At the same time the contraction of a marriage
did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at
liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he
happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his slaves for the
pleasures of the senses. His wife, although she was not free, was
respected by him as the guardian of his hearth and children. There was
but one legal reason for divorce: sterility, which frustrated the object
of matrimony. Conjugal love as we understand it did not exist; it is a
feeling which was entirely unknown to the ancients.
With the exception of the gradually weakening hold of religion on the
imagination of the people towards the decline of the Roman Empire, no
perceptible change occurred in the social life of the old world until
the dawn of the Middle Ages. To quote Otto Seeck: "A wife had no other
task than to produce legitimate offspring; and yet she gave herself airs
and graces, embittered her husband's life with her jealousy and bad
temper or, worse even, set all tongues wagging with her evil conduct.
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