על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ג י״דOn the Special Laws, Book III 14
א׳
1[79] There are some persons who show fickleness in their relations to women, mad for them and loathing them at the same time, each of them a mass of chaotic and promiscuous characteristics. They give way in a moment to their first impulses of any and every kind and let them go unbridled instead of reining them in as they should. They run about wildly and violently, pushing about and upsetting everything material or immaterial, with the result that like blind men without eyes to see before or around they tumble over them and suffer in the same measure as they have meted.
ב׳
2[80] For these people the law lays down as follows: In the case of persons who take maidens in lawful matrimony and have celebrated the bridal sacrifices and feasts, but retain no conjugal affection for their wives, and insult and treat these gentlewomen as if they were harlots—if such persons scheme to effect a separation, but finding no pretext for divorce resort to false accusation and through lack of matters of open daylight shift the charges to secret intimacies and bring forward an incriminating statement that the virgins whom they supposed they had married were discovered by them, when they first came together, to have lost their virginity already—then the whole body of elders will assemble to try the matter and the parents will appear to plead the cause in which all are endangered.
ג׳
3[81] For the danger affects not only the daughters whose bodily chastity is impugned, but also their guardians, against whom the charge is brought not only that they failed to watch over them at the most critical period of adolescence, but that the brides they had given as virgins had been dishonoured by other men, and thereby the bride-grooms were cheated and deceived.
ד׳
4[82] Then, if the justice of their cause prevails, the judges must assess the punishments due to these concoctors of false charges. This will consist of monetary fines, bodily degradation in the form of stripes, and what is most distasteful of all to the culprits, confirmation of the marriage, if, that is, the women can bring themselves to consort with such persons. For the law permits the wives to stay or separate as they wish, but deprives the husbands of any choice either way, as a punishment for their slanderous accusations.