Tacitus on Germanic Standards for Women and Child-Rearing

Yes: “good customs are stronger than good laws”. It is interesting to see the likening of a spouse to one’s own body, as Tacitus is only about 70 or so years after Paul, who used similar imagery. How stock ws the image? I am tempted to buy Wilson’s _Pauline Parallels_ (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0664231209/)

SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE

Some of the rhetoric here seems a bit familiar…

Tacitus, Germania 19-20

In that country, no one finds vice amusing; nor is seducing or being seduced celebrated as a sign of the times. Even better are those communities where only virgins marry and a promise is made with the hope and vow of a wife. And so, they have only one husband just as each has one body and one life so that there may be no additional thought of it, no lingering desire, that they may not love the man so much as they love the marriage. It is considered a sin to limit the number of children or to eliminate the later born. There good customs are stronger than good laws.

There are children there naked and dirty in every house growing into the size of limbs and body at which we wonder. Each mother nourishes each child…

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