But this union on the side of the woman was rigorous and unequal; and
she renounced the name and worship of her father's house to embrace a
new servitude, decorated only by the title of adoption: a fiction of the
law, neither rational nor elegant, bestowed on the mother of a family
(her proper appellation) the strange characters of sister to her own
children, and of daughter to her husband or master, who was invested
with the plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her
behavior was approved or censured or chastised; he exercised the
jurisdiction of life and death, and it was allowed that in the cases of
adultery or drunkenness the sentence might be properly inflicted. She
acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly
was woman defined, not as a _person_, but as a _thing_, that if the
original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other
movables, by the _use_ and possession of an entire year. The inclination
of the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so
scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws; but as polygamy
was unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or more favored
partner.
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