transactions. We see that even the Hebrew law contained no permission of this liberty to that sex; the reasons were, doubtless, the wisest, and could not spring from indifference to them, as so many regulations were made which peculiarly respected their comfort and security. And the attainment and exercise of this power by the women, at a future period of the Jewish history, may probably be traced up to the intercourse of the Hebrew nation with the Greek and Roman, who did allow of it to their women. The innovation only required some decisive example. The case of Salome furnished it; and we soon hear of other instances, of Herodias, of Drusilla, the Jewess, mentioned in the Acts,* who left her husband Azizus, King of Emessa, and cohabited with Felix the Roman Procurator, and also of the two other sisters of Agrippa,† Berenice, and Mariamne, who each divorced their husbands.

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It is also supposed, that the words of the Saviour, If a woman put away her husband, and marry another," &c. imply the existence of this practice at that time; and some con

+ Agrippa, formerly King of Chalcis, afterwards of Trachonitis and Batanea.

jecture that the woman of Samaria was an instance of it, who had (divorced, they contend) five husbands, and that her marriage with the first, being still in force, the marriage was unlawful which she had contracted with the last: "He whom thou now hast is not thy husband;"* but no reliance can be placed on this.

With regard to the men, they exercised the power in the later ages of the Jewish nation with great freedom; the interpretation of Hillel they approved, and acted upon it.

Josephus says, "If a man has a mind to part from his wife, upon what cause soever, as there are pretences in abundance, let him give her under his hand a Bill of Divorce, and they shall never come together again." And, in the account of his life he tells us, that he acted upon this himself, for he divorced his wife, not liking her temper at all; † and this, though she was the mother of three children.

Philo the Jew has also a passage to the same effect, indicating a familiarity with divorces which was then prevalent for the slightest and most frivolous pretences.

* John iv. 18.

+ Την γυναίκα μη αρεσχόμενος τοις ήθεσι απεπεμψαμεν τριων παιδων μητέρα.

Some have imagined that this unrestrained liberty in the dissolution of marriage is a main ingredient in civil comfort; but we shall have abundant occasion, in remarking on the results of it, particularly in the case of the Roman people, to observe its contrary tendency. And this part of the Essay, on the Hebrew Divorces, cannot be better closed than in the elegant and expressive sentiment of the Rabbi Eleazer:-"Tears shall bedew that altar which witnesses the hasty dissolution of the marriage vow.'

.כל המגרש אשתי ראשונה אפילו מזבה מוריך עליו במעות *

"Quisquis repudiaverit temere uxorem suam primam, etiam altare lachrymos ob eum effundit."

SECTION II.

THE second branch of this Essay respects the laws and customs which prevailed among the most celebrated of the ancient nations, on the subjects of Adultery and Divorce, which appear to have strangely varied at different periods of time.

Fidelity to the marriage bed has ever been considered, especially on the part of the woman, one of the most essential obligations of the matrimonial compact, and the wisdom of the best legislators will be discovered in following its violation by some punishment; but these punishments will generally appear to have reference to the manner in which the acquisition of the wife was obtained by the customs of different nations; and the relative value stamped upon the female sex by civilization and the refinement of manners.

Ancient Greece shall be considered first. In the heroic ages, while revenge was almost the only principle that actuated the Greeks, Adultery was frequently punished by murder; but it is not to be wondered at, that a crime. like this, inflicting such a wound on domestic enjoyment, should often prompt a man to take the punishment of it into his own hands. When Thyestes, son of Pelops, King of Mycene and Argos, had seduced the wife of his brother Atreus, Atreus invited him to a feast, and entertained him with the flesh of his two children, Tantalus and Plisthenes; and their father, fearing some further violence, made his escape.

From certain passages in Homer,* it would appear, that the adulterer was sometimes stoned, or pressed to death. The wealthy delinquent was however allowed to redeem himself with money, which was called by the disgraceful, but expressive term, papyea, and was paid to the husband of the adulteress. The woman's father, also, returned all the dowry which he might have received (according to the custom of those times) from her husband. These practices belonged to the earliest ages, in which another punishment

Iliad

y. the punishment called λαϊνος χιτων, a stone coat.