THE LEGAL DISCIPLINE OF THE ROMAN MARRIAGE

It's now time to ask ourselves how the Romans get married and what kind of legal discipline had to follow to have a family.First of all an important main principle needs to be stated: the authority of the pater familias was extended to all the living members of his family, no matter if his sons were married. As a matter of fact, the daughters in law were subject not to the potestas of their husbands, but to the power of their fathers in laws until his death. Therefore, members of the same family, no matter if they were married and had their own family life, had obligations to the pater familias.This said in ancient Rome there were two forms of marriage: cum manu and sine manu. The marriage cum manu was subdivided in confaerratio, which was a religious ceremony celebrated in front of the Pontifex Maximus with the symbolic break of a piece of bread.The second form was the coemptio, which is a sort of "purchase": the bride had to go visit the father of the bride and stipulate a sort of contract in which money or other objects were paid to him in order to have the woman and marry her. The Usus was a very unformal provision according which a woman who was living for one year with a man in the same house, she was considered under the manus of her husband.in the sine manu marriage the wife legally and ritually remained a member of her father's family, standing under the control of her father's potestas. A sine manu marriage did not change the legal status of the bride after the marriage, in regards to property rights.Therefore, in the sine manu marriage the bride is not in control of her father in law and of her husband, at his father's death.
Although citizens, the women in ancient Rome could not vote in elections, take an active part in public or political life, sit on a jury or plead in court. Only after the revision of the Roman law made by Justinian at the end of the Roman empire,Women could inherit by testament and could write wills because Christianity saw their societal role under a different angle.