individual, woman was considered a being of a higher nature; as a member of the state, she was necessarily represented by him upon whom nature had imposed the joyful burthen of her support, and the happy duty of her protection,—a principle too little considered by those who, with a scarcely pardonable sciolism, have clamoured for what they call the rights of woman. Woman among the Teutons was near akin to divinity, but not one among them ever raved that the _femme libre_ could be _woman_. ----- Footnote 437: What had struck Tacitus with astonishment and admiration in the first century (Germ. xviii. xix.), seemed equally remarkable to the thinkers of the Roman world in the fourth and fifth. Innumerable passages confirmatory of the averments in the text might be cited from Augustine, Orosius, Salvianus, or even Procopius,—testimonies all the more valuable because supplied by hostile witnesses, by the conquered of the conqueror, the orthodox of the Arian. Footnote 438: Tac. Germ. xix. Footnote 439: Ibid. viii. Footnote 440: Caes. Bell. Gall. i. 50. Footnote 441: Tac. Germ. vii. viii. After the defeat of the Cimbri by Marius, their women applied to the Consul, to have their chastity respected, and themselves assigned as serfs to the vestal virgins. On receiving a refusal they put their children and then themselves to death. The dogs that had accompanied them, long defended their corpses. See Florus, iii. 3, and Orosius, v. 16. Footnote 442: Tac. Germ. xix. Footnote 443: For this a general reference to the _Barbarian_ laws must suffice. Alaríc even went the length of putting to death a noble Goth, who, during the sack of the city, had violated the daughter of a Roman citizen. ----- Hence the profound importance attached to chastity, and the undoubted influence of alliances by marriage[444], through which separate kindreds are fused into one body, adopting common interests, pursuing common objects, and recognizing in the bond which unites its members, obligations which are still exhibited in oriental countries, which we trace throughout the middle ages of Europe, but which are gradually vanishing under the conditions of our modern mercantile society. ----- Footnote 444: A beautiful evidence of this lies in the epic name for woman; in Anglosaxon poetry she is called freoðowebbe, _the weaver of peace_. Beów. l. 3880. Trav. S. l. 11. -----