Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/205

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HE Julian law ordained a punishment against adultery. But so far was this law, any more than those afterwards made on the same account, from being a mark of purity of morals, that on the contrary they were a proof of their depravation.

The whole political system in respect to women received a change in the monarchical state. The question was no longer to oblige them to a purity of morals, but to punish their crimes. That new laws were made to punish their crimes, was owing to their leaving those transgressions unpunished, which were not of so criminal a nature.

The frightful dissolution of manners obliged indeed the emperors to enact laws in order to put some stop to lewdness; but it was not their intention to establish a general reformation. Of this the positive facts related by historians are a much stronger proof, than all these laws can be of the contrary. We may see in Dio the conduct of Augustus on this occasion, and in what manner he eluded, both in his praetor's and in his censor's office, the repeated instances that were made him, for that purpose. Rh