Then, again, there was no shame attached to a dissolution of marriage. Marriage was a contract. Religious ceremonies were connected with it, but they did not constitute the marriage, and they were not essential to it. No sacredness invested the idea of marriage. It was an agreement between two parties, and, whenever this agreement began to gall the one or the other, there was no reason why the agreement should not come to an end. The strength of the Roman feeling on this point is seen in the attitude towards breach of promise. In Latium actions for breach of promise were common, as we are told by Servius Sulpicius in his book ‘De Dotibus,’ quoted by Gellius (iv. 4), and they continued till the citizenship of Rome was conferred on the Latins by the Lex Julia. But the Romans never seem to have allowed them. Sometimes the sponsalia or betrothal, though a private act, was celebrated with great pomp; but the Romans thought that “it was dishonourable that marriages should be held together by the bond of a penalty, whether future or already contracted,”[86] and “if,” says Juvenal, “you are not going to love the woman who has been by a legal agreement betrothed and united to you, there seems to be no reason why you should marry her.”[87] Appeal is often made in this connexion to the frequency of divorce. In early days the Romans did not divorce their wives, and this fact is exhibited as a proof of the virtue of early times and the degeneracy of the later period. The first Roman divorce is said to have occurred about the year 231 B.C., when Spurius Carvilius dismissed his wife because she bore him no children. One writer represents Spurius as fond of his wife, but every citizen had to answer the Censor’s question “Have you a wife for the purpose of procuring children?” Spurius’s wife was by nature incapable of bearing children, and he therefore felt conscientious scruples in answering the Censor’s question in the affirmative, as he was bound to do, and so dismissed his wife, according to the advice of the family council. It is not likely that this was the first divorce. At least, it is recorded that the Censors of 307 B.C. removed L. Annius from the Senate because he had divorced his wife without consulting the family council, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement. But it is probable that divorces came into vogue about the middle of the third century before the Christian era. The Roman Catholic lady, Mlle. Bader,[88] who has lauded the virtue of the Romans because no divorces took place before this time has suggested an explanation of the fact. “The Roman husbands,” she says, “did not divorce their wives; they killed them.” As long as the Roman wives were under the control or in the hands of the husband, the husband unquestionably could kill his wife under certain restrictions; but when this state of matters ceased, then the obvious course was, unless the wife committed great crimes, and thereby