to be for life. As a child she was subject to the
absolute authority of the male parent, extending over
life and death. Her marriage originated, according
+to the most recent scientific historians, either in pur-
chase or in capture; and in either case the woman
was the property of the man. The wedding ring was
the symbol of marital power. The right of the hus-
band to sell his wife still survives in the popular
traditions of England; the forms of capture are still
common in barbarous society, and may be seen even
in highly civilized countries; while the forms of pur-
chase are thought to be well-nigh universal. "While
wives were captured, if there was any sense of prop-
erty at all, wives would be regarded as property.
When, at a later stage, they came to pass from the
houses of their birth into alien houses, by purchase,
they would still be property." ¹. The recorded his-
tory of early society offers numberless illustrations of
the unbounded power which the husband exercised
over his wife, and the Roman law was especially
emphatic in extending over her the patria potestas,
in which the Romans blended their conceptions of
the family relation. "The family was based not
upon actual relationship, but upon power; and the
husband acquired over his wife the same despotic
power which the father had over his children." ².

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