when the Roman woman lived in a state of perennial tutelage, under the
authority of man from birth to death--of the husband, if not of the
father, or, if not of father or husband, of the guardian--that time
belongs to remote antiquity.

When Rome became the master state of the Mediterranean world, and
especially during the last century of the republic, woman, aside from a
few slight limitations of form rather than of substance, had already
acquired legal and economic independence, the condition necessary for
social and moral equality. As to marriage, the affianced pair could at
that time choose between two different legal family regimes: marriage
with _manus_, the older form, in which all the goods of the wife passed
to the ownership of the husband, so that she could no longer possess
anything in her own name; or marriage without _manus_, in which only
the dower became the property of the husband, and the wife remained
mistress of all her other belongings and all that she might acquire.
Except in some cases, and for special reasons, in all the families of
the aristocracy, by common consent, marriages, during the last
centuries of the republic, were contracted in the later form; so that
at that time married women directly and openly had gained economic
independence.

During the same period, indirectly, and by means of juridical evasions,
this independence was also won by unmarried women, who, according to
ancient laws, ought to have remained all their lives under a guardian,
either selected by the father in his will or appointed by the law in
default of such selection. To get around this difficulty, the fertile
and subtle imagination of the jurists invented first the _tutor
optivus_, permitting the father, instead of naming his daughter's
guardian in his will, to leave her free to choose one general guardian
or several, according to the business in hand, or even to change that
official as many times as she wished.

To give the woman means to change her legitimate guardian at pleasure,
if her father had provided none by will, there was invented the _tutor
cessicius_, thereby allowing the transmission of a legal guardianship.
However, though all restrictions imposed upon the liberty of the
unmarried woman by the institution of tutelage disappeared, one
limitation continued in force--she could not make a will. Yet even
this was provided for, either by fictitious marriage or by the
invention of the _tutor fiduciarius_.