disturbed by such action. So clearly was
the power of the husband derived from that of the father, that for a
long period a father, in the exercise of his _potestas_, could take his
daughter from her husband against the wishes of both. It may be presumed
that this power, anomalous as it appears, was not unexercised, as we
find that a constitution of Antoninus Pius prohibited a father from
disturbing a harmonious union, and Marcus Aurelius afterwards limited
this prohibition by allowing the interference of a father for strong and
just cause--_magna et justa causa interveniente_. Except in so far as it
was restrained by special legislation, the authority of a husband in the
matter of divorce was absolute. As early indeed, however, as the time of
Romulus, it is said that the state asserted its interest in the
permanence of marriage by forbidding the repudiation of wives unless
they were guilty of adultery or of drinking wine, on pain of forfeiture
of the whole of an offender's property, one-half of which went to the
wife, the other to Ceres. But the law of the XII. Tables, in turn,
allowed freedom of divorce. It would appear, however, that the sense of
the community was so far shocked by the inhumanity of treating a wife as
mere property, or the risk of regarding marriage as a mere terminable
contract, that, without crystallizing into positive enactment, it
operated to prevent the exercise of so harsh and dangerous a power. It
is said that for 500 years no husband took advantage of his power, and
it was then only by an order of a censor, however obtained, that Spurius
Carvilius Ruga repudiated his wife for barrenness. We may, however, be
permitted to doubt the genuineness of this censorial order, or at least
to conjecture the influence under which the censor was induced to
intervene, when we find that in another instance, that of L. Antonius, a
censor punished an unjust divorce by expulsion from the senate, and that
the exercise of their power by husbands increased to a great and
alarming extent. Probably few of the admirers of the greatest of Roman
orators have not regretted his summary and wholly informal repudiation
of Terentia. At last the _lex Julia de adulteriis_, while recognizing a
power of divorce both in the husband and in the wife, imposed on it, in
the public interest, serious restrictions and consequences. It required
a written bill of divorce (_libellus repudii_) to be given in the
presence of seven witnesses,