Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/242

 (I dare not give the sense of this picturesque word), and deliver him to the ferocious lubricity of his slaves. Law and public opinion authorised the husband to fleece the surprised lover, and thus torture could be made a means of extorting money from him.

The Lex Julia, enacted either by Julius Cæsar or Augustus, attempted a reform of morals. By the terms of this law, which was in force till the time of Justinian, the husband could not kill his wife, taken in adultery, without being punished as a murderer. Neither could he put the lover to death unless he were a slave, a go-between (leno), a comedian, or a freed man of the husband or of the family. But the husband could hold him prisoner twenty hours in order to procure witnesses. The father had more extensive rights than the husband; he was authorised, in case of flagrante delicto, to kill his daughter and her lover, but he was to kill them both, and immediately. However, to enable him to act thus as justiciary, he must have the potestas still, and the crime must have been committed in his house, or in that of his son-in-law. The Lex Julia punishes the adulterous man by the confiscation of the half of his goods; it decrees the same punishment for the woman, and, besides, forbids her to marry after the repudiation, which was obligatory for the husband. The latter was obliged even to drive away his wife at once for fear of being called a go-between. This same Lex Julia made adultery a public crime which every citizen could bring before the tribunals, and it punished with the sword the adulterous man. By degrees, and towards the Christian epoch, the legislation relative to adultery was amended.

In his quality of philosopher the Emperor Antoninus was more clement and just than his predecessors; by one law he interdicted the husband, who might himself be presumably guilty of adultery, to kill or sue his wife surprised in flagrante delicto. By degrees the customs became in time so free and so tolerant that, Septimus Severus having enacted new laws against adultery, the consul, Dion Cassius, found at Rome three thousand plaints on the register for this cause. Theodosius, says an ecclesiastical writer, mitigated