part of their body or because the children are born under evil auspices. Someone else picks them up out of commiseration and, in order to defray the expenses of bringing the child up, cuts off one of its limbs. Today, when they are demanding charity, that life that they owe to the pity of one, they are sustaining at the expense and through the pity of all."

CHAPTER XVII

PROGRESS UNDER THE ANTONINES-FAUSTINA'S EFFORTS TO SAVE FEMALE CHILDREN-CHRISTIAN SENTIMENT GROWS-PLEA OF LACTANTIUS-ITS EFFECTS CONSTANTINE.

F

ROM the strictly legal side the most interest

ing event of Hadrian's reign is the fact

that the opinions of the jurists, when they were unanimous, were now recognized as written law. The constitutions or proclamations of law of the emperors, although none were ascribed to an earlier date, had probably been issued for a century previously, but now what is called the "Perpetual Edict" is finally arranged and authorized, and law proceeds from an intellectual and philosophic source, instead of from an imperial head.

In empowering Salvius Julianus, one of the four greatest lawyers Rome ever produced, to frame an edict, and by a senatus consultum embody this edict in the statute law of Rome, the entire law of the Empire underwent a change in spirit. What had hitherto been done by Augustus, by Nerva, by Trajan, and by Hadrian himself, Hunter, Spartianus, part xvii., p. 67.

had furnished only the value of example or of an immediate law passed for the benefit of some particular condition. A succeeding emperor was at liberty to imitate or pass similar laws, or ignore the acts of his predecessors as he might choose. As we shall see, he usually ignored the noble examples of those who had gone before.

But by placing the making of the law in the hands of the jurists, men who were thinkers and scholars and under the influence of the spreading Stoic philosophy, many disciples of Zeno and Chrysippus, and some later to be under the influence of the Christian philosophy, Hadrian was laying a broad foundation for the complete passing of the Roman idea of the unimportance of the child as a child, and making way for the Christian idea which was to take its place.

By a senatus consultum, passed before the Edict of Julianus, the right of fathers to expose their children was for the first time taken away; durante matrimonio they were compelled to rear their children instead of exposing them, while later regulations made it necessary to maintain even those children born after divorce.1

This was the first attempt to prohibit the exposing of children.

As we have seen, the right of the father to reject his offspring was restricted in earliest times to weak and deformed children, and then only after there had been a conference with five neighbours,

Julianus, 611; Walker, p. 77.

Code of Justinian

247

but the frequent reference to the exposure of children under the Republic and under the emperors indicates that there was little regard for this legal restraint. Even Augustus himself did not hesitate to expose the child of his granddaughter.

The law of Hadrian has not been placed by scholars and commentators as the first law against exposing children, partly no doubt because it was too new to be really effective. In an interesting controversy between Gerardus Noodt and Cornelius Van Binkershoek, as to whether there were any prohibitory laws prior to those of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian (367 A.D.), Binkershoek maintains with great show of authority, what is undoubtedly true, that there were. Interesting, too, is the fact that we find in the Code of Justinian (vii., 16, 1) reference to a rescript of Hadrian in which the sale of children is referred to as "res illicita et inhonesta," which is assumed by Walker to refer to the sales not being properly conducted,2 but which, judging from the temper of the Emperor, referred to the thing itself.

As the war-loving Trajan was succeeded by the lover of peace, the nomadic Hadrian was succeeded by the home-loving Antoninus Pius, who did not leave Rome for almost a quarter of a century, except for one rapid tour through Asia. He made

'Gerardus Noodt, Opera Omnia, 1767. Cornelius Van Binkershoek, Opera Omnia, 1761.

2

Abdy and Walker, Institutes of Justinian, Appendix A. Ortolan, p. 325.

it possible for children to inherit from their parents even though they had neglected to imitate a father in becoming a Roman citizen. He further showed his humanity by compelling cruel masters to sell slaves they had maltreated.

In the name of his wife, Faustina, for whomdespite the assaults on her character-he retained ever affection and respect, he consecrated a protective foundation for the benefit of girls, puellæ alimentaria Faustiniana-the first of its kind in the world, and the initial move to save female children other than the first-born. A medal of the time, showing the Empress, bears on the reverse side Antoninus surrounded by children, with the words Puella Faustiniana in the exergue. This, together with his continuous support of the pueri alimentarii, entitles him to the credit of saving more children from the "ancient and abominable" custom of being thrown out on the crossroads to die than any of his predecessors.

At the end of his reign it is evident from the inscriptions that endowments similar to those originated by Nerva had been made at Atina, Abellinum, Abella, Vibo, Caieta, Anagnia, Fundi, Cupra Montana, Industria, Brixia, Aquileia, Compsa, Eclanum, Allifæ, Aufidena, Cures, Auximum, and other places. What is more interesting than the point of view of E. E. Bryant, in his Life of Antoninus Pius, that these "endowments undoubtedly pauperized Italians and lightened Duruy, vol. v., p. 175.

I