Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/426

374 The law did not require that they should lay open the causes of divorce. In the nature of the thing, the reasons for repudiation should be given, while those for a divorce are unnecessary; because whatever causes the law may admit as sufficient to break a marriage, a mutual antipathy must be stronger than them all.

The following fact mentioned by Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Valerius Maximus , and Aulus Gellius , does not appear to me to have the least decree of probability: though they had at Rome, say they, the power of repudiating a wife; yet they had so much respect for the auspices, that no body, for the space of five hundred and twenty years, ever made use of this right, till Carvilius Ruga repudiated his, because of her sterility. We need only be sensible of the nature of the human mind, to perceive how very extraordinary it must be, for a law to give such right to a whole nation, and yet for no body to make use of it. Coriolanus setting out on his exile, advised his wife to marry a man more happy than himself. We have just been seeing that the law of the twelve tables, and the manners of the Romans, greatly extended the law of Romulus. But to what purpose were these extensions, if they never made use of a power to repudiate? Besides, if the citizens had such a respect for the auspices, that they would never repudiate, how came the legislators Rh