This is well illustrated, like so many other Roman ideas, in the _Aeneid_ of Virgil.

Those who persist in looking on Aeneas with modern eyes, and convict him of perfidy towards Dido, forget that his passion for Dido was a sudden one, not sanctioned by the gods or by favourable auspices, and that the ultimate union with Lavinia, for whom he forms no such attachment, was one which would recommend itself to every Roman as justified by the advantage to the State.

The poet, it is true, betrays his own intense humanity in his treatment of the fate of Dido, but he does so in spite of his theme,--the duty of every Roman to his family and the State.

A Roman would no doubt fall in love, like a youth of any other nation, but his passion had nothing to do with his life of duty as a Roman.

This idea of marriage had serious consequences, to which we shall return later on.
When the day for the wedding arrives, our bride assumes her bridal dress, laying aside the toga praetexta of her childhood and dedicating her dolls to the Lar of her family; and wearing the reddish veil (_flammeum_) and the woollen girdle fastened with a knot called the knot of Hercules,[214] she awaits the arrival of the bridegroom in her father's house.