The older form of Roman marriage involved the subjection of the wife to the control (manus) of her husband.
This form of marriage was fast becoming obsolete already by the beginning of the classical period of Roman private law, and accordingly we know less about it than we would like.
Gaius preserves a relatively full description of how manus marriages were entered (see Case 19), but he indicates that two of the three traditional methods were no longer in use by the mid-second century A.D.; the third (coemptio) seems to have survived only marginally at that date.The four Cases in this section were selected to introduce the main features of manus marriage, particularly because these features stand in sharp contrast to the “free” marriage of classical Roman law. One of the most remarkable features of Roman family law is that the Romans went through a transition from an archaic form of marriage featuring the wife's legal subjection to her husband to a form of marriage resting almost entirely upon voluntary cooperation between the spouses, without, as it seems, passing through any intermediate stage.
Collatio 16.2.1-3 (Gaius, Institutiones 3.1-3)
(1) Intestatorum hereditates lege duodecim tabularum primum ad suos heredes pertinent. (2) Sui autem heredes existimantur liberi qui in potestate morientis fuerunt.... (3) Uxor quoque, quae in manu est, ei cuius in manu est sua heres est, quia filiae loco est: item nurus quae in filii manu est, nam et haec neptis loco est. sed ita demum erit sua heres, si filius, cuius in manu sit cum pater moritur, in potestate eius non sit. idemque dicimus et de ea, quae in nepotis manu matrimonii causa sit, quia proneptis loco est.
(Gaius in the third book of his Institutes')
(1) By the Law of the Twelve Tables, the inheritances of those who die intestate fall first to their sui heredes (privileged heirs).
(2)New Roman"'> By sui heredes are meant descendants who were in the dying man’s potestas.
...(3) A wife in manus is also a sua heres to the man in whose manus she is, since she is in the position of a daughter (filiae loco). Likewise for a daughter-inlaw who is in a son’s manus, since she is in the position of a granddaughter; but she will be a sua heres only if she is in the manus of a son who is not in his father’s power when the father dies. And we say the same about a woman who is in a grandson’s manus for marriage purposes, since she is in the position of a greatgranddaughter.
1. Intestate Succession and Women in Manus. This Case relates not to family law as such but rather to rights of succession when a pater familias dies without leaving a will. In very early Roman law (the Twelve Tables date from 449 B.C.), the estate of the pater falls first to those persons directly under his control, the sui heredes (roughly, “his privileged heirs”); for details, see Case 159. These include his children-in-power but also his wife in manus, who is treated, for this purpose, like a daughter; that is, the wife shares the inheritance with her children, on an equal basis. Not only is a wife in manus a sua heres to her husband, but she can also inherit from her children and vice versa (Gaius, Inst. 3.14), something that was frequently untrue of a wife in free marriage. See Case 167.
2. “The Position of a Daughter.” On the various means for creating a manus marriage, see Case 19. Its main consequence is, as Gaius says (Inst. 1.111), that “she crossed into the familia of her husband and took on the position of a daughter.” That is, she leaves the familia of her pater familias (or, if she is already sui iuris, her familia comes to an end), and instead she becomes a part of her husbands.
This is one example of a change in civil status with respect to the family (see Case 1). As a consequence, her agnate relationship (see Case 3) with her prior relations is sundered; but in its place she acquires an agnate relationship with her husband and with his agnates, including his children (whether by her or by a previous wife) and his other descendants through males (see Tit. Ulp. 23.3). That said, it is still potentially misleading to describe her as actually assuming “the position of a daughter” if this is taken to mean that she enters into the patriapotestas of her husband. We know very little about manus, which was passing out of existence during the later Roman Republic; but it is at least clear that manus was conceived as a much less onesided relationship than potestas. A wife in manus was protected by certain social conventions, which were transformed into legal norms at a very early time; thus, it was apparently illegal for a husband to sell his wife, to give her in adoption, or to execute her even for serious misconduct without first consulting a consilium of relatives (compare Cases 52, 95-96). Further, the wife acceded to the responsible and socially honored position of materfamilias. Although there is no denying that her position was weak in law, it was not entirely abject.
More on the topic The older form of Roman marriage involved the subjection of the wife to the control (manus) of her husband.:
- The older form of Roman marriage involved the subjection of the wife to the control (manus) of her husband.
- According to the marriage legislation of the emperor Augustus, widows were to remarry within two (or three) years of their husband's death (and divorcees within eighteen months of divorce).8
- The husband's responsibilities
- Marriage was one of the fundamental institutions of Roman society, as it joined not only two individuals but two families.
- B Manus (marital subordination)
- CASE 40: Can a Wife in Manus Divorce?
- By ancient standards, adult Roman women, when no longer under the control of a pater familias, enjoyed considerable freedom.
- CASE 147: A Divorced Wife Takes Vengeance
- As we have seen, the legal structure of Roman marriage was fragile, in the sense that it was far from creating the family as a real partnership with respect to property; the wife appears, at times, almost as an intruder within a household structure still centered on the paterfamilias.
- CASE 72: Statutory Limits on a Husband's Power