In order to appreciate the position of women of various types in the society we are examining, it is necessary to make it clear what Roman marriage originally and ideally meant. In any society, it will be found that the position and influence of woman can be fairly well discerned from the nature of the marriage ceremony and the conditions under which it is carried out. At Rome, in all periods of her history, a iustum matrimonium, i.e. a marriage sanctioned by law and religion, and therefore entirely legal in all its results, was a matter of great moment, not to be achieved without many forms and ceremonies. The reason for this elaboration is obvious, at any rate to any one who has some acquaintance with ancient life in Greece or Italy.The house was a residence for the divine members of the family, as well as the human; the entrance, therefore, of a bride into the household,—of one, that is, who had no part nor lot in that family life—meant some straining of the relation between the divine and human members. The human part of the family brings in a new member, but it has to be assured that the divine part is willing to accept her before the step taken can be regarded as complete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to be able to share in its sacra, i.e. in the worship of the household spirits, the ancestors in their tombs, or in any special cult attached to the family.

In order to secure this eligibility, she was in the earliest times subjected to a ceremony which was clearly of a sacramental character, and which had as its effect the transference of the bride from the hand (manus) of her father, i.e. from absolute subjection to him as the head of her own family, to the hand of her husband, i.e. to absolute subjection to him as the head of her new family.

This sacramental ceremony was called confarreatio, because a sacred cake, made of the old Italian grain called far, and offered to Jupiter Farreus, was partaken of by bride and bridegroom, in the presence of the Pontifex Maximus, the Flamen Dialis, and ten other witnesses. At such a ceremony the auspices had of course been taken, and apparently a victim was also slain, and offered probably to Ceres, the skin of which was stretched over two seats (sellae), on which the bride and bridegroom had to sit. These details of the early form of patrician marriage are only mentioned here to make the religious character of the Roman idea of the rite quite plain; in other words, to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside was a matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn initiation of the greek culture during the republican age before assuming that position. And we may still further illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus, or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded by confarreatio, and that in each case the priest himself must be married by the same ceremony.

This last mentioned fact may also serve to remind us that it was not only the family and its sacra, its life and its maintenance, that called for the ceremonies making up a iustum matrimonium, but also the State and its sacra, its life and its maintenance.[208] As confarreatio had as its immediate object the providing of a materfamilias fully qualified in all her various functions, and as its further object the providing of persons legally qualified to perform the most important sacra of the state; so marriage, in whatever form, had as its object at once the maintenance of the family and its sacra and the production of men able to serve the State in peace and war. To be a Roman citizen you must be the product of a iustum matrimonium. From this initial fact flow all the iura or rights which together make up citizenship; whether the private rights, which enable you to hold and transfer and to inherit property under the shelter of the Roman law,[209] or the public rights, which protect your person against violence and murder, and enable you to give your vote in the public assembly and to seek election to magistracies.

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