[109] These are the laws which he lays down on the conduct to be observed in accepting settlers, but there are other charitable and very merciful regulations as to the treatment of enemies in wartime. They must not he declares be yet regarded as enemies, even if they are at the gates or stationed beside the walls in full array and planting their engines, until envoys have been sent with invitations to peace, so that if they yield they may obtain the supreme boon of friendship, but if they refuse to listen and continue their opposition, you may with justice to reinforce you advance to defend yourselves in the hope of victory.
[110] Further, he says, if you find among the booty a comely woman for whom you feel a desire, do not treat her as a captive, and vent your passion on her, but in a gentler spirit pity her for her change of lot and alleviate her misfortunes by changing her condition for the better in every way.
[111] And you will give this alleviation if you shave the hair of her head and pare her nails and take off the garment which she wore when captured, leave her alone for thirty days, and allow her without fear of disturbance to mourn and weep for her father and mother and the rest of her family, from whom she had been parted either through their death or because they are suffering the pains of slavery, which are worse than death.
[112] After this, live with her as your lawful wife, because holiness requires that she who is to enter a husband’s bed, not as a hired harlot, trafficking her youthful bloom, but either for love of her mate or for the birth of children, should be admitted to the rights of full wedlock as her due.
[113] Each of these regulations is quite admirable. First he did not allow rebellious desire to go unbridled, but curbed its violence by the thirty days grant of liberty. Secondly, he tests whether the man’s love is wild and giddy and wholely inspired by passion, or contains an element of reason and so has something of the purer kind. For reason will fetter desire and, instead of allowing it to commit an outrage, compel it to wait for the appointed period of a month.
[114] Thirdly, he shows pity for the captive, if she is a maiden, because there are no parents to plight her and make fast the union which they have so longed to see, if she is a widow, because bereft of her wedded mate, she is about to make trial of another, menaced too by the dread of a master, even if he deals with her as an equal; for the subject condition always fears the might of the superior even though it be tempered with gentleness.
[115] And if anyone, having satisfied his desire to the full and surfeited therewith, is no longer minded to continue his association with the captive, the law imposes what is not so much a loss of property as an admonition and correction leading him to improve his ways. For it bids him not sell her, nor yet keep her as a slave, but grant her freedom, and grant her, too, the right to depart in security from the house, lest if another wife comes in to supersede her, and quarrels ensue as they often do, this jealousy, with the master too under the sway of the charms of a new love and neglectful of the old, may bring her some fatal disaster.