506 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliv spirit of monarchy ; the parent was again reduced from a judge to an accuser; and the magistrates were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his complaints and execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life of a son without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the Pompeian law, were finally inflicted by the justice of Constantine. 112 The same pro- tection was due to every period of existence ; and reason must applaud the humanity of Paulus for imputing the crime of murder to the father who strangles or starves or abandons his new-born infant, or exposes him in a public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied. But the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity : it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always prac- tised with impunity, by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power ; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference a popu- lar custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion. 113 If the father could subdue his own feelings, he might escape, though not the censure, at least the chastisement, of the laws ; and the Eoman empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence 114 and Christianity had been in- sufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment. 115 112 The Pompeian and Cornelian laws de sicariis and parricidis are repeated, or rather abridged, with the last supplements of Alexander Severus, Constantine, and Valentinian, in the Pandects (1. xlviii. tit. viii. ix.), and Code (1. ix. tit. xvi. xvii.). See likewise the Theodosian Code (1. ix. tit. xiv. xv.), with Godefroy's Commentary (torn. iii. p. 84-113), who pours a flood of ancient and modern learning over these penal laws. 113 When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father and a master, and silences the soruples of a foolish woman. See Apuleius (Metamorph. 1. x. p. 337, edit. Delphin.). 114 The opinion of the lawyers and the discretion of the magistrates had intro- duced in the time of Tacitus some legal restraints, which might support his con- trast of the boni mores of the Germans to the bonae leges alibi — that is to say, at Rome (de Moribus Germanorum, c. 19). Tertullian (ad Nationes, 1. i. c. 15) refutes his own charges, and those of his brethren, against the heathen jurispru- dence. 119 The wise and humane sentence of the civilian Paul (1. ii. Sententiarum in Pandect. 1. xxv. tit. iii. leg. 4) is represented as a mere moral precept by Gerard Noodt (Opp. torn. i. in Julius Paulus, p. 567-588, and Arnica ReBponsio, p. 591-606), who maintains the opinion of Justus Lipsius (Opp. torn. ii. p. 409, ad Belgas, cent. i. epist.
