iction the father, and still more the husband, should
not pronounce sentence on child or wife without having previously
consulted the nearest blood-relatives, his wife's as well as his
own. But the latter arrangement involved no legal diminution of
power, for the blood-relatives called in to the domestic judgment
had not to judge, but simply to advise the father of the household
in judging.

But not only was the power of the master of the house substantially
unlimited and responsible to no one on earth; it was also, as long
as he lived, unchangeable and indestructible. According to the
Greek as well as Germanic laws the grown-up son, who was practically
independent of his father, was also independent legally; but the
power of the Roman father could not be dissolved during his life
either by age or by insanity, or even by his own free will, excepting
only that the person of the holder of the power might change, for
the child might certainly pass by way of adoption into the power
of another father, and the daughter might pass by a lawful marriage
out of the hand of her father into the hand of her husband and,
leaving her own -gens- and the protection of her own god to enter
into the -gens- of her husband and the protection of his god,
became thenceforth subject to him as she had hitherto been to her
father. According to Roman law it was made easier for the slave to
obtain release from his master than for the son to obtain release
from his father; the manumission of the former was permitted at an
early period, and by simple forms; the release of the latter was
only rendered possible at a much later date, and by very circuitous
means. Indeed, if a master sold his slave and a father his son
and the purchaser released both, the slave obtained his freedom,
but the son by the release simply reverted into his father's power
as before. Thus the inexorable consistency with which the Romans
carried out their conception of the paternal and marital power
converted it into a real right of property.

Closely, however, as the power of the master of the household over
wife and child approximated to his proprietary power over slaves
and cattle, the members of the family were nevertheless separated
by a broad line of distinction, not merely in fact but in law, from
the family property. The power of the house-master--even apart from
the fact that it appeared in operation only within the house--was
of a transient, and in some degree