statement of law or duty, all the prescriptions for the husband
and wife are the same, and the man is said to injure the wife by
infidelity. Aristotle[1176] propounds the rule of taboo on all sex
relations except in marriage, which is the doctrine of pair marriage
(sec. 383). In the _Economicus_ of Xenophon[1177] the relations of
husband and wife are expounded at length in terms of great respect and
esteem for a wife. The work seems to be rhetorical and dramatic, not
actual, and it is represented as very exceptional and astonishing that
such relations should exist between any man and his wife. In Plutarch's
_Morals_ the tract on "Conjugal Precepts" is written in an elevated
tone. It is not specific and seems open to the suspicion of being a
"pose." However, the doctrine is that of equal duty for husband and
wife, and it may be taken to prove that that was the doctrine of the
neostoics. Seneca wrote, "You know that it is a base thing that he who
demands chastity of his wife should himself corrupt the wives of
others."[1178] And again, "Let him know that it will be the worst kind
of an injury to his wife for him to have a mistress."[1179] Augustine
tells a story that Antoninus Pius granted a man a divorce for adultery
of his wife, provided the man could show that he had, by his mode of
life, maintained fidelity to his wife, and that the emperor added the
dictum that "it would be unjust that a man should be able to exact a
fidelity which he did not himself observe."[1180] Augustine himself
maintained the full equality of spouses in rights and duties. Ulpian
said that "it seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity of his
wife while he himself does not show an example of it." This dictum got
into the _Digest_ where the jurists of all succeeding ages could have it
before their eyes.[1181] It did not often arrest their attention. These
utterances, so far as they are sincere expressions of convictions, do
not represent the conduct of any school, and perhaps not even that of
the men who recorded them. They belong to a period of great corruption
of the sex mores of the upper classes, and of rapid extension of such
corruption to the lower classes. A character in Plautus's comedy of _The
Merchant_[1182] complains of the difference in codes for unchaste
husbands and unchaste wives. If every woman has to be content with one
husband, why should not every man be forced to be content with one wife?
Jerome made the most explicit s