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Rh young men of Rome, and the envy of both old and young women. Some of our English readers may be surprised, and perhaps will be glad to be told that the auburn tresses of the Germans fetched a high price in the Roman market; and that the locks which belonged by birth to the wife or daughter of a Teutonic warrior or herdsman, often belonged by purchase to some dark-haired Cynthia, or Lesbia, or Clodia. Again—and surely they knew better than Tacitus could—the old German poets adorned the most beautiful of their heroines with flowing yellow tresses. So omnipotent, indeed, in Domitian's time was the fashion, that ladies who could not afford to buy a Teutonic wig dyed their natural hair auburn or yellow.

But although the Roman ladies imported the ornaments of their German sisters, they were not, it seems, equally zealous in copying their housewifely virtues. Their marriage code was strict; so, indeed, had that of Rome once been. Divorce among the Germans was very rare: and when a sentence of it was inflicted, the punishment was little inferior, if at all, to that of death. There was no occasion to call in the aid of the civil magistrate. The husband was sole judge of his wrong. The culprit was expelled from his house in the presence of her kinsfolk, her hair was shorn, her garments were torn from her back, and she was flogged through the whole village. And the divorce was once and for ever: her crime met with no indulgence: the Germans had not arrived at the age of sentimentality; "neither beauty, age, nor wealth would procure the repudiated wife a second husband." In some states the marriage law or usage was even more stern, and Tacitus considers these states the happiest. In them maidens only were given in