Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/425

Rh

OMULUS permitted a husband to repudiate his wife, if she had committed adultery, prepared poison, or procured false keys. He did not give to women the right of repudiating their husbands. Plutarch calls this, a law extremely severe.

As the Athenian law gave the power of repudiation to the wife as well as to the husband, and as this right was obtained by the women amongst the primitive Romans, notwithstanding the law of Romulus; it is evident that this institution was one of those which the deputies of Rome brought from Athens, and which were inferred into the laws of the twelve tables.

Cicero says that the reasons of repudiation sprung from the law of the twelve tables. We cannot then doubt but that this law increased the number of the reasons for repudiation established by Romulus.

The power of divorce was also an appointment, or at least a consequence of the law of the twelve tables. For from the moment that the wife or the husband had separately the right of repudiation, there was a much stronger reason for their having the power of quitting each other by mutual consent. Rh