Manus Marriage
(1) Prevalence and Constitution
In early law, it is generally assumed, manus marriage was the normal form of marÂriage, and there were three recognised ways of constituting such a marriage.
The first was coemptio, which took the form of a fictitious sale, before witnesses, of the bride to the groom.[703] Secondly, this form of marriage could be brought about by confarreatio, which was a religious ceremony involving a sacrifice to the god Jupiter, a special cake made with spelt (a type of wheat), and formal acts and words in the presence of ten witnesses. This seems to have survived at least until Gaius' day because certain priesthoods could only be held by those married in this way and born of parents married in this way.[704] Thirdly, where the parties had entered into a free marriage, it would be converted to a manus marriage by continuous cohabiÂtation for a year. This was called usus. A provision in the Twelve Tables provided that this consequence could be avoided if the wife absented herself for three nights in the year. By Gaius' time, however, usus had fallen out of use, ‘partly abolished by statutes, partly obliterated by desuetude'.[705] In his day, the parties could cohabit continuously without their marriage being converted to a manus one.(2) Legal Consequences
The marriage had consequences for both the spouses and their children. As far as the children are concerned, by virtue of having been produced within marriage they were legitimate children of their father, and would fall into his potestas (or that of his paterfamilias'). For the wife, there were also significant consequences. On entering into a manus marriage, the wife fell into the potestas of her husband (or of his paterfamilias'). She was therefore in much the same position as her husband's daughter, unable to own property and with the succession rights of a daughter.[706]
(3) Divorce
A marriage could be brought to an end by divorce. The position of divorce in early law is not particularly clear.
However, it was certainly the case that only the husband could initiate it. According to rules attributed by later Roman writers to Romulus, the first king, there were three grounds on which a man could divorce his wife. These were adultery, ‘substitution of keys' and ‘poisoning of children'. The meaning of adultery is clear enough, but the other two grounds are unfortunately less so. Poisoning of children may refer to abortion. The idea of substitution of keys is, however, mysterious.[707] At any rate, a man who divorced his wife without one of these justifications had to give the wife half of his property. The other half was forfeited to the goddess Ceres.Divorce seems to have become more readily available from around 230 BC, when an upper-class Roman named Carvilius Ruga was allowed to divorce his wife without suffering the prescribed penalty. This was the case even though none of the prescribed grounds of divorce was present. Despite this, he was not seen as being at fault.[708] [709] In the case of a marriage constituted by confarreatio, the divorce was effected by a ceremony called diffareatioJ^ In other cases, the procedure was for the husband to emancipate his wife, as if she were his daughter.[710] This then was a procedure initiated and carried out by the husband, and it is likely that in early law the wife had no power to initiate a divorce at all. In the classical period, however, it seems that a wife in a manus marriage could compel her husband to emancipate her on sending him a notice of repudiation.[711] D.