THE GROWTH VP THE TIE 81 



able advantages. It implied free choice on the part of 

 the contracting parties, which marriage by family- 

 arrangement did not ; it secured the independence of 

 women, who were allowed to hold property in their 

 own right ; it played a large part in the conversion of 

 the empire to Christianity, through the influence of 

 the female converts, who, under the old patrician 

 systems of Confarreatio and Coemptio, would have 

 been powerless ; and it paved the way for the Christian 

 doctrine of monogamy. To Usus were due those 

 noble examples of conjugal love so conspicuous amid 

 the general corruption of Eoman society — wives who 

 followed their husbands upon distant campaigns, and 

 even refused to survive them, and couples so passion- 

 ately attached to each other that their sarcophagi 

 were adorned with a medallion representing them 

 clasped in each other's arms. 



Still, the Eomans never fully entered into the 

 sentiment known to the moderns as romantic love — 

 that ineffable captivation of the higher senses which 

 prompted the remark of Proudhon : Chez les dmes 

 d'dite, I'amour n'a pas d'organes. Chastity was 

 reverenced in theory but not in practice. There was 

 a custom that a virgin should not be put to death, 

 but it was deemed to be complied «vith if the 



