When the first uncertain light of history falls on the promontory of Italy, and on the vigorous nation that was building up one of the most powerful empires the world has ever seen, the women are subordinate, but not so harshly treated as at a later date. Letourneau finds a number of indications that the earlier Roman family was maternal in form (_i.e._, the children took the name of, and inherited through, the mother); but this does not imply anything like a matriarchate. Indeed, a curious marriage-rite that long survived at Rome, in which the husband parted the bride's hair with the point of a spear, and the story of the rape of the Sabines, suggest an early practice of capturing wives--a practice that leads naturally to subordination. However that may be, when the Romans come at length within our clear knowledge, the woman is in a position of great subordination. The state-organisation is slight, and the father rules his house with a terrible despotism. From the absolute control of a father a young woman passes to the almost absolute control of her husband. The only difference is that he cannot sell her, as he may the slave or the child, and cannot pass judgment on her except in the presence of her male relatives. It seems, however, that, as Mommsen says, a public opinion had already grown that controlled this theoretic autocracy of the husband and father. The husband could and did dismiss her at his will, while she had no right of divorce; but the woman who was reconciled to the conditions was treated with respect and affection, received guests, went to the circus with her husband, and never suffered the seclusion of her Greek cousin. She could also bear witness or plead, when the courts of justice developed. A few instances of brutal treatment are preserved in the chronicles, but these were quite exceptional. This first phase of woman's development in historical Rome lasted until about 200 B.C. I need not dwell on the familiar and splendid types of womanhood that stand out in the chronicles before that time. It is well known that character was finely developed in the early Romans. About the beginning of the second century before Christ, at the close of the long struggle with Carthage, the second phase in the development of the women (and of the race generally) set in. It is to be remembered that the Republic was still a comparatively small power. The great age of conquest, that would carry the eagles over the known earth, was to come long afterwards, and therefore, in the case of Rome, it is sheer historical untruth to represent the power as beginning to decay when the women began to assert themselves. Two hundred years before Christ conservative Romans greeted the woman-movement with all the dismal prophecies with which many greet it in our own time. Yet it was not until three centuries later that Rome reached the height of its power.