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510 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliv years ; 125 but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a con- nexion in which the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant and the tyrant was unwilling to relinquish his slave. "When the Eoman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. In three centuries of prosperity and cor- ruption, this principle was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse. Passion, interest, or caprice suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage ; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation ; the most tender of human connexions was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure. According to the various condi- tions of life, both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury : an inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious, progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late husband ; a beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and friend- less ; but the reluctance of the Komans, when they were pressed to marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks that the prevailing institutions were least favourable to the males. A specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence and inflame every trifling dispute ; the minute difference between an husband and a stranger, which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be forgotten ; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the embraces of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity of her own person. 126 Limita- Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps tions of the divorce m In the year of Rome 523, Spurius Carvilius Ruga repudiated a fair, a good, but a barren wife (Dionysius Hal. 1. ii. p. 93 [c. 25], Plutarch, in Numa, p. 141. Valerius Maximus, 1. ii. c. 1. Aulus Gellius, iv. 3). He was questioned by the censors, and hated by the people ; but his divorce stood unimpeached in law. 126 Sic fiunt octo mariti Quinque per autumnos. (Juvenal, Satir. vi. 20.) A rapid succession, which may yet be credible, as well as the non consulum numero, sed maritorum annos suos computant, of Seneca (de Beneficiis, iii. 16). Jerom saw at Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty- two of hiB less sturdy predecessors (Opp. torn. i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam). But the ten husbands in a month of the poet Martial is an extravagant hyperbole (1. vi. epigram 7).