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THE GREEN BAG
of the husband's tribe, according to most guessers — the ten curiae of the wife's fam ily, says Von Ihering), then the bride gave her consent according to the old formula, "QuandotH Gains, ego Gaia." (It mattered not what the real names were. Gaius and Gaia, like the M and N of the Anglican prayer-book, did duty for every one.) Then the two took their places side by side to the left of the family altar, facing it on stools covered with the pelts of the sheep slain to assist the forecasts of the haruspices. A bloodless offering was made to Jupiter consisting of a cake of spelt (farreum libuni), the high priest and the flamen officiating, the latter reciting a prayer to Juno, the goddess who presided over the marriage couch, and to the gods of the earth and its fruits. Then came the congratulations of the friends, and the wedding feast which ended with the distribution of pieces of wed ding cake (mustaceum) . The banqueting lasted until evening; so extravagant did these become that Augustus proposed a law limiting their cost to one thousand ses terces ($50). After this came three distinct acts — all highly symbolical. First, the bride quitted her paternal hearth, where she had been wont to worship her ancestors under her father's leadership and under his rule and authority; the father alone could separate her from it. Next, veiled and covered she was led to her husband's house; one bear ing a nuptial torch preceded the wedding party; those around the bride, guests and rabble, sang an ancient religious hymn, the refrain of which, "Talassie, Talassie," re mained the same as centuries rolled on, although even in the days of Horace the Romans had forgotten what it meant. In front of her new home the bride was pre sented with fire and water by her husband, emblems of the domestic gods and lustral water; then the groom, with a pretence of force, took her in his arms and carried her over the threshold, without allowing her feet to touch it. Again she uttered the
words, " Ubi tu Gains, ibi ego Gaia," to her husband; the door was shut against the crowd, and only invited guests entered. (Von Ihering translates these mystic words thus: "Where thou ploughest, I will plough," a reminiscence, he says, of the old days when husband and wife yoked together pulled the primitive plough; the word conjux coming from jitgum, a yoke, and conjugiiim, mean ing sharing the yoke, that is, marriage.) Lastly, the bride was led before the hearth, where the penates and the images of her husband's ancestors surrounded wood ready for the fire. She kindled this with the nuptial torch, which she then threw away, and the guests scrambled for it, as moderns do for a bride's bouquet. The twain offered up a sacrifice, poured out a libation, said prayers, received from the hands of the priest a broken piece of cake of wheaten flour, and then were left alone, more feast ing being reserved for the coming day. Henceforward they are associated in the same worship. The wife has the same gods, the same rites, the same prayers, the same festivals, as the husband; she wor ships the dead, but his dead; from her own she is completely separated. As Ruth to Naomi, so the Roman bride could say to her husband, "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy god, my god." Marriage was to her a second birth; she is henceforth the daughter of her husband, "filiae loco," says the jurists. By this rite the wife passed into the husband's hand or power (in manum convcntio), if he was him self the head of a family, a pater familias; if he was not, then, though nominally in his hand, she was, like him, subject to his family head, and the children as they were born fell under the authority of that head — the paternal grandfather —- who was entitled to exercise over his daughters-in-law and their children the same rights he had over his own sons and unmarried daughters. (Enc. Brit. XX, p. 67; The Ancient City,
