CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 37 



of -women, and this is usually employed to strengthen 

 the nuptial tie. The Roman wives, as soon as they 

 were enabled to hold property in their own right, 

 became their husbands' most inexorable creditors, and 

 by that means secured the fragile bonds of Usus. It 

 is true that Roman husbands sometimes repudiated 

 a wife with a small fortune in order to take another 

 with a larger one — Cicero is said to have done so — 

 but the wife's property, for the most part, had a 

 steadying effect upon marriage. This appears to 

 have been the case also among the ancient Egyptians. 

 In marriage settlements of the Ptolemaic period, dis- 

 covered in the tombs, it is stipulated that if the 

 husband takes a second wife he shall pay a fine to 

 the first. And in polygamous countries at the 

 present day, where a husband has the right to put 

 his wife away whenever he pleases, the dowiy is the 

 woman's sole guarantee against divorce. 



While Rome was preparing itself for the reception 

 of the Christian doctrine of marriage, the barbarian 

 peoples of the North were drifting equally into mono- 

 gamy. History knows nothing of the influences that 

 operated among them, but we may infer that they 

 were similar to those we have traced among the 

 heathen communities of the South. At all events, 



