§62. During this period, too, the free non-citizens (§§177, 178), the plebeians, had been busy in marrying and giving in marriage. There is little doubt that their unions had been as sacred in their eyes, their family ties as strictly regarded and as pure, as those of the patricians, but these unions were unhallowed by the national gods and unrecognized by the civil law, simply because the plebeians were not yet citizens. Their form of marriage was called _ūsus_, and consisted essentially in the living together of the man and woman as husband and wife for a year, though there were, of course, conventional forms and observances, about which we know absolutely nothing. The plebeian husband might acquire the same rights over the person and property of his wife as the patrician, but the form of marriage did not in itself involve _manus_. The wife might remain a member of her father's family and retain such property as he allowed her (§33) by merely absenting herself from her husband for the space of a _trinoctium_ each year. If she did this the marriage was _sine conventiōne in manum_, and the husband had no control over her property; if she did not, the marriage like that of the patricians was _cum conventiōne in manum_. [Illustration: FIGURE 10. HADRIAN] §63. At least as far back as the time of Servius goes another Roman form of marriage, also plebeian, though not so ancient as _ūsus_. It was called _coēmptiō_ and was a fictitious sale, by which the _pater familiās_ of the woman, or her guardian (_tūtor_) if she was _suī iūris_, transferred her to the man _mātrimōniī causā_. This form must have been a survival of the old custom of purchase and sale of wives, but we do not know when it was introduced among the Romans. It carried _manus_ with it as a matter of course and seems to have been regarded socially as better form than _ūsus_. The two existed for centuries side by side, but _coēmptiō_ survived _ūsus_ as a form of marriage _cum conventiōne in manum_. §64. Ius Conubii.--While the Servian constitution made the plebeians citizens and thereby legalized their forms of marriage, it did not give them the right of intermarriage with the patricians. Many of the plebeian families were hardly less ancient than the patricians, many were rich and powerful, but it was not until 445 B.C. that marriages between the two orders were formally sanctioned by the civil law. The objection on the part of the patricians was largely a religious one: The gods of the state were patrician gods, the auspices could be taken by patricians only, the marriages of patricians only were sanctioned by heaven. Their orators protested that the unions of the plebeians were no better than promiscuous intercourse, they were not _iūstae nūptiae_ (§67); the plebeian wife was taken _in mātrimōnium_, she was at best an _uxor_, not a _māter familiās_; her offspring were "mother's children," not _patriciī_.