the conclusion, as the story of the Sabine rape, the hasta coelibaris, the pretended forcible tearing of the bride from her mother, &c., point to a time when capture was in vogue, and as Gaius defines coemptio as an imaginary sale, there must have been an intermediate stage in which there was a real purchase of the bridge from her father or guardian, of which coemptio was a modified survival; that in it consequently the bridegroom was the purchaser, the bride's paterfamilias or guardian the seller, and the bride herself the object of sale. That there may have been such an intermediate stage is more than probable; but the coemption of the texts does not represent it.
The following points are to be noted: (1) Emere in old Latin did not necessarily mean to purchase for a substantial money price, but simply to take, receive, or acquire; see Festus v. Redemptores (Bruns, p. 286), Paul. Diac. vv. Abemito and Emere (Bruns, pp. 262, 267); (2) though coemptio was a mancipation, yet this was used for many other purposes besides actual sale and conveyance of a res mancipi, e.g., the execution of a testament and the effecting of a donation, adoption or emancipation the touching of the scales with a peice of copper (and later a coin) in the presence of witnesses was but the solemnity employed to mark the completion of the act, whose nature and purpose were defined in the contemporaneous spoken words; (3) that Cicero and Gaius never use the word coemere, but always coemptionem facere, a phrase they apply exclusively to the bride, coemptionari and coemptionator being applied to the bridegroom; (4) that Servius, speaking of coemptio, says (in Aen., iv. 103, Bruns, p. 322), "Mulier atque vir in se quasi coemptionem faciunt," and (in Georg., i. 31, Bruns, p. 324) "Se maritus et uxor invicem coemebant;" (5) that Boethius (in Cic. Top., ii.3, § 24, Brun, p. 320), quoting Ulpian as his authority, says, "Sese in coemendo invicem interrogabant," &c. ; (6) that Isidore (Orig. v. 24, § 26, Bruns, p. 327) says, "Se maritus et uxor invicem emebant, ne videratur uxor ancilla;" (7) that Nenius Marcellus, v. Nubentes (Bruns, p. 312), says that in ancient times a woman marrying carried three pieces of money, one for her husband tamquam emendi causa, and the others for his domestic and compital lares.
In presence of all these authorities it seems impossible to accept either the prevalent opinion that the bridegroom alone was purchaser, or that entertained by Hölder (Die Römische Ehe, Zurich, 1874, p. 20 sq.), that this position was taken solely by the bride, the bridegroom being the object of purchase. Reciprocal purchase, or rather, as Boethius puts it, the acquiring of each other as paterfamilias and materfamilias resectively, and that under pretence of purchase, seems to have been the true nature of the transaction. The objection usually urged against this view—that a man could not sell himself—is of very little weight. Why could he not do so as well as the bride? It is said she did not do so; that if a filiafamilias, she was sold by her father, and if sui juris, by her tutors. But the last part of the explanaion is onconsistent with what
