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MARS.
of the house, to weaving and spinning with her maid-servants in the atrium, and to the training of her children. She was addressed as dSmmd (mistress) by all the members of her household, even her husband, and their conduct towards her was regulated by certain rules of etiquette. On the 1st of March, the mutronalla, she received congratulations and presents from the whole household. Her birthday, too, was observed with due festivities. She took a personal interest in her husband’s pursuits, and was consulted by him on all occasions that concerned the family. In public she was treated with great respect, place was made for her, and no hand might be laid npon her, not even by the officers of the law. She might appear at religious services, at meals (where she remained sitting and took no wine), in the theatre, and even in the courts, whether to give evidence, or to offer intercession for a relative charged with an offence. After her death she was honoured by a public panegyric. The strictness of the social code which regulated the behaviour of women at home and abroad, and the respect in which they were held, maintained the sanctity of marriage for a long time inviolate.
The second Punic War was followed by a state of social corruption, which extended to the female sex, the degradation of which vras completed by the dissolution of moral ties brought about by the civil wars. One symptom of the loosening of family life was the increasing number of marriages which did not bring the wives into the power of their husbands, and left them the control of their property. Under the Empire no other kind of marriage survived. Another symptom which appeared, even in the later days of the Republic, was the increasing number of divorces, and the growing unwillingness to marry. In the first five centuries of the city divorces must have been rare. Marriages contracted by con-farreatio seem originally to have been dissoluble only in case of certain definite offences on the part of the wife. Such were i adultery, child-murder, making of false keys, ‘ and drinking of wine. In these cases the family council pronounced sentence of death, the execution of which was preceded by a solemn act of diffarreatio. The marriages of priests, contracted by confarreatio, remained always indissoluble. In early times the dissolution of a marriage for a trivial j reason drew down upon it the reproof of the censor. But as time went on divorces
became not only more frequent, but more capricious, until at length the mere expression of a desire for separation on the part of husband or wife was sufficient. If the fault was on the husband’s side, the wife’s I dowry was returned to her : if not, certain deductions were made. In case of adultery on the wife’s part, the husband had, in ancient times, the right of keeping back the whole dowry, but this law was afterwards relaxed.. The censors had, originally, the power of punishing with a pecuniary fine a citizen who refused to marry, but the disinclination to marry grew to such a pitch that neither punishment of the offence, nor rewards offered to the parents of numerous families, could check it. As | far back as 131 b.c. the censor Metellus ‘ had spoken of marriage as a necessary burden to be borne for patriotic motives. Augustus endeavoured to check the course of opinion by legislation affecting property: unmarried persons were not permitted to inherit at all, and childless couples were allowed to receive only half of their legacies, while parents, especially parents of three or more children, were favoured by various privileges and advantages. Divorces were not to take place, unless accompanied with certain forms and prescriptions. But these laws produced only a superficial effect. The moral standard was not raised, but society sank, under the Empire, to the ! lowest depth of corruption.
liars (also Mavors, Mamers). With Jupiter the principal deity of the inhabitants of Italy, and therefore honoured with particular reverence by the Latins and Romans from the very earliest times, especially as the latter regarded him as the father of Romulus, the founder of Rome, He was held to be the son of Juno, who bore him in consequence of touching a wonderful spring-flower, and the husband of N6r!o or Nerlene, a goddess of strength. Through the emphasising of one of his attributes he gradually came to be considered as, above all, the god of war; for originally he is at the same time one of the mightiest gods of nature, who accords fertility and protection to fields and herds.
The first month of the old Roman year was dedicated to him as the fertilizing god of spring; in the very ancient chant of the Arval brothers (q.v.), at the May-day festival of the Dea Dia, the help and protection of Mars were demanded. In earlier times he was also invoked at the hallowing of the fields (sec ambarvalia), that he might
