Adultery is, even amongst the ruder peoples, a transgression that is reckoned only a degree less grave than manslaughter; especially as manslaughter is a usual consequence of it, quarrels about women constituting one of the chief sources of trouble in the savage world. With a single interesting exception, the stages in the development of the law against adultery are exactly the same as in the case already examined. Whole kins fight about it. Then duelling is substituted. Then duelling gives way to the ordeal. Then, after the penalty has long wavered between death and a fine, fines become the rule, so long as the kins are allowed to settle the matter. If, however, the community comes to take cognizance of the offence, severer measures ensue. The one noticeable difference in the two developments is the following. Whereas murder is an offence against the chief's "majesty," and as such a criminal offence, adultery, like theft, with which primitive law is wont to associate it as an offence against property, tends to remain a purely civil affair. Kafir law, for example, according to Maclean, draws this distinction very clearly. It remains to add as regards adultery that, so far, we have only been considering the punishment that falls on the guilty man. The guilty woman's fate is a matter relating to a distinct department of primitive law. Family jurisdiction, as we find it, for instance, in an advanced community such as ancient Rome, meant the right of the _pater familias_, the head of the house, to subject his _familia_, or household, which included his wife, his children (up to a certain age), and his slaves, to such domestic discipline as he saw fit. Such family jurisdiction was more or less completely independent of state jurisdiction; and, indeed, has remained so in Europe until comparatively recent times.