Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/254

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E find, in the Pandect, a law ot Adrian, which denounces death to the physicians who mould make an eunuch, either by castration or by bruising the testes.By the fame law, the possessions of those who suffered castration were confiscated. Origen ought certainly to have been punished, who submitted to this operation, from the rigid interpretation of that passage in St. Matthew, which says, There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.

T changed in the reigns of succeeding emperors, who adopted the luxury of Asia; especially in the lower empire of Constantinople, where eunuchs became patriarchs and generals of armies.

I there our own times, it is the custom at Rome to castrate young children, to render