Editing Divorce (section)

===Greco-Roman culture===
{{See also|Marriage in ancient Rome}}
[[File:Roman marriage vows.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Roman married couple.]]
Rather than being conceived as a legal procedure, divorce in [[Classical Athens]] was largely thought to be a private matter — defined by law, but with no specific legal action required. To divorce his wife, an Athenian man need only to dismiss her by sending her back to her family. It is unknown what would have constituted socially acceptable grounds for divorce, save for the fact that it was required by law for men to divorce adulterous women. The procedure for divorce was considerably more difficult for women. In order to initiate divorce, Athenian women were required to appear in public before the archon to state their case. This procedure was a considerable exception to standard Athenian legal conventions, which barred women from representing themselves in court, as woman-initiated divorce proceedings required a woman to represent herself as a matter of public record.<ref name="Divorce in Classical Athens">{{cite journal |last1=Cohn-Haft |first1=Louis |title=Divorce in Classical Athens |journal=The Journal of Hellenic Studies |date=1995 |volume=115 |issue=115 |pages=1–14|doi=10.2307/631640 |jstor=631640 |s2cid=161594618 }}</ref>

Divorce was rare in early Roman culture but as their [[Roman Empire|empire]] grew in power and authority [[Roman law#civil law|Roman civil law]] embraced the maxim, "{{lang|la|matrimonia debent esse libera}}" ("marriages ought to be free"), and either husband or wife could renounce the marriage at will. The Christian emperors [[Constantine I|Constantine]] and [[Theodosius]] restricted the grounds for divorce to grave cause, but this was relaxed by [[Justinian I|Justinian]] in the 6th century.