Note 249 — OF MARRIAGE.

The Romans interdicted marriages of extreme inequality in respect of age, upon public policy; their law likewise restrained it between men above 60 and women turned 50, because at these ages procreation was improbable.

The Athenian laws are said once to have decreed that Males should not marry till they were past 35 years of age. Aristotle (Polit. lib. vii. c. xvi.) thought 37 the proper age; Plato fixes 30, in which opinion Hesiod coincides. With respect to Females, the old Athenian laws allowed them to marry at 26; Aristotle at 18, and Hesiod at 15. Lycurgus approved a marriage between men of 37, and women of 17; the principal object of which was, says Zenophon (De Republ. Lacedæm.) to insure that perfect maturity, and complete sexual vigour which he considered so eminently essential for the propagation of the human species. Aristotle wished the husband to be always 20 years older than his wife, in order that they might both arrive, at the same time, to the period when fertility ceases; and we learn from Cæsar & Tacitus that the ancient Germans maintained a similar sentiment.