Early Roman law recognised three kinds of marriage: "confarreatio", symbolized by the sharing of spelt bread ("panis farreus"); "coemptio", "by purchase"; and by "usus" (habitual cohabitation). Patricians always married by "confarreatio", while plebeians married by "coemptio" or "usus": in the latter, a woman could avoid her husband's legal control simply by being absent from their shared home for three consecutive nights, once a year. Among elite families of the early Republic, manus marriage was the norm; the bride passed from the "manus" ("hand") of her father to the "manus" of her husband, remaining under one or another form of male "potestas" (power).