I do not know how the operation and nature of the ancient Patria Potestas can be brought so vividly before the mind as by reflecting on the prerogatives attached to the husband by the pure English Common Law, and by recalling the rigorous consistency with which the view of a complete legal subjection on the part of the wife is carried by it, where it is untouched by equity or statutes, through every department of rights, duties, and remedies.[261] [261] _Ancient Law_, p. 154. NOTE.—As the position of women among the early German hordes was one of great dignity and respect, it may scarcely be argued that the sentiments embodied in the English Common Law relative to wives were in any degree the result of innate Teutonic prejudice against the female sex. #/ Notwithstanding the efforts which for several centuries were put forth in Rome to secure to women that independence which under the earlier Roman law had been denied them, in the code of Justinian, which was compiled in the early part of the sixth century, no word respecting the remarkable degree of liberty which under the later Roman law was accorded to women appears; and but for the discovery of the manuscript of Gaius, to which reference has already been made, we would never have become acquainted with the changes which had been wrought in this particular branch of Roman jurisprudence. In the Justinian code, instead of the humane edicts of the later, or middle Roman law, appeared the Canon or ecclesiastical law, by means of which women were condemned to a state of servitude even more degrading than that which had been imposed on them by the older law. Had mediæval scholasticism succeeded in concealing from the world the information contained in the manuscript of Gaius, still there would have remained sufficient evidence left to prove that in the second century of the present era woman’s freedom had been practically won. That women themselves were claiming absolute legal equality with men may not be doubted. Honoria, a Roman matron, first enunciated the principle: Taxation without representation is tyranny.[262] Cato’s celebrated oration in which he passionately exclaims: If you allow your women to be your equals how long will it be before they become your superiors?[263] shows that a certain type of men were becoming alarmed over the growing independence of women. [262] Roman History. Appian, London, 1913. [263] The History of Rome. Titus Livius, p. 172. The freeing of women from the bondage entailed on them by the older Roman law, an achievement which had required more than three centuries to accomplish, was a triumph for civilization unparalleled during the historic period. That this triumph over tyranny was of short duration is shown in the sequel to this movement.