eir own. Tacitus rendered to this fact the
tribute of his acknowledgment, which, with regard to the Germans, he
expressed in these words: "The matrimonial bond is, nevertheless, strict
and severe among them; nor is there anything in their manners more
commendable than this. Almost singly among the barbarians, they content
themselves with one wife. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a
people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband.
He cuts off the hair of the offender, strips her, and in the presence of
her relations expels her from his house, and pursues her with stripes
through the whole village. Nor is any indulgence shown to a prostitute.
Neither beauty, youth, nor riches can procure her a husband; for none
there looks on vice with a smile, or calls mutual seduction the way of
the world. The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence
pass the age of puberty unexhausted; nor are the virgins hurried into
marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required; the sexes
unite equally matched, and robust; and the children inherit the vigor of
their parents."

With the object in view of holding up a pattern to the Romans, Tacitus
painted the conjugal conditions of the old Germans with rather too rosy
a hue. No doubt, the adulteress was severely punished among them; but
the same did not hold good with regard to the adulterer. At the time of
Tacitus, the gens was still in bloom among the Germans. He, to whom,
living under the advanced Roman conditions, the old gentile
constitution, together with its principles, was bound to seem strange
and incomprehensible, narrates with astonishment that, with the Germans,
the mother's brother, considered his nephew as an own son; aye, some
looked upon the bond of consanguinity between the uncle on the mother's
side and his nephew as more sacred and closer than that between father
and son. So that, when hostages were demanded, the sister's son was
considered a better guarantee than an own son. Engels adds hereto: "If
an own son was given by the members of such a gens as a pledge for a
treaty, and he fell a sacrifice through his own father's violation of
the treaty, the latter had to settle accounts for himself. If, however,
it was a sister's son who was sacrificed, then the old gentile right was
violated. The nearest gentile relative, held before all others to
safeguard the boy or lad, had caused his death; he either had no right
to off