By _marriage_, as we have seen, a woman became a member of her husband’s family. She ceased to be any longer a member of the household in which she was born, for the life of each family was so isolated that it would have been impossible to belong to two different families at once. So we find that the marriage ceremony chiefly consisted in an expression of this change of family by the wife. In general it was preceded by a treaty between the two families, a formal offer of marriage made by the intending husband’s family on his behalf, together with a gift to the bride’s family, which was regarded as the price paid for the bride. If all preliminary matters went forward favourably, then, on the day fixed for the marriage, the different members of the bridegroom’s family went to the household of the bride and demanded her. After some orthodox delay, in which the bride was expected to express unwillingness to go, she was formally given up to those who demanded her, the patriarch of her household solemnly dismissing her from it and giving up all authority over her. She was then borne in triumph to the bridegroom’s house; and, on entering it, was carried over the threshold, so as not to touch it with her feet; thus expressing that her entry within the house was not that of a mere guest or stranger. She was finally, before the house-fire, solemnly admitted into her husband’s family, and as a worshipper at the family altar. [Sidenote: Adoption.] This ceremony was subject to a great many variations amongst the different Aryan races; but in every one of them some trace of it is to be found, and this always apparently intended to express the same idea, the change of the bride’s family. _Adoption_, which in later times became extremely common among the Romans--the race which seems in Europe to have preserved most faithfully the old Aryan family type--originated in a sort of extension of the same theory that admitted of the wife’s entry into her husband’s family, as almost all the details of the ceremony of adoption are copied from that of marriage. Cases must have occurred pretty often where a man might be placed in such a position as to be without a family. He may have become alienated from his own kindred by the commission of some crime, or all his relatives may have died from natural causes or been killed in war. In the condition in which society was then, such a man would be in a peculiarly unenviable position. There would be no one in whom he could trust, no one who would be the least interested in him or bound to protect him. Thus wandering as an outlaw, without means of defence from enemies, and unable to protect his possessions if he chanced to have any, or to obtain means of subsistence if he had none, he would be very desirous of becoming a member of some other family, in order that he might find in it the assistance and support necessary for his own welfare. It might also sometimes happen, that owing to a want of male descendants some house