[291] Frazer thinks that the Roman kingship was transmitted in the female line; the king being a man of another town or race, who had married the daughter of his predecessor and received the crown through her. This hypothesis explains the obscure features of the traditional history of the Latin kings; their miraculous birth, and the fact that many of the kings from their names appear to have been of plebeian and not patrician families. The legends of the birth of Servius Tullius which tradition imputes to a look, or that Coeculus the founder of Proneste was conceived by a spark that leaped into his mother's bosom, as well as the rape of the Sabines, may be mentioned as traces pointing to mother-descent (_Golden Bough_, Pt. I. _The Magic Art_, Vol. II. pp. 270, 289, 312). [292] Quoted from _Position of Woman, Actual and Ideal_; Essay on "The Position of Woman in History," p. 38. [293] Letourneau, _Evolution of Marriage_, pp. 120, 201. The _usus_ was similar to the Polynesian marriage, and was the consecration of the free union after a year of cohabitation. By it the wife passed as completely under the _manum mariti_ as if she had eaten of the sacred cake. [294] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, Vol. I. p. 210. The eating of the cake would seem to the ancient mind to have been connected with magic, and was regarded as actually effacious in establishing a unity of the man and the woman. [295] _Coemption_ became in time purely symbolic. The bride was delivered to the husband, who as a formality gave a few pieces of silver as payment; but the ceremony proves how completely the woman was regarded as the property of the father. [296] Romulus, says Plutarch, gave the husband power to divorce his wife in case of her poisoning his children, or counterfeiting his keys, or committing adultery (Romulus, XXXVI.). Valerius Maximus affirms that divorce was unknown for 520 years after the foundation of Rome. [297] Hobhouse, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 211 (_note_). He states, "The concubinate we hear of in Roman Law is a form of union bereft of some of the civil rights of marriage, not the relation of a married man to a secondary wife or slave-girl." [298] Donaldson, _op. cit._, p. 88. He remarks in a note, "The story may not be historical, but the Romans regarded it as such." Wives were prohibited from tasting wine at the risk of the severest penalties. [299] St. Augustine, _Confessions_, Bk. IX. Ch. IX. [300] Letourneau, _Evolution of Marriage_, pp. 244, 245. In the ancient law, when the crime of the woman led to divorce she lost all her dowry. Later, only a sixth was kept back for adultery, and an eighth for other crimes. In the last stages of the law the guilty husband lost the whole dowry, while if the wife divorced without a cause, the husband retained a sixth of the dowry for each child, but only up to three-sixths. [301] _Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI. p. 396. [302] Hecker, _History of Women's Rights_, p. 12. [303] Ellis, _op. cit._, p. 395.