Jucundus proceeded—“First, there is matrimonium confarreationis. You have nothing to do with that: strictly speaking, it is obsolete; it went out with the exclusiveness of the old patricians. I say ‘strictly speaking’; for the ceremonies remain, waiving the formal religious rite. Well, my dear Agellius, I don’t recommend this ceremonial to you. You’d have to kill a porker, to take out the entrails, to put away the gall, and to present it to Juno Pronuba. And there’s fire, too, and water, and frankincense, and a great deal of the same kind, which I think undesirable, and you would too; for there, I am sure, we are agreed. We put this aside then, the religious marriage. Next comes the marriage ex coemptione, a sort of mercantile transaction. In this case the parties buy each other, and become each other’s property. Well, every man to his taste; but for me, I don’t like to be bought and sold. I like to be my own master, and am suspicious of anything irrevocable. Why should you commit yourself (do you see?) for ever, for ever, to a girl you know so little of? Don’t look surprised: it’s common sense. It’s very well to buy her; but to be bought, that’s quite another matter. And I don’t know that you can. Being a Roman citizen yourself, you can only make a marriage with a citizen; now the question is whether Callista is a citizen at all. I know perfectly well the sweeping measure some years back of Caracalla, which made all freemen citizens of Rome, whatever might be their country; but that measure has never been carried out in fact. You’d have very great difficulty with the law and the customs of the country; and then, after all, if the world were willing to gratify you, where’s your proof she is a freewoman? My dear boy, I must speak out for your good, though you’re offended with me. I wish you to have her, I do; but you can’t do impossibilities—you can’t alter facts. The laws of the empire allow you to have her in a certain definite way, and no other; and you cannot help the law being what it is. I say all this, even on the supposition of her being a freewoman; but it is just possible she may be in law a slave. Don’t start in that way; the pretty thing is neither better nor worse for what she cannot help. I say it for your good. Well, now I’m coming to my point. There is a third kind of marriage, and that is what I should recommend for you. It’s the matrimonium ex usu, or consuetudine; the great advantage here is, that you have no ceremonies whatever, nothing which can in any way startle your sensitive mind. In that case, a couple are at length man and wife præscriptione. You are afraid of making a stir in Sicca; in this case you would make none. You would simply take her home here; if, as time went on, you got on well together, it would be a marriage; if not,”—and he shrugged his shoulders—“no harm’s done; you are both free.”