There was a surprising strength in those early institutions of which the
fragmentary survival has made Rome what it is. Strongest of all,
perhaps, was the patriarchal mode of life which the shepherds of Alba
Longa brought with them when they fled from the volcano, and of which
the most distinct traces remain to the present day, while its origin
goes back to the original Aryan home. Upon that principle all the
household life ultimately turned in Rome's greatest times. The Senators
were Patres, conscript fathers, heads of strong houses; the Patricians
were those who had known 'fathers,' that is, a known and noble descent.
Horace called Senators simply 'Conscripts,' and the Roman nobles of
today call themselves the 'Conscript' families. The chain of tradition
is unbroken from Romulus to our own time, while everything else has
changed in greater or less degree.

It is hard for Anglo-Saxons to believe that, for more than a thousand
years, a Roman father possessed the absolute legal right to try, condemn
and execute any of his children, without witnesses, in his own house and
without consulting anyone. Yet nothing is more certain. 'From the most
remote ages,' says Professor Lanciani, the highest existing authority,
'the power of a Roman father over his children, including those by
adoption as well as by blood, was unlimited. A father might, without
violating any law, scourge or imprison his son, or sell him for a slave,
or put him to death, even after that son had risen to the highest
honours in the state.' During the life of the father, a child, no matter
of what age, could own no property independently, nor keep any private
accounts, nor dispose of any little belongings, no matter how
insignificant, without the father's consent, which was never anything
more than an act of favour, and was revocable at any moment, without
notice. If a son became a public magistrate, the power was suspended,
but was again in force as soon as the period of office terminated. A man
who had been Dictator of Rome became his father's slave and property
again, as soon as his dictatorship ended.

But if the son married with his father's consent, he was partly free,
and became a 'father' in his turn, and absolute despot of his own
household. So, if a daughter married, she passed from her father's
dominion to that of her husband. A Priest of Jupiter for life was free.
So was a Vestal Virgin. There was a complicated legal trick by which the
father