In Rome a husband was allowed to lend his wife to another. Plutarch states this formally1 ; we know that Cato lent his wife to Hortensius,2 and Cato was not a man to violate his country’s laws.
On the other hand, a husband who suffered his wife’s debauchery, who did not place her in judgment, or who took her back once condemned, was punished.3 These laws appear to contradict each other, and do not. The law that allowed a Roman to lend his wife is visibly a Lacedæmonian institution, established to give the republic children of a good kind, if I dare use that term ; the object of the other was to preserve morals. The first was a political law, the second a civil law.