Augustus did in regard to adultery what he did in regard to marriage. He translated ordinary private practice into public law, and on the whole made the conduct of the Romans milder than it had been, though he was strongly tempted by the licentiousness of his daughter to prescribe stern punishment for the crime. His law required that the divorce should take place in regular form. The freedman of the man who wished to divorce must hand over the repudium, or bill of divorce, in the presence of seven Romans of full age, and the wife who wished a divorce must do the same. The law ordained, that a woman who was found guilty of adultery should be banished to an island, and lose half of her dowry and a third of her property, and similar punishments were inflicted on a faithless husband. In the case of the wife, it still lay with the husband to inflict the penalty, and he himself was liable to be punished if he did not carry out the sentence. The husband could still kill his wife if he found her in the act; but he could execute vengeance only if he put to death both the guilty parties.
The Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which was no doubt embodied in the Lex Papia Poppæa, brings to light a new phase of Roman life. Distinctions had arisen among the Roman citizens, and more anxiety was felt to maintain the honour and purity of the highest of these classes than to preserve the ordinary Roman citizen from the outside world. Senators were forbidden to marry freedwomen, but all other citizens were allowed to marry them, owing to the scarcity of free women, but prohibited from marrying prostitutes, procuresses, condemned criminals, and actresses.
The legislation of Augustus in regard to marriage has generally been regarded as a failure. Horace celebrated the success of the Lex Julia de adulterio cohibendo in Ode iv. 5:—
“Nullis polluitur casta domus stupris,
Mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas”—
words which seem to me to prove that the accounts of the degeneracy of the women were grossly exaggerated—for no legislation could produce effects in any way approaching to those described by Horace, if the evil were deeply seated. From Horace’s words we may gather that the law had some good effect; and the prominence of the Lex Papia Poppæa in the discussions of jurists, renders it likely that it continued to act for some time with considerable force. The general effect of legislation based on it, and of the course of events, was to alter the basis of the Roman State, and to make the individual, and not the family, the unit. Husband and wife became more closely connected together, the wife becoming to some extent the heir of the husband, and her children being entitled to inherit her property. But causes were working, in combination with the aversion to marriage, which rendered the Lex Papia Poppæa nugatory. In the Christian Church arose an inordinate estimate of the virtue of celibacy. A large family came to be regarded almost as a disgrace, as a proof of lasciviousness. And thus, when Constantine, a Christian Emperor, ascended the throne, he abolished most of the pains and penalties of celibacy and childlessness, and Justinian abolished all the clauses that dealt with inheritance.
BOOK III.
THE POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER I.
HIGH POSITION OF WOMEN AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEGRADATION.
The opinion has been continually expressed that woman owes her present high position to Christianity, and the influences of the Teutonic mind. But an examination of the facts seems to me to show that there was no sign of this revolution in the first three centuries of the Christian era, and that the position of women among Christians was lower, and the notions in regard to them were more degraded than they were in the first. Unquestionably in the Gospels women occupy a prominent position. Many of them followed Christ and ministered to Him. With a woman who had had five husbands and was living with a man not her husband, He holds the most profound conversation, and to her He proclaims the grandest truths of His revelation. And the women of His day and country seem to have had great liberty of movement and action. One of them, described by St. Luke as “a sinner in the city,” finds her way into the house of a Pharisee with whom He was dining, pours a box of ointment on His feet, and washes His feet with tears and wipes them with the hairs of her head. Christ mingles freely in the marriage festivities where His mother and doubtless other female residents were present. His intercourse with the family of Bethany is of the most unrestrained character, and He talks to both sisters on the highest subjects. And, according to St. John, His first appearance after His resurrection is made to a woman, Mary of Magdala, from whom he had expelled seven demons. But in the Gospels there is no special doctrine propounded in regard to women, and if there is any approach to this, it exhibits great mildness, if we take the story of the woman caught in adultery as genuine. It is when we come to the writings of St. Paul that opinions are pronounced in regard to marriage and the conduct of women, and there can be no doubt that these opinions are of a stern and restrictive nature. The Ebionites[116] explained the Apostle’s conversion by stating that he was, as he himself allowed, a native of Tarsus, that he was not a Jew, but a Greek with a Greek father and a Greek mother; that he went up to Jerusalem and stayed there for some time; that he fell in love with the high priest’s daughter, became in consequence a proselyte, and asked her in marriage, but on being refused he was enraged, and wrote against circumcision, the Sabbath, and the law. Some have thought that there is a bitterness against women in the writings of St Paul, which can be explained only by some such rejection as that related by the Ebionites. Perhaps, also, the character of the women of Tarsus, his native city, may have had an effect upon him. At an early time they were particularly prim and modest. They were in the habit of covering the entire body with clothing, so that no one could see a single part of their face or the rest of their body, and they themselves could see nothing except the road on which they were walking. This habit continued till the time of Dio Chrysostom,[117] who relates the fact. But he regards the habit as a remnant of a chastity which no longer existed. Impurity rushed in upon the women through the ears as well as the eyes, and the most of them became thoroughly licentious and corrupt. “They walk,” he says, “with their faces covered, but with soul uncovered, and indeed wide open.” St. Paul’s words had a great influence on the formation of opinion in regard to women in the ancient Church. They fell in with the tendencies of the times, and were made the groundwork and support of the depreciation of marriage, which became prevalent in the third and fourth centuries of our era.