in ancient Rome. The usus, or free cohabitation, must have been the commencement; then came the purchase of the wife, the coemptio, and at length the solemn marriage or confarreatio of the patricians. But marriage with the husband's right of manus subsisted for a long time, and it conferred on him all the customary licence of savages of every country, notably that of lending the wife, and this exorbitant right endured till the best days of Rome, since the virtuous Cato of Utica used it still in lending his wife Martia to his friend Hortensius.

This fact is curious, and deserves attention. Hortensius began by asking for the loan of Cato's daughter, Portia, already married to Bibulus, and the mother of two children. It was, says Plutarch, with the object of selection, that he might have a child of good race; he promised to return her afterwards to her husband. On the refusal of Cato, Hortensius fell back on Martia, Cato's own wife, who was at the time enciente. Cato was not at all shocked at the