they were vigilant to prevent, the vengeance due to the honour of the injured husband was amply sanctioned by the laws, and was seldom either remitted or delayed.

It is true, that women might exercise, on certain occasions, the privilege of divorce, and thereby escape from the restraint or the tyranny to which they had been subjected by marriage. Yet, even this law, seemingly favourable to the rights and interests of the sex, was impeded or enfeebled in its operation by the injustice of the public voice. The wife was scarcely permitted to detail the crime of her husband on which she was to ground her pretensions to redress; the impeachment was heard, if at all, with evident reluctance and contempt; and the coldness or frown of the disapproving magistrate was prepared to intimidate the unfeminine audacity of the complainant. It was considered as scandalous in a woman to depart, under any circumstances, from her husband; and the complaint of Medea, of the hard fate of her sex, and of the necessity imposed upon them of submitting in silence to cruelty and neglect, might have been equally just in later times. When the wife of Alcibiades appeared before the proper tribunal, and demanded a separation from her husband, for causes which she was about to state, he seized her arm, in the presence of the assenting and applauding judges, and forcibly

* Euripid. Med. v. 230. The divorce obtained by the wife, and that by the husband, was specified by two different terms. Men were said αποπεμπειν, απολύειν, to dismiss their wives; women were said aron, to depart from their husbands. The dignity of man might inflict, but was not to suffer the degradation of dismissal; and the contumacy which announced the inferiority of the sex, was to be added to the other evils imposed upon them.

conducted her to his home *. This detail, however, by no means completes the catalogue of wrongs to which women were subject in Greece and Italy. According to the grave and deliberate sentence of Cato Major, if a husband detected the adultery of his wife, he might secretly put her to death without subjecting himself to the hazard of punishment; but the wife was to respect the adulterous husband too much to disclose, even by the slightest intimation, the contumacy and the desertion of which she had reason to complaint. Or, if she were permitted to detail the evidences of his guilt, her accusation was to be confined within a narrow circle. She herself was liable to the charge and the penalty of adultery, for every act of incontinence; but her husband, indulged with ample and profligate liberty, might safely and freely associate with the most corrupt of the sex; and, in the age of courtezans, an intercourse with a married woman alone rendered him an adulterer, and exposed him to a divorce t

Plutarch. In Vit. Alcibiad.

"In adulterio uxorem tuam si deprehendisses, sine indice impune necares; illa, si adulteraris, digito non auderet contingere." Aul. Gell. lib. x. c. 13.

This was one of the laws of Solon. By many of the Greek and Latin writers, the libertinism allowed by the laws is not merely tolerated but praised. The censor Cato speaks of it with high approbation, as a privilege sanctioned by necessity and utility.

Quidam notus homo, cum exiret fornice, macte

Virtute esto, inquit, sententia dia Catonis;

Nam simul ac venas inflavit dira lubido,

Huc juvenes æquum est descendere.

Hor. Sat. lib. i. Sat. ii. 31.

The husband, therefore, had little to apprehend from any appeal of his wife to the protection and justice of the laws. But it was not enough to countenance and justify his domestic despotism by law, and to enable him to transfer his wife, as he pleased, to the temporary possession of a friend. He was also to be endowed with an authority extending beyond the grave. She who had lived in subjection to him during his life, was to be obedient to whatever disposition he might make of her person by his will. The expiring husband might supply a successor to his connubial rights by the capricious or arbitrary election of his last moments; and even a slave might be thus legally selected to occupy the bed, as well as to enjoy the property, of his departed master*.

The law of divorce, though of little avail to the wife, served only to afford a libertine licence to the husband. There was here no limit but will to his power. The most innocent was as liable as the most guilty wife, to the shame and misery of a sudden dismissal. In a moment the whole fabric of domestic felicity might be dashed down. The endearment of one

Cicero affirms that this licence, instead of being offensive to morals, was perfectly consistent with the ancient customs and constitutions of the state. "Quando enim hoc factum non est? Quando reprehensum? Quando non permissum? Quando denique fuit, ut quod licet non liceret." Orat. Pro Cœl. c. 29.

Husbands at Athens associated so rarely with their wives, that it became necessary, in the opinion of the legislator, to prescribe the attentions which domestic duty required.

The father of Demosthenes bequeathed his wife to a future husband; and Demosthenes himself justifies the will by which the slave Phormio was put in possession of the property and wife of his deceased master. Orat. In Aphob.

hour might be succeeded by the alienation of another, and alienation might indulge its caprice without limitation or reserve. A new smile exciting a new passion, a contemptible whim, a fancied offence, might be fatal to the peace of an entire household; and the tranquillity of families, built upon a foundation of sand, was every moment in danger of being overthrown. This facility of divorce extended itself from the highest to the lowest stations, and influences all the morals and manners of life. We are perpetually disgusted with the authenticated details of vile and wanton, or cruel and remorseless repudiation. We see Cicero, the author of the most moral treatise of antiquity, dismissing his wife Terentia, without a crime, after he had lived with her for thirty years.* We see Marcus Brutus, the stoic, separating himself from Claudia without remorse, though her fidelity was not to be impeachedt. We see the Patrician Dolobella parting with one

*He had an apology. She did not, in his opinion, grieve sufficiently for the death of her daughter Tullia; and hence, though she entreated, in the most submissive manner, to be permitted to see him, he sent her a divorce. Cicer. Epist. ad Attic. epist. 13, 32, 34, 47. But he did not remain long unmarried. The young Publilia soon supplied the place of the more aged Terentia. Epist. Familiar. epist. 4, 14. Nor does Terentia appear much to have lamented her loss. She lived to the age of one hundred and three years; and Cicero was succeeded by three husbands, whose blandishments may have consoled her for the cruelty of the orator. The last of her husbands was consul in the reign of Tiberius; and it was his boast, that he possessed two things which had belonged to the greatest men of the age before him--Cicero's wife and Cæsar's chair. Valer. Max. 8, 13. Plin. Hist. Nat. 7, 48. Dion. Cass. p. 612.

+ Brutus fell in love with Portia. That was enough. Cicer. Lett. ad Attic. 13, 9, &c.

wife that he might take another, who had liberated herself from her second husband by divorce, probably for the purpose of this new marriage *. And the catalogue may be aptly closed with Pompey, the boast at one time of his country, who divorced himself from his wife Antistia, under circumstances of the vilest ingratitude, that he might consult his interest or his passion by marrying a woman who was then living with her husband †. Of these enormities of practice, sanctioned by this conveniency of law, the details might be easily enlarged; but enough has appeared to prove with what facility men of the first rank, and sometimes of the highest character, availed themselves of the powers of divorce; and how little the cruel indifference was condemned with which the most innocent wife was dismissed by him in whom she should have found the love, the protection, and the guardianship of a husband.

Under laws so vile and so corrupt, marriage became, not a union of felicity, but an institution to be violated at will by caprice or crime; and it was soon found that the tolerated vices of one sex were, at length, abundantly to provoke the vices of another. The tales told by the historian, of the infamies which derived their aliment from such a system, and pervaded society, are scarcely credible. The most sensual of the passions was indulged with a profligacy which openly laughed at purity of manners,

Cicer. Epist. Famil. 2, 15. Ad Attic. 6, 7.

+ The father of Antistia was put to death on account of his attachment to Pompey. The mother, shocked by the disgrace of her daughter, destroyed herself. Plut. In Pomp. Middleton, Life of Cicero, vol. ii. 45. The lady who was to be honoured by this new espousal was Livia, the daughter of Cicero.