sband becomes governor of a province, she will
endeavour to be the power behind the throne, and her meddling will in
any case prove harmful to the strict administration of justice.

The remedy in such cases was divorce. In the lower orders of society a
mild personal castigation was quite legal and probably not uncommon;
but then in these lower orders divorce was by no means so convenient.
Among the upper classes its frequency made it scarcely a matter of
remark. Nothing like it has been seen until modern America. There was
no need of an appeal to the courts or of a decree _nisi_; there was
not even need of a specific plea, although naturally one would be
offered in most cases. The husband or wife (or the wife's father, if
she had one), might send a formal and witnessed notice declaring the
marriage dissolved, or, as it was called, "breaking the marriage
lines." The man had only to take this step and say with due
deliberation "Take your own property"--or, as the satirist puts it,
"pack up your traps"--"give up the keys, and begone." The woman on her
side need only give similar notice and "take her departure." The only
check lay in family considerations, in public opinion, which was
extremely lenient, in financial convenience, or in the possibility of
particularly wanton conduct being so disapproved in high quarters that
a senator or a knight might perhaps find his name missing from the
list of his order at the next revision.

It has appeared necessary to give this darker side of the social
picture, for, though assuredly not so lurid as might be gathered from
the moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable
not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as
refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women
and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle
town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman
world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either
quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny concerning a lady named
Arria. The events belong to the reign of Nero's predecessor Claudius.
Pliny writes: "Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was ill; so also was her
son; and it was expected that both would die. The son, an extremely
handsome and modest youth, succumbed. His mother arranged for his
funeral and carried it out, the husband meanwhile being kept in
ignorance. Not only so, but every time she came into his room she
pretend