Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/173

167 instance in Augsburg, Basel and Kaisersiautern, that the fact of his serfdom should be established by the oaths of six of his next blood relations, all of whom had to belong to his mother's kin. (Maurer, Städteverfassung, I, page 381.) Another relic of declining matriarchy was the (from the Roman standpoint) almost inexplicable respect of the Germans for the female sex. Young girls of noble family were considered the safest bonds to secure the keeping of contracts with Germans. In battle, nothing stimulated their courage so much as the horrible thought that their wives and daughters might be captured and carried into slavery. A woman was to them something holy and prophetical, and they listened to her advice in the most important matters. Veleda, the Bructerian priestess on the river Lippe, was the soul of the insurrection of the Batavians, in which Civilis at the head of German and Belgian tribes shook the foundations of Roman rule in Gaul. The women held undisputed sway in the house. If we may believe Tacitus, they, together with the old men and children, had to do all the work, for the men went hunting, drank and loafed. But as Tacitus does not say who cultivated the fields, and as according to his explicit statement the slaves paid only tithes, but did not work under compulsion, it seems that the adult men would have had to do what little agricultural work was required.

The form of marriage, as stated above, was the pairing family in gradual transition to monogamy. It was not yet strict monogamy, for polygamy was permitted for the wealthy. Chasteness of the girls was in general carefully maintained, different from the custom of the Celts. Tacitus speaks with special ardor of the sacredness of the matrimonial bond among the Germans. Adultery of the woman is alone quoted by him as a reason for a divorce. But