Note 1181 — Chapter IV · PRE-IMPERIAL CAREER OF THEODORA: THE CONSORT OF JUSTINIAN
Reading edition
The constitution of the Roman family can be apprehended readily by running through the consecutive expositions in Muirhead’s Private Law of Rome, Edin., 1886, pp. 24, 64, 115, 248, 345, 514. In law the mother and children were practically the slaves of the paterfamilias: he could divorce his wife at pleasure, and yet 500 years elapsed before a husband made use of this power, so potent was the high ethical code which sustained the Republic.