Down to a very late date, a divorce is not met with in the annals of Rome; but with what unconcern the undoing of the marriage knot came to be regarded is well illustrated in the life of Cato the Younger. Attilia, his first wife, was put away for misconduct. Then he married Marcia, against whose reputation no blighting wind of scandal ever raged. Among the dearest friends of her husband was Hortensius, known as a man of good position and excellent character. Evidently, as the sequel shows, in all seriousness he sought to persuade Cato that the latter's daughter Portia, who was married to a man to whom she had borne two children, might be given to him. His argument was that she, as a fair plot of land, ought to bear fruit; but that it was not right that one man should be provided with a larger family than he could support, while another had none. Cato answered that he loved Hortensius very well, and much approved of uniting their houses; but he could not approve of forcibly taking away his daughter from her husband. Then Hortensius was bold enough to request that Cato, who, he thought, had enough children, should relinquish to him his own wife. Cato, seeing that he was in earnest, consented to do this, stipulating first that his wife's father should be consulted. No objection being raised in that quarter, a marriage was performed between Marcia and Hortensius, Cato assisting at the ceremony. In all this there is no mention made of Marcia's consent being given or even asked. Some years afterward, Cato, wanting someone to keep his house and take care of his daughters, took Marcia again, Hortensius being now dead and having left her all his estate. Cæsar, upon this, reproached Cato with covetousness; "for," he said, "if he had need of a wife, why did he part with her? And if he had not, why did he take her again? unless he gave her only as a bait to Hortensius, and lent her when she was young, to have her again when she was rich." The historian answers this by quoting the verse of Euripides: "'To speak of mysteries-the chief of these Surely were cowardice in Hercules.' "For," he says, "it were much the same thing to reproach Hercules for cowardice and to accuse Cato of covetousness." The explanation of this singular action, the cold nature which Cato inherited from his grandfather the Censor being taken into consideration, seems to lie in the fact that the Roman idea of the necessary guardianship over women precluded any just conception of their rights in the disposal of their own persons. The giving and the taking of a woman in marriage was wholly the business of her father and her suitor; nothing was required of her in the transaction save thankful obedience. Cato was perfectly at liberty to give away his wife, if he so desired; this right was guaranteed to him by the simple fact that she was his property.