When Caesar had subdued all his competitors, and most of the foreign
nations which made war against him, he found that so many Romans had
been destroyed in the quarrels in which he had often engaged them, that,
to repair the loss, he promised rewards to fathers of families, and
forbade all Romans who were above twenty, and under forty years of age,
to go out of their native country. Augustus, his successor, to check the
debauchery of the Roman youth, laid heavy taxes upon such as continued
unmarried after a certain age, and encouraged with great rewards, the
procreation of lawful children. Some years afterwards, the Roman knights
having pressingly petitioned him that he would relax the severity of
that law, he ordered their whole body to assemble before him, and the
married and unmarried to arrange themselves in two separate parties,
when, observing the unmarried to be much the greater company, he first
addressed those who had complied with his law, telling them, that they
alone had served the purposes of nature and society; that the human race
was created male and female to prevent the extinction of the species;
and that marriage was contrived as the most proper method of renewing
the children of that species. He added, that they alone deserved the
name of men and fathers, and that he would prefer them to such offices,
as they might transmit to their posterity. Then turning to the
bachelors, he told them, that he knew not by what name to call them; not
by that of men, for they had done nothing that was manly; nor by that of
citizens, since the city might perish for them; nor by that of Romans,
for they seemed determined to let the race and name become extinct; but
by whatever name he called them, their crime, he said, equalled all
other crimes put together, for they were guilty of murder, in not
suffering those to be born who should proceed from them; of impiety, in
abolishing the names and honors of their fathers and ancestors; of
sacrilege, in destroying their species, and human nature, which owed its
original to the gods, and was consecrated to them; that by leading a
single life they overturned, as far as in them lay, the temples and
altars of the gods; dissolved the government, by disobeying its laws;
betrayed their country, by making it barren. Having ended his speech, he
doubled the rewards and privileges of such as had children, and laid a
heavy fine on all unmarried persons, by reviving the Poppaean law.
Though by this law all the males above a certain age were obliged to
marry under a severe penalty, Augustus allowed them the space of a full
year to comply with its demands; but such was the backwardness to
matrimony, and perversity of the Roman knights, and others, that every
possible method was taken to evade the penalty inflicted upon them, and
some of them even married children in the cradle for that purpose; thus
fulfilling the letter, they avoided the spirit of the law, and though
actually married, had no restraint upon their licentiousness, nor any
incumbrance by the expense of a family.