rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in Babylonia and in Egypt.  In the case of Rome, however, the growing refinement of civilization, and the expansion of the Empire, were associated with the magnificent development of the system of Roman law, which in its final forms consecrated the position of women.  In the last days of the Republic women already began to attain the same legal level as men, and later the great Antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law, reached the conception of the equality of the sexes as a principle of the code of equity.  The patriarchal subordination of women fell into complete discredit, and this continued until, in the days of Justinian, under the influence of Christianity, the position of women began to suffer.[284] In the best days the older forms of Roman marriage gave place to a form (apparently old but not hitherto considered reputable) which amounted in law to a temporary deposit of the woman by her family.  She was independent of her husband (more especially as she came to him with her own dowry) and only nominally dependent on her family.  Marriage was a private contract, accompanied by a religious ceremony if desired, and being a contract it could be dissolved, for any reason, in the presence of competent witnesses and with due legal forms, after the advice of the family council had been taken.  Consent was the essence of this marriage and no shame, therefore, attached to its dissolution.  Nor had it any evil effect either on the happiness or the morals of Roman women.[285] Such a system is obviously more in harmony with modern civilized feeling than any system that has ever been set up in Christendom.

In Rome, also, it is clear that this system was not a mere legal invention but the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling in favor of the equality of men and women, often even in the field of sexual morality.  Plautus, who makes the old slave Syra ask why there is not the same law in this respect for the husband as for the wife,[286] had preceded the legist Ulpian who wrote:  “It seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity of his wife while he himself shows no example of it."[287] Such demands lie deeper than social legislation, but the fact that these questions presented themselves to typical Roman men indicates the general attitude towards women.  In the final stage of Roman society the bond of the patriarchal system so far as women were concerned dwindled to a mere thread binding them to their fathers and leaving them quite free face to face with their husbands.  “The Roman matron of the Empire,” says Hobhouse, “was more fully her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier civilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of Egyptian history, and, it must be added, than the wife of any later civilization down to our own generation."[288]