ABSTRACT
Children in Egypt do not dare to sit in front of their elders, while the people tremble in front of the beys; and it is only the excess of domestic power which, in that unhappy country, as formerly in Rome, maintains families in some form of public state of society. Among the Greeks as everywhere, paternal power followed the fortunes of marital power; it was of no account in Athens, and all the stronger in Sparta in that every child was reputed to have as many fathers as there were old men. The simultaneous plurality of women was accepted among the Asiatics, for this childish people has never been able to escape the imperfect state. Marriage carries to excess the husband's power and the wife's dependence. It was therefore in the Athenian democracy that the laws of Solon, for the first time, allowed divorce to the wife, which she may have allowed to herself earlier than the law.
