suade, a Roman citizen to an act of unnatural lust was always regarded as a crime deserving of death; 2 to consent to it was in a freeborn youth equally punishable.3 But the law did not protect slaves from abuse and violence of their masters, however much public opinion might condemn the dissolute wretches who gave themselves up to this foreign vice. CHAP. XII. On the other hand, intercourse with prostitutes, if not Public exceeding moderate bounds, was permitted by common morality. practice, and not censured even by moralists. An anecdote which is related of the censor Cato is characteristic of this license.5 Meeting one day a respectable young man coming from a brothel, he commended him. But finding him repeatedly on the same road he turned his praise into reproach, because he could not approve of his young friend's living in the brothel. How little the reputation of a man was injured by habitual intercourse with prostitutes we can gather, not only from many features of the comic stage, but also from the reports which Livy gives of the Bacchanalia. Even married men, so 7 long as they did not offend against outward decency, could with impunity indulge in excesses which would have brought upon the wife the severest penalty. The practice of concubinage was formally allowed, and a concubine (pellex) was not considered an outcast of society, although 1 'Monstrosa Venus et nefanda libido.' 2 Valer. Max. vi. 1, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12. 3 Valer. Max. vi. 1, 5. Valer. Max. vii. 3, 10: Vulgari et permissa venere uti. Cicero, Pro Calio, 12, 28 Datur concessu omnium huic aliquis ludus ætati et ipsa natura profundit adolescentiæ cupiditates: quæ si ita erumpunt, ut nullius vitam labefactent, nullius domum evertant, faciles et tolerabiles haberi solent. Ibid. § 30, 42, 44, 48. 5 Horat. Sat. I. ii. 31, and Scholia ad l. The motive for this praise is explained in the passage quoted from Cicero above, note 4. 7 Terent. Andr. I. i. 124. Plaut. Bacchid. III. iii.; Pseudol. I. v. 8 Below, p. 272 ff. 9 Plautus, Mercat. 805: Ecastor lege dura vivont mulieres Multoque iniquiore miseræ quam viri. Nam vir si scortum duxit clam uxorem suam, BOOK VI. Law of adultery. The Roman matron. she was excluded from the honours of the matron and from the temple of Juno.1 The inequality of legal principles applied to man and wife with regard to conjugal fidelity, which has not been altogether abolished, even in our own time, by modern custom and legislation, was in Rome considered natural and reasonable. The husband by an act of adultery was not guilty of an offence against his own wife. His intercourse with the wife of another made him, indeed, guilty of adultery, but he was guilty only with regard to the husband of this woman, whom alone he was supposed to have injured. From a Roman matron, on the other hand, chastity was required as the first condition of her social and domestic status. She could approach the altar of her house only as a pure priestess. As a wife she was expected to be no less virtuous than a Vestal was as a virgin. Her infidelity would have endangered the purity and legitimacy of the family, and would have been a crime against the protecting deities of the house. Hence the husband was authorised to punish conjugal infidelity of his wife, even by death, if he succeeded in surprising her in the act. It was a crime punishable especially by the domestic tribunal of the male relatives, which was convoked on such occasions by the head of the family. Yet it was prosecuted also by the public authorities at a comparatively early time. As early as the year 295 B.C.-i.e. in the heroic age of the Samnite wars-Livy' remarks that Id si rescivit uxor, impune est viro. Uxor virum si clam domo egressast foras, Viro fit causa, exigitur matrumonio. The words of Cato quoted by Gellius, x. 23: In adulterio uxorem tuam si prehendisses, sine iudicio impune necares; illa te, si adulterares sive tu adulterarere, digito non auderet contingere, neque ius est. 3, 3. It was a reputed law of Numa, Pellex aram Junonis ne tangito.' Gell. iv. 2 Liv. x. 31, 9: Eo anno Q. Fabius Gurges aliquot matronas ad populum stupri damnatas pecunia multavit, ex quo multatitio ære Veneris ædem quæ prope Circum est faciendam curavit. This is indeed a strange story. If the fact is correctly stated by Livy, we cannot imagine that immorality on such a stupendous scale was confined to one year, or, in fact, to one period. It several matrons were accused of adultery and condemned by a popular tribunal. If this report may be believed, we cannot talk of a further corruption of morals in the time of the Scipios; at least, we have no proofs of an increase of conjugal infidelity during this time. It was not till later, in the time of the civil wars, that matters changed. Then, but not until then, the immorality of women assumed alarming proportions, and finally called forth, under Augustus, the vigorous intervention of the law. CHAP. XII. A Roman paterfamilias watched with equal vigilance Wives and daughters. and equal severity over the chastity of his daughter as over that of his wife. The deed of Virginius, who killed his daughter to save her from pollution, though it be only a fiction, is characteristic of the prevailing feeling of Roman fathers. A certain P. Mænins slew a freedman of whom he had been extremely fond, merely because he had ventured to kiss his daughter. A Roman knight, Pontius Aufidianus, whose daughter had been dishonoured by a slave, punished both the daughter and her seducer with death. The same was done by a certain Atilius, although he himself had made a profession of unchastity. Every Roman virgin, it was thought, should vie with the Vestals in purity of conduct. 