ken can be regarded as
complete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to be able to
share in its sacra, i.e. in the worship of the household spirits,
the ancestors in their tombs, or in any special cult attached to the
family. In order to secure this eligibility, she was in the earliest
times subjected to a ceremony which was clearly of a sacramental
character, and which had as its effect the transference of the bride
from the hand (manus) of her father, i.e. from absolute subjection to
him as the head of her own family, to the hand of her husband, i.e. to
absolute subjection to him as the head of her new family.

This sacramental ceremony was called _confarreatio_, because a sacred
cake, made of the old Italian grain called _far_, and offered to
Jupiter Farreus,[205] was partaken of by bride and bridegroom, in the
presence of the Pontifex Maximus, the Flamen Dialis, and ten other
witnesses. At such a ceremony the auspices had of course been taken,
and apparently a victim was also slain, and offered probably to Ceres,
the skin of which was stretched over two seats (sellae), on which the
bride and bridegroom had to sit.[206] These details of the early form
of patrician marriage are only mentioned here to make the religious
character of the Roman idea of the rite quite plain; in other words,
to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside was
a matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved
without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even
go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort
a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn
initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further
illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if
we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the
priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus,
or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded by
confarreatio, and that in each case the priest himself must be married
by the same ceremony.[207] This last mentioned fact may also serve to
remind us that it was not only the family and its sacra, its life and
its maintenance, that called for the ceremonies making up a iustum
matrimonium, but also the State and its sacra, its life and its
maintenance.[208] As confarreatio had as its immediate object the
providing of a materfamilias fully qualified in all her various
functi