Tacitus says: "A strict regard for the sanctity of the matrimonial state characterizes the Germans and deserves our highest applause. Among the females, virtue runs no hazard of being offended or destroyed by the outward objects presented to the senses, or of being corrupted by such social gayeties as might lead the mind astray. Severe punishments were ordered in case of infringement of this great bond of society. Vice is not made the subject of wit or mirth, nor can the fashion of the age be pleaded in excuse for being corrupt or for endeavoring to corrupt others. Good customs and manners avail more among these barbarians than good laws among a more refined people." Among the Teutons, whom Tacitus thus praises to the discredit of his own people, there was no room for any question of the elemental rights of woman, for among them woman was more than loved, she was reverenced. As Sharon Turner observes, women were admitted into the councils of the men; and the high position accorded them is further shown by their prominence in the more intellectual priestly class. The proportion of women to men must have been ten to one. Their preponderance in this influential order assured them of the preservation of the regard in which their sex was held. Its best security, however, lay in that instinctive feeling of the equality of the sexes which is fundamental in the character of the Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic family as a whole. We must not suppose that because the women of the Anglo-Saxons had certain rights and were accorded a certain superstitious reverence, as specially gifted in divination, they were therefore the objects of chivalrous devotion and were surrounded by æsthetic associations. The age was a rude one, and the race was made up of uncouth barbarians. The female grace of chastity was not the result of high ideals, or of wise deductions from the sacredness of the family relation in its bearing upon society; it did not even have its basis in conspicuous moral motives; but it was a natural characteristic of a people who had lived under severe conditions which necessitated a constant struggle for supremacy and relegated all weaknesses of the flesh to a place of secondary importance. Had this attribute sprung from any of those considerations which at a later time gave rise to chivalry, there would be found in the poetry of the time the evidences of a tender regard for woman; her praise would have been sung in poems of love; but there is a dearth of love songs in the verses of this period. Love of a kind there was, but it was too matter-of-fact and practical in its nature to effloresce into sentimentality.