Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/413

 IMPERIAL LEGISLATION. 397 influence the head of the State it procured a series of cruel edicts which doubtless were effective in destroying the remains of toler- ated paganism as well as in suppressing the special practices so offensive in the eyes of the orthodox. It was not difficult to com- mence with the time-honored practices of divination, for, although these had formed part of the machinery of State, yet when the State was centred in the person of its master, any inquiry into the future of public affairs was an inquiry into the fortune and fate of the monarch, and no crime was more jealously repressed and more promptly punished than this. Even so warm an admirer of ancestral institutions as Cato the Elder had long before warned his paterfamilias to forbid his milieus, or farm-steward, to consult any haruspex or augur. These gentry had a way of breeding trouble, and it boded no good to the master when the slaves were over-curious and too well-informed. In the same spirit Tiberius prohibited the secret consultation of haruspices. Constantine was thus serving a double purpose when, as early as 319, he threatened with burning the haruspex who ventured to cross another's thresh- old, even on pretext of friendship; the man who called him in was punished with confiscation and deportation, and the informer was rewarded. Priest and augur were only to celebrate their rites in public. Even this was withdrawn by Constantius in 357 ; any consultation with diviners was punishable with death, and the practitioners themselves, whether of magic or augury, or the ex- pounding of dreams, when on trial were deprived of exemption from torture and could be subjected to the rack or the hooks to extort confession.* Under this Constantius organized an active persecution throughout the East, in which numbers were put to death upon the slightest pretext; passing among the tombs at night was evidence of necromancy, and hanging a charm around the neck for the cure of a quartan was proof of forbidden arts. The witch-trials of modern times were prefigured and anticipated. Under Julian there was a reaction, and in 364 Yalentinian and Yalens proclaimed freedom of belief ; in 371 they included in this the old religious divination, while capital punishment was restricted For the care with which the Romans suppressed unauthorized soothsaying see Livy, xxxix. 16, and Pauli Sententt. Receptt. v. xxi. 1, 2, 3.
 * Cato. Eei Rust. 5.— Sueton. Tiber. 63.— Lib. ix. Cod. Theod. xvi. 1-6.