to make the laws override nature; for, when they see their wife having intercourse with whom she pleases, they will either break off the marriage, or live in constant shame, and so pay the penalty of their avarice and wrong-doing.  It is a good provision also, that the heiress may not converse with any one, but only with him whom she may choose from among her husband’s relations, so that her offspring may be all in the family.  This is pointed at by his ordinance that the bride and bridegroom should be shut in the same room and eat a quince together, and that the husband of an heiress should approach her at least thrice in each month.  For even if no children are born, still this is a mark of respect to a good wife, and puts an end to many misunderstandings, preventing their leading to an actual quarrel.

In other marriages he suppressed dowries, and ordered the bride to bring to her husband three dresses and a few articles of furniture of no great value; for he did not wish marriages to be treated as money bargains or means of gain, but that men and women should enter into marriage for love and happiness and procreation of children.  Dionysius, the despot of Syracuse, when his mother wished to be married to a young citizen, told her that he had indeed broken the laws of the state when he seized the throne, but that he could not disregard the laws of nature so far as to countenance such a monstrous union.  These disproportioned matches ought not to be permitted in any state, nor should men be allowed to form unequal loveless alliances, which are in no sense true marriages.  A magistrate or lawgiver might well address an old man who marries a young girl in the words of Sophokles:  “Poor wretch, a hopeful bridegroom you will be;” and if he found a young man fattening like a partridge in the house of a rich old woman, he ought to transfer him to some young maiden who is without a husband.  So much for this subject.

XXI.  Besides these, Solon’s law which forbids men to speak evil of the dead is much praised.  It is good to think of the departed as sacred, and it is only just to refrain from attacking the absent, while it is politic, also, to prevent hatred from being eternal.  He also forbade people to speak evil of the living in temples, courts of justice, public buildings, or during the national games; and imposed a fine of three drachmas to the person offended, and two to the state.  His reason for this was that it shows a violent and uncultivated nature not to be able to restrain one’s passion in certain places and at certain times, although it is hard to do so always, and to some persons impossible; and a legislator should frame his laws with a view to what he can reasonably hope to effect, and rather correct a few persons usefully than punish a number to no purpose.