In vain we covered our own sloth with borrowed names: if
the wife broke bounds, the husband ought to bear the blame. It was
moreover unjustly judged, for the weak and uxorious spirit of one or a
few, to bereave all others of the fellowship of their wives, the natural
partners of their prosperity and distress. Besides, the sex, weak by
nature, would be left defenceless, exposed to the luxurious bent of their
native passions, and a prey to the allurements of adulterers: scarce under
the eye and restraint of the husband was the marriage bed preserved
inviolate: what must be the consequence, when by an absence of many years,
the ties of marriage would be forgot, forgot as it were in a divorce? It
became them, therefore, so to cure the evils abroad as not to forget the
enormities at Rome." To this Drusus added somewhat concerning his own
wedlock. "Princes," he said, "were frequently obliged to visit the remote
parts of the Empire: how often did the deified Augustus travel to the
East, how often to the West, still accompanied with Livia? He himself too
had taken a progress to Illyricum, and, if it were expedient, was ready to
visit other nations; but not always with an easy spirit, if he were to be
torn from his dear wife, her by whom he had so many children.
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