In fact, if in the ancient marriage so little liberty of choice was reserved to the man, it is easy to understand that not a ghost of it was conceded to the woman. The man had in addition one advantage. Constrained to submit to the will of the father as long as the latter was alive, he became, when the father died, absolute master of his wife, because he could then repudiate her and marry another, how and when he chose. The almost unfettered liberty of divorce, without any motive, or for the most futile motives, might well be some compensation to the man for the subjection in which the father, while alive, kept him. For the woman, there was no compensation at all. As long as her father lived, she had to obey the man to whom her father gave her. When the father was no more, she still remained in the power of her husband, who could not only repudiate her without any motive, but even marry her to another. In the history of Rome, especially, the men used and abused this privilege in a way, which to us seems sometimes ridiculous, sometimes revolting, and always extravagant. Especially in the last century of the republic, when the struggles between the parties became intense, the most eminent statesmen adopted the habit of consolidating their alliances with marriages. Therefore, we see every political vicissitude of importance shrouded in a curious web of divorces and marriages. Now one great man hands his wife over to another, now he marries the other’s daughter, now gives him his sister to wife. The poor women wander from one house to the other, change husbands from one year to another, with the same facility with which, nowadays, a traveller changes his inn. For all these marriages lasted only as long as the political combination on account of which they were entered into. When the combination was dissolved, divorce broke up all or most of these families, and the husbands set themselves to contract new marriages. It was so easy for the husband to get a divorce. He needed only to write his wife a letter announcing his intention!