XX. The strangest of his remaining laws is that which declared disfranchised a citizen who in a party conflict took neither side; apparently his object was to prevent any one regarding home politics in a listless, uninterested fashion, securing his own personal property, and priding himself upon exemption from the misfortunes of his country, and to encourage men boldly to attach themselves to the right party and to share all its dangers, rather than in safety to watch and see which side would be successful. That also is a strange and even ludicrous provision in one of his laws, which permits an heiress, whose husband proves impotent, to avail herself of the services of the next of kin to obtain an heir to her estate. Some, however, say that this law rightly serves men who know themselves to be unfit for marriage, and who nevertheless marry heiresses for their money, and try to make the laws override nature; for, when they see their wife having intercourse with whom she pleases, they will either break off the marriage, or live in constant shame, and so pay the penalty of their avarice and wrong-doing. It is a good provision also, that the heiress may not converse with any one, but only with him whom she may choose from among her husband's relations, so that her offspring may be all in the family. This is pointed at by his ordinance that the bride and bridegroom should be shut in the same room and eat a quince together, and that the husband of an heiress should approach her at least thrice in each month. For even if no children are born, still this is a mark of respect to a good wife, and puts an end to many misunderstandings, preventing their leading to an actual quarrel. In other marriages he suppressed dowries, and ordered the bride to bring to her husband three dresses and a few articles of furniture of no great value; for he did not wish marriages to be treated as money bargains or means of gain, but that men and women should enter into marriage for love and happiness and procreation of children. Dionysius, the despot of Syracuse, when his mother wished to be married to a young citizen, told her that he had indeed broken the laws of the state when he seized the throne, but that he could not disregard the laws of nature so far as to countenance such a monstrous union. These disproportioned matches ought not to be permitted in any state, nor should men be allowed to form unequal loveless alliances, which are in no sense true marriages. A magistrate or lawgiver might well address an old man who marries a young girl in the words of Sophokles: "Poor wretch, a hopeful bridegroom you will be;" and if he found a young man fattening like a partridge in the house of a rich old woman, he ought to transfer him to some young maiden who is without a husband. So much for this subject.