It would be difficult to imagine a document more strange than this, from the point of view of the ideas which prevail at the present day in European and American society. Matrimony is for us an act of so great social importance that the state alone—that is to say, the law, and the law courts—can recognise or dissolve it. To leave the destiny of a family at the mercy of the will of the father of one of the two parties, to recognise as his the right to destroy a family at any moment to suit his individual interest, without being accountable to anyone for so doing, would seem to us a monstrous thing. And yet this monstrous thing seemed to the whole of antiquity, with few restrictions and reservations, legitimate, reasonable, and wise. Differences in the organisation of the family existed in different countries and in different centuries; but they were but superficial, unessential differences. On one point, the whole world agreed: that matrimony should never be considered an act to be left to the will of the contracting parties, but a business transaction which the young people should leave to their fathers to arrange. Matrimony, as it was in Rome, will serve to give a clear idea of the ancient world’s conception of the family. In Rome, fathers often betrothed their sons when they were still children. They made them marry when they were still quite young, the males before they were twenty, the girls at about sixteen; and they had the right to oblige them at any moment to divorce each other, without being forced to give any reason or explanation. A man might be an exemplary husband, might live with his wife in the most perfect bliss. If the son’s wife, for one reason or another, did not suit the fancy of his father, the son might be obliged any day to put her away. Amongst others to whom this happened was no less a person than Tiberius, at a time when he had already become one of the first figures in the Empire, and had commanded armies in battle. He had married a daughter of Agrippa, and loved her devotedly. The couple were considered in Rome a model of affection and faithfulness. But, at a certain moment, Augustus, who was the adoptive father of Tiberius, judged that for political motives another marriage might have suited Tiberius better; and he, accordingly, obliged Tiberius to divorce her. Tiberius was so much upset, that—as Suetonius tells us—every time he met his first wife in society, he burst into tears—he, who was one of the most formidable generals of his time; so that Augustus had to take measures to prevent their meeting each other. And yet Tiberius had to give way; for his father, in the eyes of the law and in accordance with the ideas current in his time, was absolute arbiter in these matters! Not even a man in the circumstances of Tiberius, who had already been consul, could think of rebelling against the paternal authority.