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, 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
which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved
by the hand of the executioner. But the sacred right of the husband was
invariably maintained, to deliver his name and family from the disgrace
of adultery: the list of _mortal_ sins, either male or female, was
curtailed and enlarged by successive regulations, and the obstacles of
incurable impotence, long absence, and monastic profession, were
allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the
permission of the law, was subject to various and heavy penalties. The
woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the
bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed,
_her_ fortune might be lawfully seized 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 hi