XIX.26 Continuation of the same subject

The law of Theodosius and Valentinian¹ took the cau­ses of repu­dia­tion from the ancient ethos and man­ners of the Romans.² It num­be­red among these cau­ses the act of a hus­band who chas­ti­sed his wife in a man­ner unwor­thy of a free­born per­son.³ This cause was omit­ted in sub­se­quent laws,⁴ because the ethos had chan­ged in this res­pect : Oriental prac­ti­ces had taken the place of European ones. The first eunuch of the empress wife of Justinian II threa­te­ned her, his­tory says, with the punish­ment applied to chil­dren in the schools. Nothing short of an esta­bli­shed ethos, or an ethos see­king to become esta­bli­shed, could allow a per­son to ima­gine such a thing.

We have seen how laws fol­low the ethos ; let us now see how the ethos fol­lows the laws.