ple; but his divorce stood unimpeached in law.]

[Footnote 125:--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. 71. epigram 7.)]

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, [126] 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; [127] 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 proetor, 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. [128] 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, [129] 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