d 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; 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
praetor, as the guardian of equity, examined the cause and the
characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor of the guiltless and
injured party. Augustus, who united the powers of both magistrates,
adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising the license of
divorce.

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 by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of her marriage
portion. The Christian princes were the first who specified the just
causes of a private divorce; their institutions, from Constantine to
Justinian, appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire and the
wishes of the Church, and the author of the _Novels_ too frequently
reforms the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and _Pandects_. In the most
rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard,
or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege,
in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been
dissolved by the hand of the executioner.

But the sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to
deliver his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list of
_mortal_ sins, either male or female, was curtailed and enlarged by
successive regulations, and the obstacles of incurable impotence, long
absence, and monastic profession were allowed to rescind the matrimonial
obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission of the law was subject
to various and heavy penalties. The woman was stripped of her wealth and
ornaments, without excepting the bodkin of her hair: if the man
introduced a new bride into his bed, _her_ fortune might be lawfully
seized