Ill So far I ha\ e concentrated attention on the prehistory stipulario and wtnu'ifmfio, before the introduction of any appropriate procedure. Now I want to turn to the rather different case of coufunvatio which may ne\er have directly given rise to a process hut seems from the outset to have had legal consequences. This form of marriage ceremony mov ed the bride from her own family into the manus or pow er of the husband or his paterfamilias. I’he ceremony was fundamentallv' religious, and involved the presence of leading priests including the fJamcii Dialis the poiitifc.x maximus. With the necessary inv'olv'ement of these leading state priests coufanratio must have been \ ery restricted, to patricians and possibly to a few leading piebeians. (it has even been suggested, though without evidence, that it was even restricted to the marriage of priests.) When, later, the transfer of mamis to the husband could be achieved by coemptio, a variant of the developed mauiepatio, religion played no legal role. Religious rites would be verv’ much present in the marriage celebrations but had no part in the actual coemptio. Coemptio be used by anyone. It vvoidd appear that the state religious leaders were not interested in mauus for the masses. IV Rut now: the earliest civ il action for w hich we hav e ev idence is the li’gis actio sacramaito, "the action (d the law by oath." If the evidence seems plausible, then the action nuvst likelv' arose from stipulatio. 6 But I am not one of those who think the concept of ownership developed only late in Rome. For that view see, e.g. Max Kaser, The Concept of Roman Ownership,' 17 Tydskrif vir Hedendagse Romeins-Hollandse Reg (1966), pp. sff. 7 For sources see, e.g. Alan Watson, Rome of the XII Tables (Princeton, 1975), pp. 9ff. 159
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