spite of the elasticity of the laws which governed them, and of the divers elements of which they were sometimes composed. No doubt polygamy and frequently divorce exercised here as elsewhere a deleterious influence; the harems of Babylon were constantly the scenes of endless intrigues and quarrels among the women and children of varied condition and different parentage who filled them. Among the people of the middle classes, where restricted means necessarily prevented a man having many wives, the course of family life appears to have been as calm and affectionate as in Egypt, under the unquestioned supremacy of the father: and in the event of his early death, the widow, and later the son or son-in-law, took the direction of affairs. Should quarrels arise and reach the point of bringing about a complete rupture between parents and children, the law intervened, not to reconcile them, but to repress any violence of which either side might be guilty towards the other. It was reckoned as a misdemeanour for any father or mother to disown a child, and they were punished by being kept shut up in their own house, as long, doubtless, as they persisted in disowning it; but it was a crime in a son, even if he were an adopted son, to renounce his parents, and he was punished severely. If he had said to his father, “Thou art not my father!” the latter marked him with a conspicuous sign and sold him in the market. If he had said to his mother, “As for thee, thou art not my mother!” he was similarly branded, and led through the streets or along the roads, where with hue and cry he was driven from the town and province.* * I have adopted the generally received meaning of this document as a whole, but I am obliged to state that Oppert- Menant admit quite a different interpretation. According to them, it would appear to be a sweeping renunciation of children by parents, and of parents by children, at the close of a judicial condemnation. Oppert has upheld this interpretation against Haupt, and still keeps to his opinion. The documents published by Meissner show that the text of the ancient Sumerian laws applied equally to adopted children, but made no distinction between the insult offered to the father and that offered to the mother: the same penalty was applicable in both cases.