Wife
Further information: Women in Ancient Rome and Marriage in ancient RomeThe legal potestas of the pater familias over his wife depended on the form of marriage contracted between them. In the Early Republic, a wife was "handed over" to the legal control of her husband in the form of marriage cum manu (Latin manus means "hand"). If the man divorced his wife, he had to give the dowry back to his wife and her family. By the Late Republic, manus marriage had become rare, and a woman remained legally a part of her birth family.
Women emancipated from the potestas of a paterfamilias were independent by law (sui iuris), but had a male guardian appointed to them. A woman sui iuris had the right to take legal action on her own behalf, but not to administer legal matters for others.
Read more about this topic: Pater Familias
Famous quotes containing the word wife:
““Come, come” said Tom’s father, “at your time of life,
There’s no longer excuse for thus playing the rake—
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.”
“Why, so it is, father—whose wife shall I take?””
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“A lock-jaw that bends a man’s head back to his heels, hydrophobia, that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity, that makes him eat grass; war, plague; cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He knows little, who will tell his wife all he knows.”
—Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)