Book XVIII.
Chap. 24, & 25.of the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, had their long hair for a diadem.
CHAP. XXIV.
Of the Marriages of the Kings of the Franks.
I HAVE already said, that with people who do not cultivate the earth, marriages are less fixed than with others, and that they generally take many wives. "The Germans were almost the only people of[1] all the barbarous nations, who were satisfied with one wife, if we except[2], says Tacitus, some persons, who, not from a disoluteness of manners, but because of their nobility, had many."
This explains the reason why the kings of the first race had so great a number of wives. These marriages were less a proof of incontinence, than an attribute of dignity: and it would have wounded them in a tender point to have deprived them of such a prerogative[3]. This explains the reason why the example of the kings was not followed by the subjects.
CHAP. XXV.
Childeric.
"MARRIAGES amongst the Germans, says Tacitus, are strictly observed[4]. Vice
- ↑ Props soli Barbarorum singulis uxoribus contenti sunt. De morib. Germanorum.
- ↑ Exceptis admodum paucis qui non libidine, sed ob nobilitattm, plurimis nuptiis ambiuntur. Ibid.
- ↑ See Fredegarius's chronicle of the year 628.
- ↑ Severa matrimonia—nemo illic vitia ridet, nec corrumpere corrumpi sæculum vocatur. De moribus Germanorum.
