initiative in divorce; the husband was all-powerful. The first divorce
of which we have any record took place in the year 231 B.C., when
Spurius Carvilius Ruga put away his wife for sterility. Public opinion
censured him severely for it "because people thought that not even the
desire for children ought to have been preferred to conjugal fidelity
and affection."[96] As the Empire extended and Rome became more worldly
and corrupt, the reasons for divorce became more trivial. Sempronius
Sophus divorced his wife because she had attended some public games
without his knowledge.[97] Cicero, who was a lofty moralist--on
paper,--put away his wife Terentia in order to marry a rich young ward
and get her money if he could. Maecenas, the great prime-minister of
Augustus, sent away and took back his wife repeatedly at
caprice--perhaps he believed that variety is the spice of life. But
during all this time the husband alone could annul marriage.[98]

Gradually, however, the status of women changed and they were given
greater and greater liberty. Inasmuch as Roman marriage was a civil
contract based on consent, strict justice had to allow that on this
basis either party to the contract might annul the marriage at his or
her pleasure. The result was that during the first three centuries after
Christ the wife had absolute freedom to take the initiative and send her
husband a divorce whenever and for whatever reason she wished. The
proof of this fact is positively established not only from the
statements of the jurists, but also from numberless accounts in the
other writers of the day.[99] Divorce became, at least among the higher
strata of society, extraordinarily frequent. That a lady of the Upper
Four Hundred should have been content with only one husband was deemed
worthy of special mention on her tomb; the word _univira_ (a woman of
one husband) may still be read on certain inscriptions. The satirists
are fond of dwelling on the license allowed to women in the case of