At such a ceremony the auspices had of course been taken,
and apparently a victim was also slain, and offered probably to Ceres,
the skin of which was stretched over two seats (sellae), on which the
bride and bridegroom had to sit.[206] These details of the early form
of patrician marriage are only mentioned here to make the religious
character of the Roman idea of the rite quite plain; in other words,
to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside was
a matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved
without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even
go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort
a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn
initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further
illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if
we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the
priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus,
or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded by
confarreatio, and that in each case the priest himself must be married
by the same ceremony.
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