CHAP. XVI.
An excellent Custom of the Samnites.
Book VII.
Chap. 16.THE Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and especially in their situation, must have produced admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one place, and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the best of the whole assembly, had leave given him to take which girl he pleased for his wife; the person that had been declared second best chose after him; and so on[1]. Admirable institution! The only recommendation that young men could have on this occasion, was owing to virtue and to the services done their country. He who had the greatest share of these endowments, chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler, and grander recompence, less chargeable to a petty state, and more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be imagined.
The Samnites were descended from the Lacedaemonians: and Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus, enacted very near the same law[2].
