affairs of my lady.[1] They went further still, and as it happens in Russia at the present day, they concluded fictitious marriages; but at Rome, these false marriages, contracted for ready money, had no other object than to elude the laws against celibacy.[2]
VI. Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage.
In order to avoid being too incomplete in this rapid survey of marriage among all races, I will say a few words on barbarous marriage outside the Greco-Roman world.
The barbarians of ancient Europe, more or less monogamous, have differed little from any others. Their marriage resembles that of their fellows of all races and all times; that which chiefly characterises it is the subjection of woman.
Barbarous women, says Plutarch, neither ate nor drank with their husbands, and never called them by their name.[3] Among the Germans, who were more often monogamous, as Tacitus says,[4] the wife was purchased; then the purchase-money was transformed into a dower accorded to the bride under the name of morgengabe or oscle (osculum), the price of the first kiss.
German betrothals, which could only be annulled for a serious reason, strongly resembled Latin ones—that is, they were a sale of the girl in anticipation by her legal owners. It was necessary for the girl to have the consent of her father, or her nearest relative, for her marriage. As widow, having been purchased, she belonged to the relatives of her dead husband, and could not marry again without their leave.[5] The feudalism of the Middle Ages was careful not to emancipate the woman, and she remained a minor, or even less, since the Code of Beaumanoir says (titre lvii.)—"Every husband can beat his wife when she will not obey his commands, or when she curses him or contradicts him,
