prevailed essentially at Rome, down to the time when Rome became Christian.
Those who wish for particulars will find them in an admirable chapter (the
fifth) of Maine's "Ancient Law." At one time the husband was held to
possess the _patria potestas_, or paternal power, in its full force. By law
"the woman passed _in manum viri_, that is, she became the daughter of her
husband." All she had became his, and after his death she was retained in
the same strict tutelage by any guardians his will might appoint.
Afterwards, to soften this rigid bond, the woman was regarded in law as
being temporarily deposited by her family with her husband; the family
appointed guardians over her; and thus, between the two tyrannies, she won
a sort of independence. Then came Christianity, and swept away the merely
parental authority for married women, concentrating all upon the husband.
Hence our legislation bears the mark of a double origin, and woman is half
recognized as an equal and half as a slave.

It is necessary to remember, therefore, that all the relation of subjection
in marriage is merely the residue of an unnatural system, of which all else
is long since outgrown. It would have seemed to an ancient Roman a matter
of course that a woman should, all her life long, obey the guardians set
over her person. It still seems to many people a matter of course that she
should obey her husband. To others among us, on the contrary, both these
theories of obedience seem barbarous, and the one is merely a relic of the
other.

We cannot disregard the history of the Theory of Tutelage. If we could
believe that a chrysalis is always a chrysalis, and a butterfly always a
butterfly, we could easily leave each to its appropriate sphere; but when
we see the chrysalis open, and the butterfly come half out of it, we know
that sooner or later it must spread wings, and fly. The theory of tutelage
implies the chrysalis. Woman is the butterfly. Sooner or later she will be