Book VII.
Chap. 10.women. The censors had not an eye over them but as over the rest of the republic. The institution of the domestic tribunal[1] supplied the magistracy established among the Greeks[2].
The husband summoned the wife's relations, and tried her in their presence[3]. This tribunal preserved the morals of the republic; and at the same time these very morals maintained this tribunal. For it decided not only in respect to the violation of the laws, but alto of morals; now in order to judge of the violation of morals, morals are requisite.
The penalties inflicted by this tribunal, ought to be, and actually were, arbitrary: for all that relates to manners, and to the rules of modesty, can hardly be comprized under one code of laws. It is easy indeed to regulate by laws what we owe to others; but it is very difficult to comprize all we owe to ourselves.
The domestic tribunal inspected the general conduct of women: but there was one crime, which beside the animadversion of this tribunal, was likewise subject to a public accusation. This was adultery; whether that in a republic so great a violation of morals interested the government; or whether the wife's immorality might render the husband's
- ↑ Romulus instituted this tribunal, as appears from Dionysius Halicarnass. bonk 2 . p. 96.
- ↑ See in Livy, book 39, the use that was made of this tribunal at the time of the conspiracy of the Bacchanliaus: they gave the name of conspiracy against the republic to assemblies in which the morals of women and young people were debauched.
- ↑ It appears from Dionys. Halicarn lib. 2. that Romulus's institution was, that in ordinary cases the husband should sit as judge in presence of the wife's relations, but that in grievous crimes he should determine in conjunction with five of them. Hence Ulpian, tit. 6. § 9, 12, & 13, distinguishes in respect to the different judgments of manners, between those which he calls important, and those which are left so, graviores, leviores.
