Book XIX.
Chap. 25, & 26.seduced by domestic cares, by complaisance and the happiness of a whole life.
A law of the[1] Visigoths forbad the man giving more to the woman he was to marry than the tenth part of his substance, and his giving her any thing during the first year of their marriage. This also took its rise from the manners of the country. The legislators were willing to put a stop to that Spanish ostentation, which only led them to display an excessive liberality in acts of magnificence.
The Romans, by their laws, put a stop to some of the inconveniencies which arose from the most durable empire in the world, that of virtue; the Spaniards by theirs, would prevent the bad effects of a tyranny, the most frail and fleeting, that of beauty.
CHAP. XXVI.
The same Subject continued.
THE law[2] of Theodosius and Valentinian drew the causes of repudiation from the ancient manners[3] and customs of the Romans. It placed in the number of these causes the behaviour of a husband[4] who beat his wife, in a manner that disgraced the character of a freeborn woman. This cause was omitted in the following laws[5]: for their manners were in this respect changed: eastern customs had banished those of Europe. The first eunuch of the empress, wife to Justinian II, threatened her, says the historian, to chastise her in the same manner as children are punished at
