Ancient law subordinates the woman to her blood-relations, while a prime phenomenon of modern jurisprudence has been her subordination to her husband. The history of the change is remarkable. It begins far back in the annals of Rome. Anciently, there were three modes in which marriage might be contracted according to Roman usage, one involving a religious solemnity, the other two the observance of certain secular formalities. By the religious marriage of _Confarreation_; by the higher form of civil marriage, which was called _Coemption_; and by the lower form, which was termed _Usus_, the husband acquired a number of rights over the person and property of his wife, which were on the whole in excess of such as are conferred on him in any system of modern jurisprudence. But in what capacity did he acquire them? Not as _Husband_, but as _Father_. By the _Confarreation_, _Coemption_, and _Usus_, the woman passed in _manum viri_—that is, in law she became the _Daughter_ of her husband. She was included in his _Patria Potestas_. She incurred all the liabilities springing out of it while it subsisted, and surviving it when it had expired. All her property became absolutely his and she was retained in tutelage after his death to the guardian whom he had appointed by will.[255]
On this subject of male supremacy in the family Mr. Maine remarks:
The foundation of Agnation is not the marriage of Father and Mother, but the authority of the Father. All persons are Agnatically bound together who are under the same Paternal Power, or who have been under it, or who might have been under it if their lineal ancestor had lived long enough to exercise his empire.[256]
Under this bond would be united all the children belonging to the head of the household and all the descendants of the sons, but not of the daughters; the daughters’ children under this manner of reckoning descent belonged to the families of their respective fathers. Although under this system a man might adopt a stranger into his family, and invest him with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereunto, no descendant of a daughter could claim any of the rights of agnation. Under Hindu law, which is saturated with the primitive notions of family dependency, in the genealogies, the names of women are omitted altogether. We are assured by Mr. Maine that the exclusion of women from governmental functions certainly had its origin in agnation. Thus it is seen that paternity had come to involve the idea of a supreme ruler or potentate, and that the overshadowing predominance of the male over the female had paved the way to the future worship of one all-powerful male deity.