Identifier: plainhometalkabo00foot (find matches)
Title: Plain home talk about the human system--the habits of men and women--the cause and prevention of disease--our sexual relations and social natures
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Foote. Edward B(liss), 1829-1906. (from old catalog)
Subjects: Medicine, Popular Marriage
Publisher: New York : Murray Hill publishing company (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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-ively by the designation—pa-trician and plebeian. At thisearly age of Roman civiliza-tion, the civil law had nothingto do with marriage; it wasan affair of the family. Cus-tom, rather than law, tookcharge of the function of fam-the monogamic pamily. (\y organization ; but custom was then, as it now is, an arbitrary ruler in all things it presumed to regulate.In the oldest form of Roman marriage, according to Paul Gide, thewoman gave up all family ties on her side, on becoming a wife, and enteredwith all her effects into the family of her husband. After a time, theresprang up a party which opposed this absorption of the daughter and herproperty into the family of the husband, and custom began to allow thewoman to remain at home after marriage, in consequence of which, herfamily was aggrandized by the industry and prosperity of the husband.For many generations these two customs co-existed, some abiding by thefirst, and others governing themselves by the latter one, and eventually the
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HISTORY OF MONOGAMY. 661 former became extinct in all cases, excepting those wherein the woman wasan heiress in her own right, or otherwise possessed of property belongingwholly to herself; a woman thus situated was allowed, if she chose, tobecome a member of the household to which her husband belonged. When the wife remained at her fathers house, she was mainly subject tohis control. He could take her from the husband, punish her, or even takeher life. The husband, too, had the right to whip, kill, or sell her. Whenthe will of the husband came in conflict with that of the father, the diffi-culty was submitted to a tribunal composed of the relatives of the parentsand friends of the wife, and finally, if necessary, to the censor, who was apublic functionary, acting under no rules of law, but simply upon principlesof equity. Webster defines a censor as an officer in ancient Rome, whosebusiness was to register the effects of the citizens, to impo-e taxes accord-ing to the property which

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