ad only the compilations of Justinian to
consult; but the discovery of the manuscript of Gaius discloses it to
us at a most interesting epoch, just when it had fallen into complete
discredit and was verging on extinction. The great jurisconsult
himself scouts the popular apology offered for it in the mental
inferiority of the female sex, and a considerable part of his volume
is taken up with descriptions of the numerous expedients, some of them
displaying extraordinary ingenuity, which the Roman lawyers had
devised for enabling Women to defeat the ancient rules. Led by their
theory of Natural Law, the jurisconsults had evidently at this time
assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of their code of
equity. The restrictions which they attacked were, it is to be
observed, restrictions on the disposition of property, for which the
assent of the woman's guardians was still formally required. Control
of her person was apparently quite obsolete.

Ancient Law subordinates the woman to her blood-relations, while a
prime phenomenon of modern jurisprudence has been her subordination to
her husband. The history of the change is remarkable. It begins far
back in the annals of Rome. Anciently, there were three modes in which
marriage might be contracted according to Roman usage, one involving a
religious solemnity, the other two the observance of certain secular
formalities. By the religious marriage or _Confarreation_; by the
higher form of civil marriage, which was called _Coemption_; and by
the lower form, which was termed _Usus_, the Husband acquired a number
of rights over the person and property of his wife, which were on the
whole in excess of such as are conferred on him in any system of
modern jurisprudence. But in what capacity did he acquire them? Not as
_Husband_, but as _Father_. By the Confarreation, Coemption, and Usus,
the woman passed _in manum viri_, that is, in law she became the
_Daughter_ of her husband. She was included in his Patria Potestas.
She incurred all the liabilities springing out of it while it
subsisted, and surviving it when it had expired. All her property
became absolutely his, and she was retained in tutelage after his
death to the guardian whom he had appointed by will. These three
ancient forms of marriage fell, however, gradually into disuse, so
that, at the most splendid period of Roman greatness, they had almost
entirely given place to a fashion of wedlock--old apparently, but not
h