Meanwhile the auspices are being taken;[215] in earlier times this was done by observing the flight of birds, but now by examination of the entrails of a victim, apparently a sheep.

If this is satisfactory the youthful pair declare their consent to the union and join their right hands as directed by a pronuba, i.e.a married woman, who acts as a kind of priestess.

Then after another sacrifice and a wedding feast, the bride is conducted from her old home to that of her husband, accompanied by three boys, sons of living parents, one carrying a torch while the other two lead her by either hand; flute-players go before, and nuts are thrown to the boys.

This _deductio_, charmingly described in the beautiful sixty-fifth poem of Catullus, is full of interesting detail which must be omitted here.
When the bridegroom's house is reached, the bride smears the doorposts with fat and oil and ties a woollen fillet round each: she is then lifted over the threshold, is taken by her husband into the partnership of fire and water--the essentials of domestic life--and passes into the atrium.

The morrow will find her a materfamilias, sitting among her maids in that atrium, or in the more private apartments behind it: Claudite ostia, virgines Lusimus satis.