To understand marriage at Rome, it is needed to keep in mind that a woman was always considered to be under the control of a man--father, husband, or guardian. Marriage might or might not mean the transfer of this right to the husband, so that there were two general kinds of marriage contracts. By the one, _cum conventione_, the wife passed from her father's family into the family of her husband, _in manum convenit_, and stood in relation to her husband as a daughter, she surrendered her patrimony and became one of her husband's legal heirs. In the second, _sine conventione_, the wife remained under the rule of her father, as before the marriage, and retained her own property and her right of inheritance in her father's estate. In the first case, the wife became a _materfamilias_ while in the second she was simply an _uxor_. In the marriage, _sine conventione_, there was, perhaps, no form required as cohabitation of the man and woman constituted the marriage. In the marriage, _cum conventione_, there were three forms--_usus_, _coemptio_, and _confarreatio_. Marriage by _usus_ prevailed among the plebian, common people; marriage by _coemptio_ was the one commonly practised by the middle classes; and marriage by _confarreatio_ was the favorite form in the highest social circles. Marriage by _usus_ was the simplest form, in which the wife entered into her husband's _manus_, if she lived a whole year in the man's house, both parties agreeing to the relation. In this case then the father's power was gone and he could not even compel the wife to leave her husband's home. But should the woman absent herself from the man's house for three nights in succession during the year, then the bond was broken. In the times when divorce was denied to the woman, she would often avail herself of this right of remaining away three nights in a year, so that if need arose she could have herself claimed by her father or guardian and in this way she could leave her husband. In marriage by _coemptio_, there was a kind of mutual purchase, a fictitious sale, which the couple made to each other of their person, in which each delivered to the other a small piece of money and repeated certain words. The father emancipated his daughter in favor of her future husband and she came to sustain to the husband the relation of a daughter, took his name, gave up all her goods to him, and declared that she entered into the union of her own free will.