§33. So, too, in regard to the ownership of property the conditions were not really so hard as the strict letter of the law makes them appear to us. It was customary for the Head of the House to assign to his children property, _pecūlia_ ("cattle of their own"), for them to manage for their own benefit. And more than this, although the _pater familiās_ held legal title to all their acquisitions, yet practically all property was acquired for and belonged to the household as a whole, and he was in effect little more than a trustee to hold and administer it for the common benefit. This is shown by the fact that there was no graver offense against public morals, no fouler blot on private character, than to prove untrue to this trust, _patrimōnium prōfundere_. Besides this, the long continuance of the _potestās_ is in itself a proof that its rigor was more apparent than real. [Illustration: FIGURE 3. PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS] §34. Extinction of the Potestas.--The _patria potestās_ was extinguished in various ways: 1. By the death of the _pater familiās_, as has been explained in §19. 2. By the emancipation of the son or daughter. 3. By the loss of citizenship by either father or son. 4. If the son became a _flāmen diālis_ or the daughter a _virgō vestālis_. 5. If either father or child was adopted by a third party. 6. If the daughter passed by formal marriage into the power (_in manum_) of a husband, though this did not essentially change her dependent condition (§35). 7. If the son became a public magistrate. In this case the _potestās_ was suspended during the period of office, but after it expired the father might hold the son accountable for his acts, public and private, while holding the magistracy. §35. Manus.--The subject of marriage will be considered later; at this point it is only necessary to define the power over the wife possessed by the husband in its most extreme form, called by the Romans _manus_. By the oldest and most solemn form of marriage the wife was separated entirely from her father's family (§28) and passed into her husband's power or "hand" (_conventiō in manum_). This assumes, of course, that he was _suī iūris_; if he was not, then though nominally in his "hand" she was really subject as he was to his _pater familiās_. Any property she had of her own, and to have had any she must have been independent before her marriage, passed to him as a matter of course. If she had none, her _pater familiās_ furnished a dowry (_dōs_), which shared the same fate. Whatever she acquired by her industry or otherwise while the marriage lasted also became her husband's. So far, therefore, as property rights were concerned the _manus_ differed in no respect from the _patria potestās_: the wife was _in locō fīliae_, and on the husband's death took a daughter's share in his estate.