 With respect to the issue of who is authorized to represent the family, and the practice whereby only men are granted this prerogative, Condorcet makes a simple observation: If marriage is “a society of two people”, it admits of only one condition under which a necessary inequality be allowed, that is, “the need for someone to have a casting vote on the rare occasions when the different opinions cannot be allowed to act simultaneously, while at the same time the need to act quickly means that we cannot wait for the parties to come to an agreement” (McLean and Hewitt 1994, 298). However, even in these circumstances, Condorcet insists that there need be no permanent inequality introduced between the spouses. He would instead divide and rotate the prerogative, giving “either men or women the casting vote for matters in which one or the other is more likely to express a will which conforms to reason”. He also reminds his readers that greater equality between spouses is “not as new as we might imagine”, for Roman women were granted by Emperor Julian the right to initiate divorce proceedings against their spouses. On this point, Condorcet cannot resist a witticism: “Perhaps the least gallant of the Caesars was the most just toward women”, he proposes (McLean and Hewitt 1994, 298).