Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/261

 divorce" in her hand, and may not take her again, either if she is repudiated by another husband or becomes a widow. With much stronger reason a man can repudiate an immodest wife. As for the wife, she could only demand a divorce for very grave causes: if the husband was attacked by a contagious malady (leprosy); if his occupations were too repugnant; if he deceived her; if he habitually ill-*treated her; if he refused to contribute to her maintenance; and if, after ten years of marriage, his impotence was well established, especially if the woman declared she needed a son to sustain her in her old age. But even then it was the husband who was reputed to have sent away his wife, and she lost her dowry.

All these antique legislations bear on the woman with shameful iniquity. The most humane have confined their efforts to placing a few slight restrictions on the brutal good pleasure of man, which nothing holds back in savage societies. But it is important to notice that certain tribes, still more or less buried in savagery, have regulated divorce with humanity enough and equity enough to put to shame the theocratic legislators of the great barbarian societies.

We discover again this iniquitous spirit in regard to the respective situations of the man and the woman in marriage in the Greco-Roman world, but it becomes moderated as ancient civilisation progresses. In primitive Greece the right of repudiation is left to the man, and he uses it whenever he thinks he has legitimate motives for doing so. This right continued in more civilised Greece, but it was gradually restricted. Nevertheless, it was always a great dishonour for a woman to be repudiated. Euripides makes Medea say, "Divorce is always shameful for a woman." In Andromachus, Menelaus, speaking of his daughter Hermione, said: "I will not that my daughter should be driven from the nuptial bed; save that, all that a woman can suffer is relatively without importance; but for her to lose her husband is to lose her life." At Athens repudiations were frequent, and they would have been more