 This type of cohabitation varied little from actual marriage, except that heirs from this union were not considered legitimate.Often this was the reason that men of high rank would live with a woman in concubinage after the death of their first wife, so that the claims of their children from this first marriage would not be challenged by the children from this later union.Concerning the difference between a concubine and a wife, the jurist Julius Paulus wrote in his "Opinions" that “a concubine differs from a wife only in the regard in which she is held,” meaning that a concubine was not considered a social equal to her patron, as his wife was.