by the vengeance of his exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes
commuted to a fine; the fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation
to an island or imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party was
released from the bonds of marriage; but the offender during life or a
term of years was disabled from the repetition of nuptials. The
successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects,
and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians
were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word,
which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation
that the wisdom of a legislator can demand.

The freedom of love and marriage was restrained among the Romans by
natural and civil impediments. An instinct, almost innate and universal,
appears to prohibit the incestuous commerce of parents and children in
the infinite series of ascending and descending generations. Concerning
the oblique and collateral branches nature is indifferent, reason mute,
and custom various and arbitrary. In Egypt the marriage of brothers and
sisters was admitted without scruple or exception: a Spartan might
espouse the daughter of his father, an Athenian that of his mother; and
the nuptials of an uncle with his niece were applauded at Athens as a
happy union of the dearest relations.

The profane law-givers of Rome were never tempted by interest or
superstition to multiply the forbidden degrees: but they inflexibly
condemned the marriage of sisters and brothers, hesitated whether first
cousins should be touched by the same interdict; revered the parental
character of aunts and uncles, and treated affinity and adoption as a
just imitation of the ties of blood. According to the proud maxims of
the republic, a legal marriage could only be contracted by free
citizens; an honorable, at least an ingenuous birth, was required for
the spouse of a senator: but the blood of kings could never mingle in
legitimate nuptials with the blood of a Roman; and the name of Stranger
degraded Cleopatra and Berenice to live the _concubines_ of Mark Antony
and Titus. This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty, cannot
without indulgence be applied to the manners of these oriental queens. A
concubine, in the strict sense of the civilian, was a woman of servile
or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a Roman
citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station, below
the