The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter both of public and private importance.[28] In various places criminal proceedings might be taken against celibates.[29] Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity;[30] and Isaeus says, “All those who think their end approaching look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs.”[31] So also the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children constituted a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep hold of the Roman mind in early times.[32] Cicero’s treatise ‘De Legibus’—which generally reproduces in a philosophical form the ancient laws of Rome—contains a law according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men.[33] But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520 B.C.—naturally increased in proportion, especially among the upper classes. Among these marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon;[34] and later the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age,[35] though with little or no result.[36]
[28] Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, ii. 300 sq. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55. Hearn, op. cit. p. 72. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234 sq.
[29] Pollux, Onomasticum, iii. 48.
[30] Plato, Leges, vi. 773.
[31] Isaeus, Oratio de Apollodori hereditate, 30, p. 66. Rohde observes (Psyche, p. 228), however, that such a belief did not exist in the Homeric age, when the departed souls in Hades were supposed to be in no way dependent upon the survivors.
[32] Mommsen, History of Rome, i. 74.
[33] Cicero, De legibus, iii. 3. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55.
[34] Mommsen, op. cit. iii. 121; iv. 186 sq.
[35] Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 418.
[36] Mackenzie, Studies in Roman Law, p. 104.