To any one not versed in ethnographical sociology these customs seem improbable. Doubt has been cast on this story of Hortensius and Cato, though it is attested by the _Anti-Cato_ of Julius Cæsar, on which Plutarch relies; but it has nothing extraordinary for us. We know that at first woman was everywhere the absolute property of the man. The _manus_ of the Roman husband was in the main only an attenuated form of primitive conjugal right, which we know included the power to lend, barter, or cede the wife without consulting her. The case of Cato is then only a survival of preceding ages. Necessarily brief and incomplete as the _résumé_ must be that I can here give of conjugal legislation at Rome, it will suffice, I hope, to give a clear idea of what Roman marriage was. I should add that the law, inspired by the old patriotic spirit and the prejudices of caste, limited the right of marriage, the _jus connubii_. The _justes noces_ were at first an aristocratic privilege. The plebeians coupled _more ferarum_. At length the _jus connubii_ extended to marriages between Latin and Roman, Latin and Latin, and even foreigner and foreigner. The child followed the condition of the mother, which seems to be a survival of the ancient maternal family. Another vestige of the same kind is found in the legal position of _spurii_--that is to say, of children born of a marriage which is either prohibited or incestuous or bigamous. These children, irregularly conceived, have a mother, but no legal father; they do not come under the paternal power of the father, like the child of lawful marriage, and cannot be legitimated.[615] The study of the transformations that Roman marriage underwent from the time of Numa to that of the emperors is most interesting; for we can follow a complete evolution in regard to it which has never been so complete in any other country. At first we find conjugal anarchy, the capricious union or _usus_, which could be, and which was in fact, often polygamous, as the ulterior persistence of the concubinate proves; then the marriage by capture, of which the trace remained in the marriage ceremony; then the marriage by purchase, the coemptio, with its ordinary consequence, the servitude of the wife, which even the solemn marriage or confarreation did not abolish. At length this brutal law of the primitive ages relaxes. The law which holds the woman under paternal power (_patria potestas_) is turned round. The father himself gives his daughter _in mancipium_ to a third party, who afterwards enfranchises her. Sometimes it is the _patria potestas_ which is a check to the _manus_ of the husband. The wife, in marrying, without being subject to the _manus_, remains subject to her father, who can even claim her again.