At boni Coniuges, bene vivite, et Munere assiduo valentem Exercete iuventam.
Even the dissipated Catullus could not but treat the subject of marriage with dignity and tenderness, and in this last stanza of his poem he alludes to the duties of a married pair in language which would have satisfied the strictest Roman.

He has also touched another chord which would echo in the heart of every good citizen, in the delicious lines which just precede those quoted, and anticipate the child--a son of course--that is to be born, and that will lie in his mother's arms holding out his little hands, and smiling on his father.[216] Nothing can better illustrate the contrast in the mind of the Roman between passionate love and serious marriage than a comparison of this lovely poem with those which tell the sordid tale of the poet's intrigues with Lesbia (Clodia).

The beauty and _gravitas_ of married life as it used to be are still felt and still found, but the depths of human feeling are not stirred by them.

Love lies beyond, is a fact outside the pale of the ordered life of the family or the State.
No one who studies this ceremonial of Roman marriage, in the light of the ideas which it indicates and reflects, can avoid the conclusion that the position of the married woman must have been one of substantial dignity, calling for and calling out a corresponding type of character.

Beyond doubt the position of the Roman materfamilias was a much more dignified one than that of the Greek wife.