In conclusion, another advantage which the ancient marriage, with all its many hardships and its want of sympathy, assured to the woman was what one might call the legal protection of virtue. Nowhere was this protection greater and stronger than in ancient Rome. In Rome, the legitimacy of a marriage did not depend, as it does now in Europe and America, on the fulfilment of certain formalities before a priest or a magistrate, but on the moral situation of the woman. An _ingenua et honesta_ woman, to use the expression then current, meaning a free-born woman of irreproachable habits, could live with a man only in the capacity of his legitimate wife. No formality in the presence of any magistrate was required. The fact of living with a man and being _ingenua et honesta_ sufficed to assure to a woman and her own children all the rights appertaining to a wife and to legitimate offspring. On the other hand, a woman who had lived a dissolute life, had engaged in certain employments considered, and justly considered, disgraceful for a woman, or who had been convicted of adultery, could never become a legitimate wife or enjoy the privileges and rights of a legitimate wife. There was no ceremony before a priest or magistrate which could make a legitimate wife of her. She was by law a _concubina_, and in that capacity for a long time had no rights. Only in the course of time could she hope to get the rights, much restricted and of little importance as they were, which the law gradually conceded to the _concubina_. To transport this ancient conception of matrimony into modern society would doubtless not be possible, because it contradicts the great democratic principle of the equality of all before the law, on which our social organisation rests. But considered by itself this ancient conception of matrimony is without a doubt more lofty and more noble, and in particular more favourable to the woman, than the modern one. For it did not reduce the status of legitimate wife to what is practically a formality, but made it the exclusive privilege of the virtuous woman, and therefore assured the virtuous woman of a kind of privileged legal position, protecting her effectively against the intrigues and seductions of the attractive and gay women who, in the modern régime, are usually the more dangerous to the peace and happiness of the virtuous women, the less austere are their habits. In ancient Rome, the law guaranteed the virtuous woman that at least no one of these women should be able to rob her of the post of honour which she occupied in the family.