1 Corinthians 7:11

but and if she depart Literally, be separated, as above. There were great facilities for divorce, both under the law of Greece and Rome, in St Paul's day, but the facilities were greater for the husband than for the wife. At Athens the husband could dismiss his wife at will. At Sparta failure of issue was regarded as a sufficient reason. Thus the Ephors, we are told by Herodotus (1 Corinthians 7:39) sent for Anaxandrides and urged him, lest the race of Eurysthenes should be extinct, to put away his wife. Something similar is related by the same historian (vi. 61 3) of Ariston. So in Roman law, the husband had originally the full disposal of the wife's person and liberty, but this harsh regulation was resented by the wives, and in the days of the empire the wife also obtained the power of divorce. Cicero and Cæsar both divorced their wives. Juvenal (Sat. vi. 229, 230) speaks of the fatal facility of divorce, possessed by the wives in his day: the then accepted theory being that whatever put an end to conjugal affection was sufficient to dissolve marriage. See Art. Divortiumin Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities, and Merivale's History of Rome, Vol. iv. The Jewish law of divorce was also very lax. See St Matthew 5:31-32; Deuteronomy 24:1.