To begin with, the boy and girl—­for such they were, as we should look on them, even at the time of marriage—­have been betrothed, in all probability, long before.  Cicero tells us that he betrothed his daughter Tullia to Calpurnius Piso Frugi early in 66 B.C.; the marriage took place in 63.  Tullia seems to have been born in 76, so that she was ten years old at the time of betrothal and thirteen at that of marriage.  This is probably typical of what usually happened; and it shows that the matter was really entirely in the hands of the parents.  It was a family arrangement, a mariage de convenance, as has been and is the practice among many peoples, ancient and modern.[212] The betrothal was indeed a promise rather than a definite contract, and might be broken off without illegality; and thus if there were a strong dislike on the part of either girl or boy a way of escape could be found.[213] However this may be, we may be sure that the idea of the marriage was not that of a union for love, though it was distinguished from concubinage by an “affectio maritalis” as well as by legal forms, and though a true attachment might, and often did, as in modern times in like circumstances, arise out of it.  It was the idea of the service of the family and the State that lay at the root of the union.  This is well illustrated, like so many other Roman ideas, in the Aeneid of Virgil.  Those who persist in looking on Aeneas with modern eyes, and convict him of perfidy towards Dido, forget that his passion for Dido was a sudden one, not sanctioned by the gods or by favourable auspices, and that the ultimate union with Lavinia, for whom he forms no such attachment, was one which would recommend itself to every Roman as justified by the advantage to the State.  The poet, it is true, betrays his own intense humanity in his treatment of the fate of Dido, but he does so in spite of his theme,—­the duty of every Roman to his family and the State.  A Roman would no doubt fall in love, like a youth of any other nation, but his passion had nothing to do with his life of duty as a Roman.  This idea of marriage had serious consequences, to which we shall return later on.

When the day for the wedding arrives, our bride assumes her bridal dress, laying aside the toga praetexta of her childhood and dedicating her dolls to the Lar of her family; and wearing the reddish veil (flammeum) and the woollen girdle fastened with a knot called the knot of Hercules,[214] she awaits the arrival of the bridegroom in her father’s house.  Meanwhile the auspices are being taken;[215] in earlier times this was done by observing the flight of birds, but now by examination of the entrails of a victim, apparently a sheep.  If this is satisfactory the youthful pair declare their consent to the union and join their right hands as directed by a pronuba, i.e. a married woman, who acts as a kind of priestess.  Then after another sacrifice and a wedding feast,