Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/461

Rh of the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, had their long hair for a diadem.

HAVE already said, that with people who do not cultivate the earth, marriages are less fixed than with others, and that they generally take many wives. "The Germans were almost the only people of all the barbarous nations, who were satisfied with one wife, if we except, says Tacitus, some persons, who, not from a disoluteness of manners, but because of their nobility, had many."

This explains the reason why the kings of the first race had so great a number of wives. These marriages were less a proof of incontinence, than an attribute of dignity: and it would have wounded them in a tender point to have deprived them of such a prerogative. This explains the reason why the example of the kings was not followed by the subjects.

ARRIAGES amongst the Germans, says Tacitus, are strictly observed. Vice Rh