[757] We have also illustrations of the fatal facility of divorce under the Empire, and of the domestic strife and crime resulting therefrom. In the following epitaph a discarded wife laments the murder of her child by the usurper of her rights: MATER FILIO PIISSIMO MISERA ET IN LVCTV ETERNALL VENEFICIO NOVERCAE—“To her most affectionate son, the wretched mother, plunged in perpetual grief by the poison of his step-mother, (raised this slab.)” There is also a curious inscription, written jointly by two living husbands to the same deceased wife, in which she is designated, CONIVX BENE MERENTA (sic)—“A well-deserving consort.” Another slab is dedicated to both the wife and the concubine—VXORI ET CONCVBINAE—of a Roman lictor.
[758] In like manner, with more tender sentiment than we would have expected in the stolid monarch, George II. was, in accordance with his own request, laid in death beside his good and gentle consort long deceased, and the partition between them removed, “that their dust might blend together.”
[759] Several of these examples are translated from Kenrick.
[760] While yet alive, Domitian was called, Our Lord and God—Dominus et Deus noster.
[761] A licentious poet, recognizing this moral corruption as the cause of national decay, exclaims:
Hoc fonte derivata clades
In patriam populumque fluxit.
[762] Origen, Contra Cels., i, 67. Cf. Jus. Mar., Apol., ii, 61, and Tert. Apol., and Ad. Nat., passim.
[763] Tertul., Apol., 22.
[764] Fabri deorum vel parentes numinum.—Prudentius, Peristeph., Hymn x, 293.
[765] Tertul., De Idol., vi.