3 freemen. We have already repeatedly pointed out the injurious Slaves and influence of slavery on the Roman state and people. Wherever we turn we find its pernicious traces. Law, social economy, customs, all branches of public and private must have been an evil of long growth before it could reach such dimensions. For moral disease, unlike a physical epidemic, is not capricious and unaccountable in its devastations. It can neither come nor go suddenly. We should, therefore, be justified in assuming on the strength of Livy's report, that the old Roman purity of manners, so generally and so highly extolled, is altogether fictitious, or that the outbreak of vice in 259 B.C. was no more real than the poisoning of 331 B.C. (above, p. 231) and of 180 B.C. We are decidedly in favour of the latter alternative, and we see in the proceedings against the matrons in 259 B.C. one of the instances of periodical panic to which the Romans were subject, and which made them unjust and cruel to an extent rarely equalled by other nations. Valer. Max. vi. 1, 4. 2 Valer. Max. vi. 1, 3. Valer. Max. vi. 1, 6. BOOK Condition of the slaves. life were afflicted by the inflammation and sores produced by this ubiquitous poison. The Romans were severely punished for refusing to recognise human nature and their native, human rights in human beings. The injustice which they accustomed themselves to practise towards slaves necessarily hardened their hearts towards freemen, who after all were distinguished from slaves, not by nature, but by an artificial barrier alone. Hardheartedness to the weak, to subjects and enemies, is the most outrageous mockery of that humanity which we usually consider as the ornament both of ancient and modern life. It is precisely in men who, like Cato, appear as patterns of Roman virtue that this coarseness of moral feeling is most distinctly marked and shaped into sententious rules of life. So many slaves,' says Cato, 'so many enemies in the house.' In order to maintain the master's authority amid such dangers, he recommends the encouragement of disputes and quarrels among slaves, and as much as possible the separation of those among them who as countrymen might be inclined to sympathise with one another and possibly to conspire. Cato advises the Roman slave-owner to sell old slaves, that he may not be obliged to support them when they have become decrepit and useless. It is evident from every page of ancient history, in comic writers, historians, and philosophers, that slaves, as might be expected of them, did not fail to return such want of feeling with dishonesty, treachery, and hatred; that they instructed and abetted the children and women in immorality, and were their accomplices in all intrigues or conspiracies; that they aided their masters in the indulgence of their worst vices, and were ever ready to lend their hand in any act of infamy. Excluded as they were from honourable employment; living like domestic animals, without rights, without property, and without marriage; wearing a distinguishing dress, by which they could know each other and count their increasing numbers, they formed indeed a dangerous classdangerous through their vices, their misery, and their strength. A healthy condition of social and public life was under these circumstances impossible, and outbursts of rage and revenge which in the shape of slave-revolts occurred periodically in the history of Rome were the symptoms of an incurable disease. If, nevertheless, instances of magnanimity and virtue can be found among slaves, this only shows that human nature cannot be entirely exterminated in man by any amount of brutality or injustice. But such phenomena were rare exceptions, and did not materially moderate the fatal effect which the institution of slavery produced. The influences which acted upon Roman morals were essentially the same as those which now and at all times chiefly determine the actions of men. Neither religion nor law produced deep or lasting effects. Religion was almost exclusively directed to one object, the teaching and enforcing of formal and ceremonial duties towards the gods; law was limited within sharply defined bounds, and watched over the performance of obligations demanded in social and political relations. Morality had within these lines a wide scope for the free development of personal character in views and actions; and this moral liberty, unaffected by religion or law, was directed only by the conscience of individuals and of society, the inborn sentiment of what is morally allowed or prohibited that lives in every human being, and pervades every human society as public opinion. CHAP. XII. Influence of religion and law. sorial con trol of In antiquity, and still more in modern times, a great The cen influence upon the morals of the Romans has been attributed to an institution which had originally no connex- morals. ion with morals or religion, but served purely political and administrative purposes. It is the so-called control of morals (the censura morum or regimen morum) vested in the censors. The ancient writers speak of it with a kind of pride and admiration.' In our own time we often 1 Dionys. xviii. 19: οἷς ἀποδέδοται τοὺς ἁπάντων Ῥωμαίων ἐξετά ειν βίους, καὶ τοὺς ἐκβαίνοντας ἐκ τῶν πατρίων ἐθῶν ζημιοῦν. Id. xx. 3. Plutarch, Cato M. 16. Zonar. vii. 19. Liv. iv. 8, 2: Idem annus censuræ initium fuit, rei VOL. IV. R |