A few years later, Quintus Hortensius desired to make an alliance with Cato and asked for Porcia's hand in marriage. Bibulus, who was infatuated with his wife, was unwilling to let her go. Hortensius offered to marry her and then return her to Bibulus once she had given birth to an heir. Such an arrangement was not uncommon at the time. He argued that it was against natural law to keep a girl of Porcia's youth and beauty from producing children for his allies and impractical for her to overproduce for Bibulus. Nonetheless Bibulus refused to divorce her and Cato disliked the idea of marrying his daughter to a man who was four times her age. Instead, Cato divorced his wife, Porcia's stepmother Marcia, and gave her to Hortensius; he remarried her after Hortensius died.