resents, especially neck-bands in the form of a
half-moon (_lunulae_), and the golden balls (_bullae_) which were worn
as a charm round the neck until the attainment of manhood.

Of the numerous petty divinities which watched over the child's early
years we have already given some account. In their protection he
remained until he arrived at puberty, about the age of seventeen, when
with due religious ceremony he entered on his manhood. At home, on the
morning of the festival, he solemnly laid aside the _bulla_ and the
purple-striped garb of childhood (_toga praetexta_) before the shrine
of the household gods, and made them a thank-offering for their
protection in the past. Afterwards, accompanied by his father and
friends and clad now in the _toga virilis_, he went solemnly to the
Capitol, and, after placing a contribution in the coffers of
Iuventas--or probably in earlier times of Iuppiter Iuventus--made an
offering to the supreme deity Iuppiter Capitolinus. The sacred
character of the early years of a young Roman's life could hardly be
more closely marked.

Though _confarreatio_ was the only essentially religious form of
marriage, and was sanctified by the presence of the _pontifex maximus_
and the _flamen Dialis_, yet marriage even in the less religious
ceremony of _coemptio_ was always a _sacrum_. It must not take place on
the days of state-festivals (_feriae_), nor on certain other _dies
religiosi_, such as those of the Vestalia or the feast of the dead
(_Parentalia_). Both the marriage itself and the preliminary betrothal
(_sponsalia_) had to receive the divine sanction by means of auspices,
and in the ceremonies of both rites the religious element, though bound
up with superstition and folk-customs, emerges clearly enough. The
central ceremony of the _confarreatio_ was an act partly of sacrifice,
partly, one might almost say, of communion. The bride and bridegroom
sat on two chairs united to one another and covered with a lambskin,
they offered to Iuppiter bloodless offerings of a rustic character
(_fruges et molam salsam_), they employed in the sacrifice the
fundamental household necessaries, water, fire, and salt, and
themselves ate of the sacred spelt-cake (_libus farreus_), from which
the ceremony derived its name. The crucial point in the more civil
ceremony of _coemptio_ was the purely human and legal act of the
joining of hands (_dextrarum iunctio_), but it was immediately followed
by the sacrifice of a