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Updated: June 2, 2025
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.
Otherwise the marriage was absolutely as valid for all purposes private and public as it could be made even by confarreatio itself. The sacramental part was absent, and the survival of the features of marriage by purchase, which we may see in the form of coemptio, was also absent; but in all other respects the marriage ceremony was the same as in marriage cum manu.
This was the solemn marriage by confarreatio, already described, which qualified the husband and wife for the special priesthood of Jupiter. Women soon grew to value their freedom too highly to enter it; as early as 23 A.D. the Senate had to relax some of the rigour of the old laws on the matter as a special inducement for women to consent to enter this union.
In two other forms, besides confarreatio, the bride could be brought under the hand of her husband, viz., coemptio and usus, with which we are not here specially concerned; for long before the last century of the Republic all three methods had become practically obsolete, or were only occasionally used for particular purposes.
But with a few exceptions, in which reasons of religion protected the ancient usages to which class the -confarreatio- as well as the declaration of war by the college of Fetiales belonged the Roman law, as we know it, uniformly and on principle rejects the symbol, and requires in all cases neither more nor less than the full and pure expression of will.
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