Out of that philosophy, that association, and that teaching, out of the character of Hadrian—for, despite the attempts of his biographers, Startianus and Dion Cassius, to make him a cruel and vain tyrant, his whole life shows an abhorrence of bloodshed—there was born a new rule.[350]
He closed the ergastula, or workhouses, where so many men, carried off by surprise, were detained and tortured; he protected slaves against the cruelty and murderous punishments of masters, prohibiting their sale to houses of prostitution or schools for gladiators, and also declaring against the indiscriminate torture of slaves whose masters had been assassinated. Up to that time even those who had not been within sight or hearing of a murder were liable to punishment. A woman who had ill-treated her female slaves he sentenced to five years’ imprisonment—an unheard-of thing in those days.
Once before, during the reign of Tiberius, Carthaginian priests had been crucified by the Emperor for the sacrifice of children to their god Moloch, but apparently the punishment had not acted as a deterrent, for we find a similar provision in the laws of Hadrian.
Going further and, as Duruy says, “employing logic in the service of humanity,” he ruled that any woman who had been free at the time of pregnancy must naturally give birth to a free child, a ruling not important in itself but closely in touch with what we will come to see was the argument of the Christian Fathers in behalf of the lives of little children.
He ameliorated the condition of women, allowing them to make wills, and for the first time softened the law of the Twelve Tables which, according to Ulpian, had given a mother no rights in the property of a son dying intestate. Hadrian, however, following a senatus consultum Tertullianum, gave the mother, under the jus trium liberorum, the right to inherit when she had had three sons, and, if a freed woman, when she had had four.
But the great blow Hadrian struck at the theories that had hitherto held sway was the condemning to banishment a father who had killed his son. From time immemorial the boast of Rome had been fathers who, in the ardour of patriotism, and sometimes in the heat of anger or resentment, had sacrificed their sons, no matter how famous or important their sons were.
THE SACRIFICING OF LIVING INFANTS TO THE GOD MOLOCH
“Lucius Brutus,” says Valerius Maximus, giving suitable incidents of the father’s power, “who equalled Romulus in honour, for he founded Rome and thus the Roman liberty, coming to the supreme power, and understanding that his sons endeavoured to restore Tarquin, caused them to be apprehended, and to be whipped with rods before the Tribuna; and, after that, caused them to be tied to a stake, and then ordered the sergeant to cut off their heads. He put off the relation of a father, that he might act like a consul; rather chose to live childless, than to be remiss in public duty.
“Cassius, following his example, though his son was a tribune of the people, and was the first that had promulgated the Agrarian law, and by many other popular acts had won the hearts of the people, when he had laid down his command, by advice of his kindred and friends, condemned him in his own house for affecting the kingdom; and after he was whipped, commanded him to be put to death; and consecrated his estate to Ceres.