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 536 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap xliv founded with the more venial transgressions of fornication and adultery ; nor was the licentious lover exposed to the same dis- honour which he impressed on the male or female partner of his guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal, 200 the poets accuse and celebrate the degeneracy of the times, and the reformation of manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the civilians, till the most virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the sin against nature as a crime against society. 201 Kigour of A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose tian emper- in the empire with the religion of Constantine. 202 The laws of Moses were received as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence ; the frailty of the sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to sorcery or parricide ; the same penal- ties were inflicted on the passive and active guilt of paederasty ; and all criminals of free and servile condition were either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of man- kind ; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general and pious indignation ; the impure manners of Greece still pre- vailed in the cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the punish- ment at least of female infidelity ; the guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband. But the same emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of un- manly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the purity of his motives. 203 In defiance of every 200 A crowd of disgraceful passages will force themselves on the memory of the classic reader : I will only remind him of the cool declaration of Ovid : Odi concubitus qui non utrumque resolvunt. Hoc est quod puerum tangar amore mintis. 201 iElius Lampridius, in Vit. Heliogabal. in Hist. August, p. 112 [xvii. 32, 6]. Aurelius Victor, in Philippo [Caes., 28], Codex Theodos. 1. ix. tit. vii. leg. 7 [leg. 6 ; a.d. 390], and Godefroy's Commentary, torn. iii. p. 63. Theodosius abolished the subterraneous brothels of Rome, in which the prostitution of both sexes was acted with impunity. 202 See the laws of Constantine and his successors against adultery, sodomy, &c. in the Theodosian (1. ix. tit. vii. leg. 7 ; 1. xi. tit. xxxvi. leg. 1, 4) and Justinian Codes (1. ix. tit. ix. leg. 30, 31). These princes speak the language of passion as well as of justice, and fraudulently ascribe their own severity to the first Caesars. 203 Justinian, Novel, lxxvii. cxxxiv. cxli. Procopius, in Anecdot. c. 11, 16, with the Notes of Alemannus. Theophanes, p. 151 [a.m. 6021], Cedrenus, p. 368 [i. p. 645, ed. Bonn]. Zonaras, 1. xiv. p. 64 [c. 7].