Now, all this seems rigorous enough; but, as I have already remarked, we must beware of imagining that a statute is enforced simply because it stands in the code. As a matter of fact, public sentiment had grown so humane in the first three centuries after Christ that it did not for a moment tolerate that a father should kill his daughter, no matter how guilty she was; and in all our records of that period no instance occurs. As to husbands, we have repeated complaints in the literature of the day that they had grown so complaisant towards erring wives that they could not be induced to prosecute them.[92] A typical instance is related by Pliny.[93] Pliny was summoned by the Emperor Trajan to attend a council where, among other cases, that of a certain Gallitta was discussed. She had married a military tribune and had committed adultery with a common captain (_centurio_). Trajan sent the captain into exile. The husband took no measures against his wife, but went on living with her. Only by coercion was he finally induced to prosecute. Pliny informs us that the guilty woman had to be condemned, even against the will of her accuser. A woman guilty of incest received no punishment, but the guilty man was deported to an island.[94] If the incest involved adultery, the woman was of course held on that charge. [Sidenote: Divorce] We come now to a matter where the growing freedom of women reached its highest point--the matter of divorce. Here again we have to note the progress of toleration and humanitarianism. In the early days of the Republic the family tie was rarely severed. Valerius Maximus tells us[95] of a quaint custom of the olden days, to the effect that "whenever any quarrel arose between husband and wife, they would proceed to the chapel of the goddess Viriplaca ["Reconciler of Husbands"], which is on the Palatine, and there they would mutually express their feelings; then, laying aside their anger, they returned home reconciled." During these days a woman could never herself take the initiative in divorce; the husband was all-powerful. The first divorce of which we have any record took place in the year 231 B.C., when Spurius Carvilius Ruga put away his wife for sterility. Public opinion censured him severely for it "because people thought that not even the desire for children ought to have been preferred to conjugal fidelity and affection."[96] As the Empire extended and Rome became more worldly and corrupt, the reasons for divorce became more trivial. Sempronius Sophus divorced his wife because she had attended some public games without his knowledge.[97] Cicero, who was a lofty moralist--on paper,--put away his wife Terentia in order to marry a rich young ward and get her money if he could. Maecenas, the great prime-minister of Augustus, sent away and took back his wife repeatedly at caprice--perhaps he believed that variety is the spice of life. But during all this time the husband alone could annul marriage.[98]