REFORMS OF HADRIAN—PUNISHMENT OF FATHERS—VALERIUS
MAXIMUS—FAVOURITE STREETS IN ROME FOR LEAVING ABANDONED
CHILDREN—MUTILATING CHILDREN FOR PROFIT.
Never, it has been said, had the human race enjoyed a state of
prosperity equal to that under the reign of Hadrian, the successor
to Trajan, and like him a philosopher among emperors. From Nerva to
Marcus Aurelius—the five emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus
Pius, and Marcus Aurelius—there was a reign of philosophy. Indeed they
may also be called the emperors of the children for the reforms they
accomplished and initiated—working as they did, contrary to the entire
law and tradition of their country, and without the inspiration of
complete knowledge of the intellectual and spiritual conditions that
were governing them.
[Illustration: ANTONINUS PIUS, CONSECRATOR OF THE WORLD’S FIRST
PROTECTIVE FOUNDATION BENEFIT FOR GIRLS]
[Illustration: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, EMPEROR-PROTECTOR OF THE ROMAN
CHILD]
To appreciate all that Hadrian did, one must remember that he had
Plutarch for a master, Suetonius for his secretary, and Phlegon, his
freedman, as amanuensis to write the history of his reign. As a youth
he had studied all the philosophic systems including that of Epictetus,
and showed an acquisitive spirit. Had he lived in our age of private
railway cars probably he would have spent little time at the Capitol:
in a time when travel was both disagreeable and dangerous he journeyed
back and forth over his great domain, to the dissatisfaction of the
Romans, but to his own greater knowledge of his people and consequent
greater humanitarianism.
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.
[Illustration: 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.
“Titus Manlius Torquatus, famous for his many great dignities, and
a person of rare experience in the civil law and the pontifical
ceremonies, did not think it necessary to consult his friends in an act
of the same nature. For when the Macedonians had by their ambassadors
complained to the Senate of D. Silanus, his son, who was governor of
that province, he besought the Senate that they would determine nothing
in that affair till he had heard the difference betwixt his son and the
Macedonians. Then, with the general consent of the conscript fathers,
and of them that came to complain, he sat and heard the cause in his
own house, wherein he spent two whole days alone, and the third day,
after he had diligently examined the testimonies on both sides, he
pronounced this sentence: ‘Whereas it hath been proved that Silanus, my
son, has taken money of our allies, I think him unworthy to live either
in the commonwealth, or in my house, and I command him forthwith to get
out of my sight.’ Silanus, struck with the sharp and cruel sentence of
his father, would not endure to live any longer, but the next night
hanged himself.
“But M. Scaurus, the light and ornament of his country, when the Roman
cavalry was worsted by the Cimbrians and deserting the proconsul,
Catullus, took their flight toward the city, sent one to tell his
son, who was one of those that fled, that he had rather meet with his
carcass slain in the field, than see him guilty of such a shameful
flight. And therefore if there were any shame remaining in his breast,
degenerate as he was, he should shun the sight of his enraged father;
for by the remembrance of his youth, he was admonished what kind of son
was to be owned or contemned by such a father as Scaurus. Which message
being delivered him, the young man was forced to make a more fatal use
of his sword against himself, than against his enemies.
“No less imperiously did A. Fulvius, one of the Senatorian Order, keep
back his son from going into the field, than Scaurus chid his for
running away. For he caused his son, eminent among his equals for his
wit, learning, and beauty, to be put to death because he took part
with Catiline, being seduced by ill-counsel; having brought him back
by force, as he was going to Catiline’s army, and uttering these words
before his death, that he ‘did not beget him to join with Catiline
against his country, but to serve his country against Catiline.’ He
might have kept him till the heat of the war had been over, but that
would have been only the act of a cautious, this was the deed of a
severe father.”
The father who was brought before Hadrian under the old conditions
would have been honoured—he had killed a son who befouled his name.
Nevertheless this man was ordered to be deported, “because he had
killed as a thief rather than as one using the power (_jure_)
of father; _nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrociate
consistere_.”[351] Whatever the excuse given, he was punished. That he
had not observed the forms in killing his son by calling a consultation
of the members of his family, was the nominal reason for punishing him,
but the unchecked power of the father over the life of his children,
even when they had become adults, was ended.
Modern sensibility will be shocked at the thought that there had been
sufficient social “advance” for distinct places to become established
for the exposure of children. But advance it was when no longer were
children left in unfrequented highways, no longer were they thrown into
the Tiber.
There were two places where it was the custom to leave abandoned
children. One was near the Velabrum, a street on the western slope of
the Aventine Hill between the Vicus Tuscus and the Forum Boarium where
the oil dealers and the cheese mongers made a practice of selling their
wares; and the other, in the vegetable market, where there rose a
column round which the children were placed. Because of this practice,
according to Festus, the column was called the Lactaria.[352] It was
said that courtesans favoured the Velabrum.
What happened to the children even in this “advanced” age was doubtless
little different from the treatment they received when they were found
on the highways. The elder Seneca has given a vivid account of the
practice of the day in the “Thirty-third Controversy,” book five,
headed “Debilitans Expositos.”[353]
Difficult as it is to believe that the people who eventually charged
themselves with the rearing of the foundlings made a business of
mutilating them, there is no doubt but that such was the case.
In the “Controversy” of Seneca the question is whether those who
mutilated exposed children have done a wrong toward the State. The
debate is opened by Porcius Latro, who asks if after having suffered
the misfortune of being exposed, it is not a piece of good luck to have
someone find them.
Cassius Severus then expresses his opinion.
“Look,” he exclaims, “on the blind wandering about the streets leaning
on their sticks, and on those with crushed feet, and still again look
on those with broken limbs. This one is without arms, that one has had
his shoulders pulled down out of shape in order that his grotesqueries
may excite laughter. Let us view the entire miserable family shivering,
trembling, blind, mutilated, perishing from hunger—in fact, already
half dead. Let us go to the origin of all these ills—a laboratory for
the manufacture of human wrecks—a cavern filled with the limbs torn
from living children—each has a different profession, a different
mutilation has given each a different occupation.”
The conclusion is that inasmuch as the exposed children are slaves,
being the property of those who rear them, they have no cause for
complaint against the State.
“What wrong has been done to the Republic?” asks Gallio in reply to
Severus. “On the contrary, have not these children been done a service
inasmuch as their parents had cast them out?”
“Many individuals,” adds F. Claudius, “rid themselves of misformed
children defective in some part of their body or because the children
are born under evil auspices. Someone else picks them up out of
commiseration and, in order to defray the expenses of bringing the
child up, cuts off one of its limbs. Today, when they are demanding
charity, that life that they owe to the pity of one, they are
sustaining at the expense and through the pity of all.”