futed 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.[1]
Limitations of the liberty of divorce Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans afforded a peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints of a married life; but her epithet of Viriplaca, the appeaser of husbands, too clearly indicates on which side submission and repentance were always expected. Every act of a citizen was subject to the judgment of the censors; the first who used the privilege of divorce assigned, at their command, the motives of his conduct;[2] and a senator was expelled for dismissing his virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of his friends. Whenever an action was instituted for the recovery of a marriage-portion, the prætor, as the guardian of equity, examined the cause and the characters, and gently inclined the scale in favour of the guiltless and injured party. Augustus, who united the powers of both magistrates, adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising the licence of divorce.[3] The presence of seven Roman witnesses was required for the validity of this solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation had been given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was compelled to refund immediately or in the space of six months; but, if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or levity was expiated
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 his less sturdy predecessors (Opp. tom. i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam). But the ten husbands in a month of the poet Martial is an extravagant hyperbole (l. vi. epigram 7).
127 Sacellum Viriplacæ (Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 1) in the Palatine region appears in the time of Theodosius, in the description of Rome by Publius Victor.
128 Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 9. With some propriety he judges divorce more criminal than celibacy: illo namque conjugalia sacra spreta tantum, hoc etiam injuriose tractata.
129 See the laws of Augustus and his successors, in Heineccius, ad Legem Papiam Poppæam, c. 19, in Opp. tom. vi. P. i. p. 323-333.