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:
“Can you support the expense of a husband, hussy, in gaming, drinking and whoring? Have you money enough to carry on the daily quarrels of man and wife about who shall squander most?”
—John Gay (1685–1732)
“To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“That matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter Piper. How would she have set in order that huge littered empire of the one, and with indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled peppers for the other.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)