riage of men is
rare, and only one stepmother is mentioned.[1304] The prejudice against
second marriages continued amongst the Greeks, even for men, for whom
second marriage was restrained, in some parts of Greece by political
disabilities, if the man had children. The reason given was that a man
who had so little devotion to his family would have little devotion to
his country.[1305] In the classical period widows generally married
again. Sometimes the dying husband bequeathed his widow. In later times
some widows contracted their own second marriages.[1306] Marcus Aurelius
would not take a second wife as a stepmother for his children. He took a
concubine. Julian, after the death of his wife, lived in
continence.[1307] On Roman tombstones of women the epithet "wife of one
husband" was often put as praise.[1308]

+409. Widows and remarriage in the Christian church.+ The pagan emperors
of Rome encouraged second marriages as they encouraged all marriage, but
the Christian emperors of the fourth century took up the ascetic
tendency. About 300 the doctrine was, "Every second marriage is
essentially adultery."[1309] Augustine, in his tract on "Continence,"
uttered strong and sound doctrine about self-control and discipline of
character. In the tract on the "Benefit of Marriage" he defended
marriage, intervening in a controversy between Jerome and Jovinian, in
which the former put forth the most extravagant and contradictory
assertions about virginity. Augustine's formula is: "Marriage and
fornication are not two evils of which the second is worse, but marriage
and continence are two goods, of which the second is better." Although
this statement is very satisfactory rhetorically, it carries no
conclusion as to the rational sense of regulation of the sex passion, or
as to the limit within which regulation is beneficial. Augustine laid
great stress on 1 Cor. vii. 36. In a tract on "Virginity" he glorified
that state according to the taste of the period. In a tract on
"Widowhood" (chaps. 13 and 14), he repudiated the extreme doctrine about
second and subsequent marriages, but he exhorted widows to continence.
The church fathers, like the mediaeval theologians, had a way of
admitting points in the argument without altering their total position
in accordance with the admissions or concessions which they had made.
The positions taken by Augustine in these tracts about the sex mores
cannot be embraced in an intelligible and consiste