Negatively, however, it was the later law of Rome which had most to do with shaping the ideas of the Christian Fathers relative to the nature of marriage and the doctrine of divorce.[11] By each of the three ancient forms of marriage the wife came or might come under the power of the husband, _in manu viri_. In the family she was legally regarded as being in a daughter's place, _in loco filiae_;[12] and in each case divorce was solely the husband's prerogative.[13] But by the beginning of our era all these older and stricter forms, with their consequent one-sided right of separation, had been practically superseded by free contract in which the husband and wife were placed on an equal footing.[14] By this form marriage became a simple private agreement. The wife did not pass under the _manu_ of the husband. She retained full control of her property, being in this regard, as it were, temporarily deposited at her husband's side;[15] while divorce became a formless private transaction to which the woman was as freely entitled as was the man.[16] No intervention of court or magistrate was essential. So far, indeed, was carried the theory of absolute liberty of either spouse to dissolve the contract that, according to Cicero, the jurists in one case were in doubt whether a divorce did not legally arise _ipso facto_ through the consummation of a second marriage by one of the parties during the lifetime of the other.[17] Augustus, however, introduced an important change in the interest of publicity, requiring the party wishing a divorce to declare to the other his purpose in the presence of seven witnesses, who must be Roman citizens of full age; otherwise the divorce to be null and void.[18] But there was no intention through this condition of establishing the jurisdiction of the state in the matter of divorce, which remained, as before, a private legal act of the interested persons. "Still less was it the purpose of the state to put any material restriction upon the freedom of divorce."[19] To this liberty there was but one exception. The freedwoman might not repudiate her patron, her former master, who had taken her in marriage.[20] In all other cases the divorce, however arbitrary or unjust, was legally effective. There was no action for the restitution of conjugal rights; though the responsible party might in certain cases suffer pecuniary damage.[21]