CONFARREATIO. - Among the Romans, this was the sacred nuptial rite par excellence (Pliny, Nat. hist., XVIII, 14), which originally must have consisted in the offering made by the two spouses of a spelt cake, the most ancient cereal cultivated by the Romans. Under the Empire it remained the prerogative of the members of the great priestly colleges and was performed not before the hearth, but in a public place, as a marriage from which children capable of exercising the highest functions of the State were born.
Besides ten witnesses, the pontifex maximus and the flamen dialis attended the ceremony. If the latter was the contracting party, the union of the spouses was expressed, in addition to their eating the same cake, by their sitting on two seats covered with the skin of a sheep sacrificed to Jupiter Farreus (Servius, ad Aen., IV, 374; Gaius, Inst., I, 112). The confarreate marriage was dissolved by diffarreatio, the ritual of which is unknown, except that spelt was likewise employed in it and that (according to Plutarch, Quaest. rom., 59; and Festus, s. V. Diffarreatio) it was accompanied by strange and terrifying ceremonies.